Ford CEO says new technologies like AI are leaving many workers behind, and companies need a plan

It’s the factory employees, construction workers, and HVAC installers who are “the backbone of our society,” he said at the Aspen Ideas Festival on Friday, in an interview with author Walter Isaacson. And, yet productivity levels for what he calls these “essential economy” workers have fallen, even as new technologies have boosted efficiency and made white collar jobs 28% more productive, he said, citing research from The Aspen Institute. Farley also pointed out how there are millions of open roles for factory, construction, and auto technician jobs today that companies are struggling to fill, he said.

“We can’t ignore it,” Farley said, adding: “AI, battery plants—they all seem exciting, but they all need HVAC installers, they all need electricians. They need welders… What happens if you have to defend yourself—is Google going to make the tanks? To be totally frank, we’ve forgotten a lot about that… People do not realize how dependent we are as a country on making things in other countries.”

Part of the problem, Farley said, is the lack of government spending on vocational training. There isn’t much attention being spent on how robotics and augmented reality could boost productivity for labor jobs, Farley said. 

Farley said he expects robotics to replace a significant number of jobs, but said that it won’t come close to the millions of open roles companies are struggling to fill today. 

“So far, maybe 10% of our operations can be roboticized. With the humanoid robot, maybe it’s 20%. But it’s not going to be 80%,” he said. 

Farley said that humans are doing things in factory plants that robots still cannot, pointing to an example of a worker in one of Ford’s plants in Germany, who creatively used a bicycle tire and a wheel with a wooden slat to close a tailgate of a truck that had gotten stuck going down the line. 

Farley reiterated that companies need to have a plan to help their workforce transition in this new age of artificial intelligence. But he said there needs to be a societal mindset shift, too.

“I think we need to go back to the basics—to trade schools—and we need to have a society that doesn’t look down on people like that,” Farley said.

During the talk, Farley put up a picture of his grandfather, who had joined Ford as an hourly employee, its 389th hire. “Look around the room. At some point, almost all of your families came from these kind of jobs,” he said.

Farley said it was “very clear” to him that technology has left a lot of Americans behind. 

“We have to acknowledge that these new technologies are great. They’ll make a lot of people’s lives better, even people in the essential economy. But what are we going to do as a society for the people that it leaves behind that are valuable humans?” he said. “We have to have a plan for sustainment, and we don’t have that plan today.”