Introducing Ford AI Assistant

[NeighborGeek]

To (somewhat) answer this question - it's a little different than your "generic AI". The Ford-specific nature comes from the proprietary integration layer.

While Ford may leverage foundational Large Language Models (LLMs) for natural language and general knowledge, the company is building its own intelligent thread that connects those models to its internal vehicle telemetry, service data, and sensor arrays. This is also a benefit of utilizing in-house teams and it ensures the assistant can communicate with the vehicle's hardware. This is a level of depth that a generic phone-based assistant cannot achieve.

It may not launch in-app with this level of integration, but you can see where the company is going with it.

I understand the potential benefits of giving the AI access to data from the vehicle. What doesn't make sense is making it a separate voice assistant that I have to go into the ford app to use. It would make more sense to expose it to Siri / Google / ChatGPT's existing services already on the device so that I can talk to them and they can leverage the tech in the ford app to get the answer. The generic phone based assistant doesn't have to be the one to do the work, it can just hand the request off to ford's AI and spit out what it gets back. I can't see this ever succeeding as a separate voice interface that only exists in the ford app.

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[NeighborGeek]

What if the your vehicle just understood simple voice commands like “turn on/off seat heater” or “turn on/off defroster”? A man can dream…

Even better, there could just be a physical button you press to toggle the seat heater on and off.

 

[NeighborGeek]

Just look at the current human slop in the world. Human error in medicine kills and impairs tens of thousands of people each year in the U.S. alone. Same for drivers on the road. Take this forum as an example of the human mind.

I read years ago that the VA PHARMACY uses robots to dispense prescriptions to avoid human error.

A pharmacy robot is dramatically different from anything resembling AI. They are relatively simple systems. There are large bins that staff fills with pills. The 'robot' just counts pills from those bins, puts them into a bottle, and applies the label to the bottle. The bottle then drops out into a slot for humans to double check the machine's work, and for the pharmacist to review the medication as applicable to the specific patient to check for interactions etc.
Sure, there's complexity in the software receiving orders from the pharmacy management software, and orchestrating the different servos and sensors to dispense out the right number of pills from the right bin, but it's actually less like a 'Robot' as most people think of them and more like an oversized vending machine with a built in label printer.

 

[bc1]

Eh - I can respect the invention of the assembly line, but given Henry Ford's Nazi-like philosophies and friendship with Hitler, I would be happy if nobody thought like that anymore.

Sorry, guess I missed his friendship with Hitler and being like a Nazi in 1908 which was the year when he invented the Model T. Now I have to go back to see what happened to the Kaiser.

 

[Jim Lewis]

Just look at the current human slop in the world. Human error in medicine kills and impairs tens of thousands of people each year in the U.S. alone. Same for drivers on the road.

A pharmacy robot is dramatically different from anything resembling AI.

@NeighborGeek, you've got my post 180° reversed, looking at it from the wrong angle. The point is about "slop of the human mind" in comparison to complaints about "AI slop," as if the average human mind were some impeccable pinnacle of achievement (it's not). The point is, forget about AI slop. You can't even count on humans to do a purely robotic job. Some are daydreaming while performing relatively boring dispensing operations, a few might be all messed up over problems with their significant others or their finances, or maybe some are just distracted by thoughts of their vacation, starting next week, etc.

Within the limits of mechanical reliability, you can count on a robot (or AI) doing the same repetitive tasks over and over again, and not getting distracted by boredom, conversations with fellow workers, domestic or financial problems, or eagerness to start an impending vacation. That was the point of my post.

Both ChatGPT and Gemini give ~the same answer:

Deaths

• Many public safety summaries estimate that 7,000 – 9,000 Americans die each year due to medication errors, with pharmacy dispensing mistakes being a major contributor to these deaths.

People Injured / Sickened

• Estimates of broader harm from medication errors (which include but are not limited to dispensing errors) are much larger:
  • ~1.3 million people are injured by medication errors annually in the U.S. according to some health authority reports.
  • Other analyses suggest hundreds of thousands of adverse outcomes (including hospitalizations, emergency visits, and significant side effects) occur each year due to mistakes in medication dispensing.

 

[RipInPepz]

Sort of ironic how EVs are meant to help reduce our environmental impact on the world, only to be impregnated with AI that will increase that negative impact tenfold. Maybe not right away with just the ford app, but in a decade when it's in every new car sold on Earth.

There is no cost too great when it comes to appeasing the shareholders, I suppose.

 

[bc1]

Sort of ironic how EVs are meant to help reduce our environmental impact on the world, only to be impregnated with AI that will increase that negative impact tenfold. Maybe not right away with just the ford app, but in a decade when it's in every new car sold on Earth.

There is no cost too great when it comes to appeasing the shareholders, I suppose.

In the local news last night, apparently Kansas passed a bill last year offering 20 year tax breaks for data centers to develop the AI and now one or more counties have a 90 hold on any permits to study the impacts from water and electrical usage before issuing any permits for the data centers along with the Not in My Backyard people coming out against them. We got lots of wind farms and all the groups both for and against them. Many farmers reap financial benefits from it and are for them and its the former city slickers who moved onto a few acres out in the country who are against them. These are the same city slickers who move out by the airport and then complain about airliner noise and they also move out into farm country and complain about the dust being raised by a farmer plowing his fields. Go figure.

 

[bc1]

Rofl, which is funny considering Edsel fought against the stodgy stuck in the mud Ford leadership and was undermined because his cars were too forward thinking

By that time you are right. Maybe if Edsel had a decent battery back then, wasn't competing against the 55-57 and beyond Chevys, or come up with the Mustang, he might have caught on. When I was a driller in the middle east, we had 2000 HP EMD powered diesel electric engines running the drawworks run by DC motors from locomotive engines. When I stepped on the pedal and could pull 500,000 pounds of pipe out of a 25,000' hole like it was nothing was quite a feeling. Then it had a large inertia brake with a handle controller that I could stop and hold it mid air and let it down as slow as I wanted. That just goes to show how much power and braking is available in electric motors and I feel it in the Lightning driving in one pedal mode.

 

[Jenovalente]

They have gills? No wonder their e-fishin-t.

Sorry the fruit was too low to not tie the electricity, the fish, and the model T

Ok. E-fishin-t is a pretty bad dad joke

 

[GingerBear85]

In the local news last night, apparently Kansas passed a bill last year offering 20 year tax breaks for data centers to develop the AI and now one or more counties have a 90 hold on any permits to study the impacts from water and electrical usage before issuing any permits for the data centers along with the Not in My Backyard people coming out against them. We got lots of wind farms and all the groups both for and against them. Many farmers reap financial benefits from it and are for them and its the former city slickers who moved onto a few acres out in the country who are against them. These are the same city slickers who move out by the airport and then complain about airliner noise and they also move out into farm country and complain about the dust being raised by a farmer plowing his fields. Go figure.

Having been a kid when my generations old farming family lost the last of the regional produce sales to large corporations and the land in turn to developments of people who moved out to the country and complained about the smell, tractors on the road, or the sounds of a functioning farming operation this hits home. Now it’s just data centers instead of city people causing problems. I’m pretty sure my grandfather would have been the first to embrace an electric truck for our daily operations vehicles, but he wouldn’t and I don’t want AI taking over the last of our personal spaces. What happens to these data centers when some get shuttered, that land won’t be farmed again easily. I’ll take my electric truck without data centers powering it’s mediocre answers and am glad it won’t be installed on our trucks… more reason to love my software flawed Lightning otherwise perfect truck for as long as I can!

Plus now it’s an antique, it will go up in value, Right ?

Your doing the best you can Brian @fordmotorcompany problem is there is just one of you, when there should a a few more supporting you. This will be like one of those dying ai powered robots scenarios slowly playing out as this account and our trucks slowly stop responding and loosing functionality, for now you are appreciated for staying active!

 

[bc1]

Having been a kid when my generations old farming family lost the last of the regional produce sales to large corporations and the land in turn to developments of people who moved out to the country and complained about the smell, tractors on the road, or the sounds of a functioning farming operation this hits home. Now it’s just data centers instead of city people causing problems. I’m pretty sure my grandfather would have been the first to embrace an electric truck for our daily operations vehicles, but he wouldn’t and I don’t want AI taking over the last of our personal spaces.

As I look back, nine of eleven of my uncles served during WWII. Considering they just went through the depression and rural electrification didn't get to our farming area until the war years, they and I appreciated "anything" that would save a little labor. My back reminds me every day and night throwing 55-60# hay bales as a kid. After I grew up someone invented the big baler. Go figure. But those guys and my grandfathers before them really put in the hard labor and my life is easy peasy now. Five of those nine uncles came back from the Pacific theater and settled in California after WWII. They are deceased now but what they knew of that state back in the their time is long gone.

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