Farley said Tuesday that he expects the disruption to blue-collar jobs to be a mix of "negatives and positives" and that it ultimately depends on how companies manage the shift. One example: "If you're repairing a Super Duty," he said, referring to one of Ford's pro-grade pickup trucks, "augmented reality AI is a game changer. Just ask my team, they'll tell you. We need to use AI to make those repairs much simpler for people."
Ford CEO Jim Farley is issuing a wake-up call to America: the country's economic strength depends not just on the innovation hotspots of Silicon Valley, but on the everyday industries that get things "moved, built, or fixed." In a series of recent commentaries and interviews, Farley has been highlighting the mounting crisis in the "essential economy"-sectors like manufacturing, skilled trades, and infrastructure-and outlines how automation and artificial intelligence threaten to upend the white-collar workforce while blue-collar fields face unprecedented shortages.