Ford CEO sees blue-collar workers using AI as a ‘companion’—but other jobs ‘are definitely going to be changed and eliminated’

Ford CEO Jim Farley knows AI won’t leave blue-collar workers untouched. But at a backstage media roundtable during Ford Pro Accelerate, he argued the technology will arrive in factories, repair bays, and skilled-trades workplaces principally as a “companion”—a tool to help people perform more complex tasks, build expertise faster, and help employers address an acute shortage of technical labor.

“I think most of these jobs will be both using AI and also protected from it,” Farley said at the roundtable, which also included Linda Hubbard, president and CEO of Carhartt, and Chris Nelson, CEO of Stanley Black & Decker. But “if you work in finance doing spreadsheets, or you’re in a call center, or you’re an entry-level programmer—those jobs are definitely going to be changed and eliminated with at least this first inning of AI.”

Farley’s distinction was straightforward: AI is likely to disrupt routine, screen-based, and standardized knowledge work more quickly than it can replace electricians, technicians, mechanics, and factory skilled-trades workers. Those jobs will be transformed by AI, automation, and software, he said, but they will also remain dependent on people who can diagnose failures, apply practical judgment, and work safely around complex physical systems.

At Ford, Farley said, that change is already underway. The company has more than 10,000 skilled-trades workers, or roughly 20% of its 56,000 UAW workers. The work is moving beyond traditional maintenance of conveyors and other mechanical systems, toward repairing robots, handling fiber, maintaining automated equipment, and working with increasingly digital manufacturing operations.

The new factory trades

Farley said the line separating skilled trades from engineering is increasingly hard to see........

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