New Delhi, July 26 -- When Ford Motor Co. recently announced that it was bringing back hundreds of experienced engineers to strengthen product quality, it delivered one of the most important lessons of the artificial intelligence (AI) era.

After years of expanding the use of AI and automated engineering systems, Ford acknowledged that inspection systems failed to deliver the results.

Kumar Galhotra, its chief operating officer, admitted: "We had been relying more and more on automated quality systems and not getting the desired results. We brought back technical specialists, and they hunt for failure points before a part ever reaches the plant floor."

Ford's experience should not be dismissed as an isolated engineering setback. It is a...