AI in automotive manufacturing: Promise, payoff and the problem of scale

AI in autos: useful wrench, not a magic wand

Artificial intelligence has become one of the automotive industry’s buzzwords. It appears in earnings calls, factory tours and investor decks with near-compulsive frequency. Automakers promise smarter factories, fewer defects and lower costs, all delivered by algorithms quietly optimizing production in the background. The reality, however, is more prosaic. AI has proved very useful in specific, tightly bound applications. What it has not yet delivered is the sweeping transformation often implied by the rhetoric.