Ford CEO Jim Farley says AI is blurring the line between engineers and skilled trades

The traditional boundary between the university-educated software engineer and the blue-collar factory worker is rapidly dissolving.

Speaking at the Ford Accelerate Summit in Detroit, Ford chief executive Jim Farley said the line between software engineers and hourly skilled-trades workers is now "completely blurred out" as artificial intelligence, robotics, and machine learning reshape the modern assembly line.

While Farley acknowledged that many corporate roles are "definitely going to be changed and eliminated" by automation, he argued that hands-on, skilled trades will remain resilient. Instead of replacing mechanics, electricians, and technicians, Farley expects AI to become a "companion" that helps them perform highly technical work.

The rise of the high-tech trade

The transformation at Ford reflects a wider shift across industrial and utility sectors, where companies are scrambling to rebrand manual labour as high-tech, sophisticated career paths.

Dave Regnery, the chief executive of Trane Technologies, said his company is launching learning laboratories for its skilled trade workers. The training programmes are modelled on those used for elite athletes, designed to make the trade feel innovative and modern.

Similarly, Dan Peyovich of infrastructure firm Dycom is expanding worker benefits and offering training in subjects like personal finance. The goal, he said, is to help workers who lay fibre-optic cables see their roles as long-term careers rather than just temporary jobs. At PG&E, chief executive Patti Poppe described utility workers dangling from helicopters to maintain the grid, framing the physical trade as an extreme sport.

Upskilling and the death of the org chart

With technology changing how work is done on a weekly basis, executives say the burden of keeping up is shifting to the employees themselves.

At Fortune’s AIQ Summit in New York, corporate leaders discussed how AI is dismantling traditional corporate hierarchies. Drew Holler, an executive at homebuilder Lennar, told the summit that AI has effectively "killed the org chart" by democratising access to advanced technical capabilities.

"We’re going to give you all the tools," Holler said, "but it’s your responsibility to upskill yourself."

This continuous push to learn is already defining the next generation of workers. Dallas Sutton, a 17-year-old student training to be an auto mechanic, told journalists at the Detroit summit that she plans to use her mechanic credentials to fund her studies to become a veterinarian, while also training to be a part-time firefighter.

How fast is AI moving?

For some business leaders, the rapid acceleration of these technologies points to much more existential changes in the workforce.

Dan Schulman, the chief executive of Verizon and former head of PayPal, warned that the timeline for automation is compressing rapidly. Schulman predicted that the tech industry will achieve some form of artificial general intelligence (AGI) within the next six to 18 months.

According to Schulman, that milestone will be followed by the "era of quantum" computing two years later. By 2030, he predicts, humanoid robots could be outperforming human workers in physical tasks.

"If that's the case," Schulman said, "convincing kids to consider a career in construction might not be our biggest problem."