Cummins has discovered artificial intelligence.
Everybody remain calm.
In a sponsored Northern Echo article, Dom Coles declares that Cummins is becoming “an AI company that makes diesel engines”. The headline goes further, announcing that its team is making “engines driven by AI”.
What technological marvel justifies this transformation?
Staff are learning to use AI in Outlook, PowerPoint and Excel.
Pack up, Silicon Valley. Somebody in Darlington has summarised an email.
Diesel In The AI Bubble
The article identifies no engine driven by artificial intelligence. It describes engineers using AI to analyse data, employees improving office productivity and Cummins supplying diesel and natural-gas generators to power-hungry data centres.
Cummins has not invented the gold rush. It has parked a generator outside and started wearing a cowboy hat.
Coles even says Cummins’ share price now moves with the AI industry and that investors increasingly see the company as part of the AI bubble.
There it is.
This is not merely about engineering efficiency. Cummins desperately wants the market to see an AI company where everybody else can still smell diesel.
Using Microsoft Copilot does not turn Cummins into an artificial-intelligence business. By that standard, anybody asking ChatGPT to rewrite an email becomes Sam fucking Altman.
Psychological Safety, Cummins Style
The funniest section concerns “psychological safety”.
Cummins says employees should feel able to admit that they do not understand AI, feel threatened by it or worry about what it means. Leaders must supposedly create an environment where people can express vulnerability without suffering negative consequences.
What a lovely new value.
When I expressed distress, vulnerability and fear about how Cummins was treating me, the company did not construct a safe environment. Managers needled me, collected my reactions and later weaponised them as evidence that I was the problem.
Cummins now says humans must remain accountable for consequential decisions involving AI. During my case, human accountability disappeared into a swamp of HR managers, reconstructed explanations, barristers and witnesses who suddenly remembered whatever the company required.
Perhaps an algorithm could locate the person responsible. The humans certainly fucking struggled.
Coles also says Cummins wants to train AI agents to understand the company’s values.
That could take a while.
Artificial intelligence can process millions of documents, identify obscure patterns and generate sophisticated predictions. Asking it to find consistent integrity inside Cummins may finally cause the machines to revolt.
Intelligence, Artificially Applied
This is sponsored corporate theatre dressed as technological reporting.
Cummins uses AI-assisted office tools. Its engineers may use machine learning to analyse information. Its generators help power data centres. None of that makes the company “an AI company that makes diesel engines”.
It makes Cummins a diesel-engine company frantically rubbing itself against the AI boom and hoping some of the valuation sticks.
AI sometimes hallucinates.
Cummins has been doing it manually for years.
Lee Thompson – Founder, The Cummins Accountability Project
Source
The Northern Echo: Cummins team is making engines driven by AI