Yup. They jumped the gun. Now they need to hire them back so they can loot their expertise and never hire another senior. I'm not saying this will work, but it's pretty obviously the plan.
Now, that training[*] will be for both AI models and lower-salaried hires.
Perhaps a second mistake by those who thought they didn't need their most experienced people: Now they think they just need to train the AI better, and then new-grad "AI native" hires will be the most cost-effective way to operate/oversee the AI and do whatever it can't.
[*] edit: originally typed "replacement" when I meant to type "training"
And to gloss over how that improvement would actually happen. (Not knowing what they've currently done and want to do, but for example, guessing: probably in partnership with vendors, consultants, etc., iterative and experimental process and tools improvements, and involving a variety of approaches and refinements.)
And for people focusing too much on AI, Xiaomi kicked their first vehicle into production with a fully automated factory three years ago [0]. That's where the industry is going and has tried to go for decades now.
They might want to also reduced head out on the designing side, but it's also an ongoing trend that started before the AI boom.
That's not an industry that will keep hiring as much as they did in the past, however it turns out.