It’s like the Dotcom boom in 1999-2001 and AI will bust as well

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Executives Are Pouring Money Into AI. So Why Are They Saying It’s Not Paying Off?

The general fear of being left behind by missing the boat on AI is still rampant.

“At this point, leaders who aren’t leveraging AI and their own data to move forward are making a conscious business decision not to compete,” IBM vice chairman Gary Cohn wrote in the report. “As AI adoption accelerates, creating greater efficiency, and productivity gains, the ultimate pay-off will only come to CEOs with the courage to embrace risk as opportunity.”

But how to leverage AI meaningfully — and convey that vision to workers — is proving extremely difficult.

According to a 2024 Gallup poll, only 15 percent of US employees felt that “their organization has communicated a clear AI strategy.” Only 11 percent said they feel “very prepared” to work with AI, a drop of six percent from Gallup’s 2023 survey.

Despite pouring tens of billions of dollars into AI investments and supporting infrastructure expansions, companies are still many years out from turning a profit. When, or if, they’ll ever get to the point where AI pays for itself remains to be seen.

“Are we using GenAI to solve real problems, or just optimizing slide decks?” Curioser.AI CEO Stephen Klein told Forbes.

In a study commissioned by Microsoft last year, researchers claimed that for every $1 invested in generative AI, companies would realize an average of $3.70 in return, claims that were never externally validated.

Even ChatGPT loses money, despite having all that money thrown their way.

h/t Stephen Green