Corporate AI Isn't Actually Making (or Saving) Very Much Money

Pretty quickly after the introduction of chatbots like ChatGPT, it became clear that the MBA-driven quest to replace workers with AI agents simply was not going to work, at least in the near future. Alright, they said, but AI will still increase productivity and have a huge impact on the corporate and national bottom line.

Well, now a high-profile survey is calling even that idea into question. The National Bureau of Economic Research surveyed 6,000 CEOs, CFOs, and other C-Suite decision-makers from large corporations. They were from all over the English-speaking world, both start-ups and legacy corporations.

The survey found that the vast majority of respondents had yet to see AI have any meaningful impact on their business, beyond the direct impact of its own subscription cost. Almost 90% of the leadership surveyed felt they'd seen no impact on employment or productivity over the past three years. (Interestingly ...