I think it depends on what you call AI and where you want to use it. Many people focus on "automation" - so do the analytics that an analyst would otherwise do.

I think it depends on what you call AI and where you want to use it. Many people focus on "automation" - so do the analytics that an analyst would otherwise do. But as you note, mostly automation, workflow, analytic or chat, is only able to do very routine tasks, and it's still quite expensive to deploy. Another issue is that often when you tackle these domains it turns out that a commonsense non-technical approach is almost as good. On several occasions I've seen it's just a case of "stop doing that". On the other hand AI can be a powerful tool or assistant when humans are struggling with a task. AI that (for example) highlights all the suspicious places in an oncology image after an oncologist has had a look and labelled it as showing cancer could improve quality of outcome. I am deeply suspicious of people who want to chop the oncologist out though! More prosaically prediction systems to estimate future customer churn, identify sales opportunities (or in the public service case demand for services and needs), future traffic flows, complex settings for complex devices (especially in the face of change), diagnostics of problems, reasoning over millions of records, are all valuable. Often the theme is "can we make a very narrow very specialist component that could come to the same conclusions that a reasonably smart three year old would if we could make her concentrate and do it millions of times". So a bit smart, very autistic, very fast. What you will not do is create value from consultancy and procurement; you need to build a capability to get the value, and that is a slow, expensive and strategic game - think 4 high cost (but don't be bullshitted there are great people who will work for reasonable amounts out there so long as you don't expect them to be slaves and make bombs or crash the financial system - think doctor or lawyer cost and recruit with the support of your uni) fte for three years. If that is too expensive then I think it's going to be a waste of your time for now, and your current stance of sceptical openness is the right thing to do - eventually someone will come with a convincing shrink wrapped offer that is right for your domains, at the right price - then all is good.