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> Despite $30–40 billion in enterprise investment into GenAI, this report uncovers a surprising result in that 95% of organizations are getting zero return. Oo

> Despite $30–40 billion in enterprise investment into GenAI, this report uncovers a surprising result in that 95% of organizations are getting zero return. Oof

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
close04 1y ago
I'm wondering, if the return is that the employees get 20 minutes extra free time per day, is that a good, quantifiable return? Would anyone consider as a "return" anything that you can't put on your balance sheet?
DoctorOetker 1y ago
For companies competing in the same niche, the same low hanging fruits will be automated first if they invest in ML. So within the niche there is no comparative advantage. It's pay big tech or fall behind.
grues-dinner 1y ago
These are probably the same people who are "surprised" when 100 offshore agency dredgings don't magically do the app 10x faster than 10 expensive onshore workers. To be fair, the PowerPoint they were shown at that AI Synergies retreat probably was very slick.
- ToucanLoucan 1y ago
  It's almost like the people in charge of these businesses have no goddamn clue what they're actually selling, how it works or why it's good (or isn't). It's almost like, and stay with me here, but it's almost like the vast majority of tech companies are now run by business graduates who do not understand tech AT ALL, have never written a single line of code in their lives, and only know how to optimize businesses by cutting costs and making the products worse until users revolt.
  - ethbr1 1y ago
    It's almost like that's a consequence of not enforcing anti-trust vigorously enough, allowing capital to accrete in Big Tech, and creating extremely large tech companies whose primary innovation comes from acquiring rather than building. The reason a competitive ecosystem of tech companies is effective has less to do with market hand magic and more to do with big companies being dumb and conservative, largely as a consequence of their leader selection criteria. Microsoft missing web and mobile. Intel missing mobile and GPU. Google missing productizing AI.
  - franktankbank 1y ago
    Cough cough kickbacks
- SpaceManNabs 1y ago
  I have tried to digest why this is done. It is not because they believe they are 10x faster. It is because they think it will 10x their chances of getting a really good engineer for 1/10th as cheap. At least that is my theory. maybe i am wrong. i try to be charitable.
  - somenameforme 1y ago
    Do you think you could do a better job than a CEO of public company [x] from a technical standpoint - in other words, omitting the connections and public-facing charisma that they typically bring as part of the package? I genuinely do, but kind of paradoxically also suspect I'm wrong. It's simply that it's something so far outside my domain that I just can't really appreciate their skills honed over many years of practice and training, because all I get to externally see are their often ridiculous limitations, failures, and myopia. I imagine this is, in many ways, how people who have no understanding of e.g. software, let alone software development, see software engineers. I don't think it's uncharitable, it's just human nature. Imagine if we were the ones hiring CEOs. 'That guys a total asshat, and we can get ten guys in India - hard working, smart guys, standouts in 1.4 billion people - for the same price.' Go go go.
    - dariusj18 1y ago
      I think there is confusion because coding is easy, software engineering is hard.
      - motbus3 1y ago
        Coding was never the hardest problem. And it is hard to say why people are taking so long to realise it
        HankStallone 1y ago
        People who don't know how to code know they don't know how. They can look over your shoulder and see that it looks like gibberish, and they also have no interest in understanding it even if they could. On the other hand, designing the software or engineering a solution to the problem seems like something they could do, as far as they know, because it's not something concrete that they can look at and see is beyond their abilities.
- tmaly 1y ago
  that meme with the oversized pants and penny loafers comes to mind.
- charlieyu1 1y ago
  I just don't understand why offshore agenies are so prevalent. Surely hiring directly would be cheaper and gives your more control when you are hiring >1000 workers
  - ike2792 1y ago
    About 10 years ago I worked for Fortune 500 company that had outsourced a bunch of its technical work to offshore contractors. New CEO and CTO came in and got rid of all the contractors, replacing them with talented US-based hires. Cut the size of our tech organization down from something like 12,000 (including contractors) to maybe 3,000. Our tech generally worked a lot better after that also.
crazygringo 1y ago
This is no different from the personal computer, and it is to be expected. The initial years of adopting new tech have no net return because it's investment. The money saved is offset by the cost of setting up the new tech. But then once the processes all get integrated and the cost of buying and building all the tech gets paid off, it turns into profit. Also, some companies adopt new tech better than others. Some do it badly and go out of business. Some do it well and become a new market leader. Some show a net return much earlier than others because they're smarter about it. No "oof" at all. This is how investing in new transformative business processes works.
- datavirtue 1y ago
  I think it just turns into table stakes.
- delusional 1y ago
  The document actually debunks this take: > GenAI has been embedded in support, content creation, and analytics use cases, but few industries show the deep structural shifts associated with past general-purpose technologies such as new market leaders, disrupted business models, or measurable changes in customer behavior. They are not seeing the structural "disruptions" that were present for previous technological shifts.
  - signatoremo 1y ago
    Changes over which time window? AI projects in enterprises can’t be longer than 2 years, which is practically in testing the water phase, of course there are very few projects of the disruption nature exist yet.
- TimTheTinker 1y ago
  > transformative business processes Many new ideas came through promising to be "transformative" but never reached anywhere near the impact that people initially expected. Some examples: SOA, low-code/no-code, blockchain for anything other than cryptocurrency, IoT, NoSQL, the Semantic Web. Each of these has had some impact, but they've all plateaued, and there are very good reasons (including the results cited in TA) to think GenAI has also plateaued. My bet: although GenAI has plateaued, new variants will appear that integrate or are inspired by "old AI" ideas[0] paired with modern genAI tech, and these will bring us significantly more intelligent AI systems. [0] a few examples of "old AI": expert systems, genetic algorithms, constraint solving, theorem proving, S-expression manipulation.

> Despite $30–40 billion in enterprise investment into GenAI, this report uncovers a surprising result in that 95% of organizations are getting zero return. Oof

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

close04 1y ago

I'm wondering, if the return is that the employees get 20 minutes extra free time per day, is that a good, quantifiable return? Would anyone consider as a "return" anything that you can't put on your balance sheet?

DoctorOetker 1y ago

For companies competing in the same niche, the same low hanging fruits will be automated first if they invest in ML. So within the niche there is no comparative advantage. It's pay big tech or fall behind.

grues-dinner 1y ago

These are probably the same people who are "surprised" when 100 offshore agency dredgings don't magically do the app 10x faster than 10 expensive onshore workers. To be fair, the PowerPoint they were shown at that AI Synergies retreat probably was very slick.

ToucanLoucan 1y ago
It's almost like the people in charge of these businesses have no goddamn clue what they're actually selling, how it works or why it's good (or isn't). It's almost like, and stay with me here, but it's almost like the vast majority of tech companies are now run by business graduates who do not understand tech AT ALL, have never written a single line of code in their lives, and only know how to optimize businesses by cutting costs and making the products worse until users revolt.
- ethbr1 1y ago
  It's almost like that's a consequence of not enforcing anti-trust vigorously enough, allowing capital to accrete in Big Tech, and creating extremely large tech companies whose primary innovation comes from acquiring rather than building. The reason a competitive ecosystem of tech companies is effective has less to do with market hand magic and more to do with big companies being dumb and conservative, largely as a consequence of their leader selection criteria. Microsoft missing web and mobile. Intel missing mobile and GPU. Google missing productizing AI.
- franktankbank 1y ago
  Cough cough kickbacks
SpaceManNabs 1y ago
I have tried to digest why this is done. It is not because they believe they are 10x faster. It is because they think it will 10x their chances of getting a really good engineer for 1/10th as cheap. At least that is my theory. maybe i am wrong. i try to be charitable.
- somenameforme 1y ago
  Do you think you could do a better job than a CEO of public company [x] from a technical standpoint - in other words, omitting the connections and public-facing charisma that they typically bring as part of the package? I genuinely do, but kind of paradoxically also suspect I'm wrong. It's simply that it's something so far outside my domain that I just can't really appreciate their skills honed over many years of practice and training, because all I get to externally see are their often ridiculous limitations, failures, and myopia. I imagine this is, in many ways, how people who have no understanding of e.g. software, let alone software development, see software engineers. I don't think it's uncharitable, it's just human nature. Imagine if we were the ones hiring CEOs. 'That guys a total asshat, and we can get ten guys in India - hard working, smart guys, standouts in 1.4 billion people - for the same price.' Go go go.
  - dariusj18 1y ago
    I think there is confusion because coding is easy, software engineering is hard.
    - motbus3 1y ago
      Coding was never the hardest problem. And it is hard to say why people are taking so long to realise it
      - HankStallone 1y ago
        People who don't know how to code know they don't know how. They can look over your shoulder and see that it looks like gibberish, and they also have no interest in understanding it even if they could. On the other hand, designing the software or engineering a solution to the problem seems like something they could do, as far as they know, because it's not something concrete that they can look at and see is beyond their abilities.
tmaly 1y ago
that meme with the oversized pants and penny loafers comes to mind.
charlieyu1 1y ago
I just don't understand why offshore agenies are so prevalent. Surely hiring directly would be cheaper and gives your more control when you are hiring >1000 workers
- ike2792 1y ago
  About 10 years ago I worked for Fortune 500 company that had outsourced a bunch of its technical work to offshore contractors. New CEO and CTO came in and got rid of all the contractors, replacing them with talented US-based hires. Cut the size of our tech organization down from something like 12,000 (including contractors) to maybe 3,000. Our tech generally worked a lot better after that also.

crazygringo 1y ago

This is no different from the personal computer, and it is to be expected. The initial years of adopting new tech have no net return because it's investment. The money saved is offset by the cost of setting up the new tech. But then once the processes all get integrated and the cost of buying and building all the tech gets paid off, it turns into profit. Also, some companies adopt new tech better than others. Some do it badly and go out of business. Some do it well and become a new market leader. Some show a net return much earlier than others because they're smarter about it. No "oof" at all. This is how investing in new transformative business processes works.

datavirtue 1y ago
I think it just turns into table stakes.
delusional 1y ago
The document actually debunks this take: > GenAI has been embedded in support, content creation, and analytics use cases, but few industries show the deep structural shifts associated with past general-purpose technologies such as new market leaders, disrupted business models, or measurable changes in customer behavior. They are not seeing the structural "disruptions" that were present for previous technological shifts.
- signatoremo 1y ago
  Changes over which time window? AI projects in enterprises can’t be longer than 2 years, which is practically in testing the water phase, of course there are very few projects of the disruption nature exist yet.
TimTheTinker 1y ago
> transformative business processes Many new ideas came through promising to be "transformative" but never reached anywhere near the impact that people initially expected. Some examples: SOA, low-code/no-code, blockchain for anything other than cryptocurrency, IoT, NoSQL, the Semantic Web. Each of these has had some impact, but they've all plateaued, and there are very good reasons (including the results cited in TA) to think GenAI has also plateaued. My bet: although GenAI has plateaued, new variants will appear that integrate or are inspired by "old AI" ideas[0] paired with modern genAI tech, and these will bring us significantly more intelligent AI systems. [0] a few examples of "old AI": expert systems, genetic algorithms, constraint solving, theorem proving, S-expression manipulation.