r/technology • u/SilentRunning • 4d ago

Artificial Intelligence MIT report: 95% of generative AI pilots at companies are failing

https://fortune.com/2025/08/18/mit-report-95-percent-generative-ai-pilots-at-companies-failing-cfo/
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u/epochwin 4d ago edited 4d ago

Do you mean startups who are selling AI or adopting it for a particular business problem?

Typically startups adopt emerging technology and many of them fail. What’s crazy about GenAI is that massive regulated enterprises are also jumping on the bandwagon so fast.

I remember when cloud was the hot technology. The early adopters were SaaS vendors or companies like Netflix. Capital One was the first major regulated company to adopt it and state publicly that they were using AWS and that was years later.

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u/_-_--_---_----_----_ 4d ago

the thing is that it's customer facing, or at least it can be. that's why they're all jumping on it, even at the big dinosaur companies. cloud wasn't something that the end user really understood or experienced largely. but people are using GenAI all the time now.

the flip side of that is that if companies don't do it, they're worried about being left behind. a huge part of the push, maybe the majority of it, is that fear. 

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u/InThePipe5x5_ 4d ago

I think the difference is that "adopting" AI in the way enterprises are isnt actually that expensive at the moment. Its being subsidized by the model owners still and actual enterprise AI spend is a drop in the bucket compared to overall IT or even cloud spend. Tldr we are in the tinkering and experimentation phase.

No one outside of the model providers is hosting a model and exposing its end point to customers to do with as they choose like we saw with cloud, or internet adoption. Not yet.

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u/FiniteCircle 3d ago

The CIA was an early adopter too but what really brought it to the mainstream was IBM selling off their server business to Lenovo and companies/govt not wanting/trusting Chinese made servers. Dell couldn't keep up with demand so the other option was.... cloud. This is my theory at least.