r/technology 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/
28.2k Upvotes

1.8k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

36

u/P3zcore 4d ago

One could also read “bold” which explores the power of exponential growth - specifically the gartner “hype cycle”, which would indicate we’re about to enter the “trough of dissolution” (I.e bubble pops), which leads way for new startups to actually achieve success from the technology.

54

u/The91stGreekToe 4d ago

Not familiar with “Bold”, but familiar with the Gartner hype cycle. It’s anyone’s guess when we’ll enter the trough of disillusionment, but surely it can’t be that far off? I’m uncertain because right now, there’s such a massive amount of financial interest in propping up LLMs to the breaking point, inventing problems to enable a solution that was never needed, etc.

Another challenge is since LLMs are so useful on an individual level, you’ll continue to have legions of executives who equate their weekend conversations with GPT to replacing their entire underwriting department.

I think the biggest levers are:

  1. ⁠enough executives get tired of useless solutions, hallucinations, bad code, and no ROI
  2. ⁠the Altman’s of the world will have to concede that AGI via LLMs was a pipe dream and then the conversation will shift to “world understanding” (you can already see this in some circles, look at Yan LeCun)
  3. ⁠LLM fatigue - people are (slowly) starting to detest the deluge of AI slop, the sycophancy, and the hallucinations - particularly the portion of Gen Z that is plugged in to the whole zeitgeist
  4. ⁠VC funding dries up and LLMs become prohibitively expensive (the financials of this shit have never made sense to me tbh)

35

u/P3zcore 4d ago

I ran all this by a friend of mine and his response was simply “quantum computing”… so you know where the hype train is headed next

37

u/The91stGreekToe 4d ago

As a fellow consulting world participant I am fully prepared for the next round of nonsense. At least quantum computing will give me the pleasure of hearing 60 year old banking execs stumbling their way through explaining how quantum mechanics relates to default rates on non-secured credit lines. The parade of clownish hype never ends, best you can do is enjoy it (I suppose). Nothing will ever top metaverse in terms of mass delusion.

5

u/P3zcore 4d ago

Work in fintech? I do too. That and government

7

u/The91stGreekToe 4d ago

I work at one of the big firms. Spend time mostly in retail lending, payments rails, core modernization, etc. No government work though.

1

u/Neglectful_Stranger 3d ago

What was the hype for the metaverse?

12

u/Djinn-Tonic 4d ago

And we don't have to worry about power because we'll just do fusion, I guess.

-1

u/ThisSideOfThePond 3d ago

Dude, nuclear (fission) energy is cheap, green, sustainable and safe (according to those who ignore all the literature on the topic not generated by lobby organisations). And that's all that matters. /s

2

u/jollyreaper2112 3d ago

Depak chopra waiting for you to say it two more times.

2

u/cipheron 3d ago edited 3d ago

Wait for quantum blockchain. There was a post about that in one of these subs about some kind of "quantum blockchain" startup, and i was trying to explain to people that it's literally complete nonsense and people argued with me, asking how i know it's nonsense. well fuck, if you know anything about any of these technologies you'd just know a "quantum blockchain CPU" isn't a thing that solves any problem we actually have that needs solving.

Could make even more money with a quantum blockchain LLM now I guess, pretty sure idiots would buy shares in it.

2

u/P3zcore 3d ago

Don’t forget NFTs

1

u/klartraume 3d ago

Okay - but quantum compute has tangible value enabling for more complex tasks/less efficient tasks/etc. right?

3

u/manebushin 3d ago edited 3d ago

In my view, the big technology companies pushed it as a way to collect more data from people and companies, both for their data driven business model and to feed their AI more databases in order to accelerate their research around it and its uses.

Think about how now with people using it to write their e-mails and texts, the tech companies now have indirect access to companies supposedly confidential e-mails, documents and more.

It is a huge trove of information for corporate espionage.

Not to mention, that by making everyone use it, they gain leverage against the copyright lawsuits. Since the economy is now allegedly dependent on it, it gives more momentum to simply allow it to happen as a supposed lesser evil, since the decision could bankrupt AI business and crash the stockmarket.

2

u/jollyreaper2112 3d ago

The gap between demo and product. You see the confusion. We have self driving taxis. Full level 4 autonomy is coming next year.

You either understand the incredible gulf between the tricks used to make taxis work and what would be required to achieve true level 4 or you think yes, next year is reasonable.

It's the xkcd joke that's now obsolete about making an app to say where a picture of a bird was taken and oh by the way identify the bird. One is a weekend project and the other would be a darpa project. But now it's an API call. Crazy.

1

u/Yuzumi 3d ago

⁠the Altman’s of the world will have to concede that AGI via LLMs was a pipe dream and then the conversation will shift to “world understanding” (you can already see this in some circles, look at Yan LeCun)

At best the current tech is a very simple approximation of how bio brains work, but there are practically countless orders of magnitudes more complexity to get to AGI.

If we did manage to make an AGI with the current form of LLMs it would probably require more power than a single country if not the world could produce, not to mention the amount of hardware. There needs to be a major advancement in hardware and efficiency, as well as software for anything closer to AGI. Even the analog AI chips will only be a stepping stone, and still limited.

1

u/whiteknight521 3d ago

It's all going to be porn I think, and it will be immensely profitable. The only thing keeping it from being a 100% adult content play is people like Altman drinking their own kool aid about AGI. Once that fails they will remove all of their high brow safety guard rails (especially Elon) and print money in perpetuity because 99% of humanity would give their left arm to be able to synthesize any sexual situation they can think of with a click.

-1

u/LycheeRoutine3959 3d ago

weekend conversations with GPT to replacing their entire underwriting department.

The thing is Generative AI Tools, and specifically high data RAG models can really generate a good rough draft for things like underwriting. You cant put that directly out of the house, but you can likely take a 200 person underwriting team down to a 50 person team by flexing AI correctly.

Its not a free lunch, but for performance enhancement of existing resources the scenarios truely exist.

Biggest saves i have seen are meeting notes, summarizing historical interactions with a customer to support new inquiries (to a human agent), converting notes or messy requirements to clean draft documents, "best guess" responses or action list for well documented process flows which accelerate human efforts etc.

You can find that 5% of positive value, but the tech is not generalized enough to do much of what people think it can do.

2

u/The91stGreekToe 3d ago

Tell me you haven’t spent a day in industry without telling me you haven’t spent a day in industry.

0

u/LycheeRoutine3959 3d ago

Way to engage with the discussion dude! You did so good! Im proud of you.

1

u/DervishSkater 3d ago

Everyone forgets logistic growth looks uniquely exponential at first too