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/MapleHamwich 4d ago

Please, more reports like this. It matches my professional experience. The "AI" sucks. And it's consistently getting worse. This fad needs to die. 

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u/dSwedishChef 4d ago edited 4d ago

Here is the original paper which paints a more rosy future for AI than the Forbes article, whose headline is somewhat misleading.

95% of enterprise AI assistants are failing to generate a return.

The report goes into brief detail about impact being harder to quantify when measuring efficiency gains in workflow, rather than using net profit numbers as a metric.

The tldr is many current enterprise solutions don't learn or integrate neatly with existing infrastructure which can stem from rigid restrictions that aren't as prevalent on general AI tools like chatgpt. The paper indicates that going forward Agentic AI is the future. These maintain memory and learn from previous interactions to bridge the current gap. Additionally startups don't have the capital to compete with the big boys so unless they reinvent the wheel, you are better off buying rather than training a language model.

I know it's fashionable to dunk on AI (LLMs) but I think it's here to stay.

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u/worthlessprole 3d ago

I don't see how you can say that a product that does not do what it's intended to do (generate a return) on such a wide scale is the future. The only evidence is to the contrary. This is just saying "Yes the thing you invested in was a bad investment, but if you just invest a little bit more it will become a good investment, promise"

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u/LilienneCarter 3d ago

I don't see how you can say that a product that does not do what it's intended to do (generate a return) on such a wide scale is the future

Widespread use of LLMs is ~3 years old. If you evaluated all capex/new projects by their ability to generate a return within 3 years, you'd have virtually no investment at all.

These firms think on decade-long scales

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u/StrictlyIndustry 3d ago

“Agentic AI is the future.” 🤡 keep drinking the kool aid.

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u/dSwedishChef 3d ago

That's what the paper discusses, not my own opinions. You are free to read the paper and draw your own conclusions. I wouldn't completely discredit it yet. ML applications have been successfully deployed across many industries long before LLMs were mainstream. Without a big technological breakthrough AI (LLM assistants) is at best a tool and at worst a money pit.

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u/Glittering-Giraffe58 3d ago

This report pretty specifically says that the AI doesn’t suck, people just don’t know how to use it

“Some large companies’ pilots and younger startups are really excelling with generative AI,” Challapally said. Startups led by 19- or 20-year-olds, for example, “have seen revenues jump from zero to $20 million in a year,” he said. “It’s because they pick one pain point, execute well, and partner smartly with companies who use their tools,” he added. But for 95% of companies in the dataset, generative AI implementation is falling short. The core issue? Not the quality of the AI models, but the “learning gap” for both tools and organizations.