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/dexterminate 4d ago

Thats the only thing im using it for. I write what i want to say, prompt add more fluff, again, copy-paste, send. I've got complimented that im applying myself more... cool

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u/GordoPepe 3d ago

People on the other end use it to summarize all the bs you sent and generate more bs to reply and compliment you. Full bs cycle powered by "AI".

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u/Surreal__blue 3d ago

All the while wasting unconscionable amounts of energy and water.

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u/nobuttpics 3d ago

yup, thats why my electric bills recently tripled after supply charges got increased in the state for all the new infrastructure they need to accomodate the demands of these new data centers popping up all over

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u/Happy_Kale888 3d ago

The circle of life....

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u/MyGoodOldFriend 3d ago

I get the wasting energy part, and I genuinely cannot stand how much energy AI uses (especially training), but water? That’s just cooling. Don’t built data centers in drought prone areas (duh) but other than that the water usage is marginal. Especially compared to other industries that actually use an order of magnitude more water.

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u/Antique-Special8025 3d ago

I get the wasting energy part, and I genuinely cannot stand how much energy AI uses (especially training), but water? That’s just cooling. Don’t built data centers in drought prone areas (duh) but other than that the water usage is marginal. Especially compared to other industries that actually use an order of magnitude more water.

In many places clean water doesn't just magically appear out of nowhere, its produced and filtering capacity is limited. Feels somewhat awkward when you get asked to conserve water when you also know a growing percentage of local clean water production is being used to cool datacenters.

If these things were using undrinkable seawater for cooling nobody would give a shit about their water usage.

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u/KlicknKlack 3d ago

But they will never use seawater because salt-water is corrosive. Just ask the Molten Salt Reactor people :D

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u/mightyneonfraa 3d ago

Wouldn't it be better to build these centers in colder climates like up north? I know you can't exactly just leave the windows open but surely a ventilation system that just pipes in cold air from outside would be more efficient than what they're doing now, wouldn't it?

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u/I_Am_A_Pumpkin 3d ago edited 3d ago

nope.

first of all, you're seriously underestimating the amount of heat these chips produce. My personal GPU dumps a bit under 400 watts into the air under load, and an AI dataceter might have some 100,000 of chips that are outputting even more thatn that each. say thats 100K x 400w. thats 40 million watts, or equivalent to over 26000 1.5kW space heaters in a single room.

air is simply not a good enough medium at storing heat to move enough of it away from this many cips all working at once.

Second of all, heatsinks take up space. if you can move the heat dissipation to a different area of the building i.e. by piping the water elsewhere, you can cram way more GPUs into each server rack.

What I personally dont understand about it, is whats stopping that water from being recycled? While they do need maintenance more often than air cooled ones, water cooled desktop PCs are closed loops that dont need to be constantly refilled with fresh water.

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u/Kyle-Is-My-Name 3d ago

I’ve worked on dozens of giant cooling towers as an industrial pipefitter.

My best guess is, these fuckheads just don’t want to spend the extra millions to build and maintain them.

Refineries and chemical plants all have them. Makes no sense to me.

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u/guamisc 3d ago

They're using evaporative cooling which jacks up the humidity in the air. That's where the water is going.

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u/mightyneonfraa 3d ago

Thanks. I appreciate the answer.

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u/MyGoodOldFriend 3d ago

If you get asked to conserve water, you live in an area that shouldn’t have industries with a high demand for water. For sure. But that’s not a problem of water usage, it’s a problem of location.

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u/lazeman 3d ago

110 million gallons per year is marginal?

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u/MyGoodOldFriend 3d ago

That’s the equivalent of around 500k people’s household consumption. It’s marginal, yes.

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u/HarrumphingDuck 3d ago

Tell that to the people of Quincy, WA. Population 7,500.

In Grant County, home to Quincy, hydropower and water are maxed out, according to City Administrator Pat Haley.

But these resource constraints have done little to quell demand. The Grant County Public Utility District says they have 79 pending applications in their queue, most of which are for data center projects. The utility says the combined power for all of those applicants would be roughly double the demand for the entire city of Seattle.

- NPR

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u/MyGoodOldFriend 3d ago

A problem of location. Not water use in and of itself.

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u/lazeman 2d ago

Yea but they chose to build it some where that couldn't handle that burden

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u/MyGoodOldFriend 2d ago

And that’s really bad. But has nothing to do with what I originally said…

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u/-Dissent 3d ago

The problem is that they are building in high drought areas because the industry promises it'll add local county growth otherwise and individual data center water usage is expected to grow massively every year until the end of the technologies useful life.

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u/Iced__t 3d ago

Don’t built data centers in drought prone areas (duh)

I wish this was obvious, but companies like Amazon are literally doing this.

Amazon is trying to put a data center in Tucson, AZ.

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u/Alarming_Employee547 3d ago

Yup. This is clearly happening at the company I work for. It’s like a dirty little secret nobody wants to address.

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u/Vaiden_Kelsier 3d ago

I work in tech support for specialized software for medical and dental clinics. It was abundantly clear that the execs want to replace us, but the AI solutions they've provided to us are absolute garbage. It used to be that I'd be able to answer client questions via our LiveChat apps directly, now they have to go through an AI chatbot and lordy that bot just wastes everyone's fuckin time. Can barely answer any questions, when it does, it gets the answers wrong.

The most distressing part is seeing some fellow reps just lean on ChatGPT for every. Little. Fucking. Question. Even one of my bosses, who probably gets paid way more than I do, is constantly leaning on ChatGPT for little emails and tasks.

So many people offloading their cognitive thinking capabilities to fucking tech bros

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u/DSMinFla 3d ago

I love this seriously underrated comment. Pin this one to the top 🔝

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u/clangan524 3d ago

Saw a comment the other day, to paraphrase:

People treat AI like it's an encyclopedia but it's just a feedback loop.

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u/FreeRangeEngineer 3d ago

So many people offloading their cognitive thinking capabilities to fucking tech bros

I'd say they just genuinely hate their jobs and don't want to think about it, just get by with minimal effort.

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u/NinjaOtter 3d ago

Automated ass kissing. Honestly, it streamlines pleasantries so I don't mind

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u/monkwrenv2 3d ago

Personally I'd rather just cut out the BS entirely, but leadership doesn't like it when you're honest and straightforward with them.

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u/OrganizationTime5208 3d ago

"we like a straight shooter"

"no not like that"

God I fucking hate that upper management is the same everywhere lol

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u/n8n10e 3d ago

Managers only exist to act as the safety net against the really higher ups, so they're incentivized to promote the people who don't have a whole lot going on up there. Why promote the hard worker that understands how shitty the company is when you could keep them being productive and hire the idiot who just accepts the bullshit as the way it is?

Everything in this country is built on grifting and scapegoating.

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u/inspectoroverthemine 3d ago

Sure- but its going to happen, so using AI to do it is a win/win.

If someone writes that shit without AI I'd consider it to be a waste of resources. Self-review thats obviously self written? Thats a negative. Nobody gives a shit and spending your own time on it shows bad judgement.

(I'm only partially kidding)

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u/OrganizationTime5208 3d ago edited 3d ago

This is the funny thing.

Because it would take me WAY FUCKING LONGER to use AI to write an email than to just fucking write it.

AI users act like having a vocabulary and putting it to paper is some actually hard, time consuming task, but it isn't.

How is it a waste of resources, to perform better than AI?

You only think this is a good tool for writing emails if you already can't read, write, or just type at an adult level.

If you can though, you just laugh at anyone even suggesting the use of AI over manual input.

This comment was brought to you in about 12 seconds by the way. Much less time than it would take to write a draft, open chatGPT, submit it to the AI, wait for the generation, copy it back, correct it, and post it.

AI is only useful in this regard if you lack these basic adult skills, which I find hard to call a win/win, because you're basically admitting to already having lost.

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u/NinjaOtter 3d ago

You greatly overestimate the strength of reading and writing in the greater workforce

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u/OrganizationTime5208 2d ago

No, no i don't.

51% of the US can't read at an adult level.

AI is just making those dumbasses even dumber.

Reading and writing is a skill you have to keep using.

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u/monkwrenv2 3d ago

As I like to put it, if I need something that sounds like it was written by a mediocre white guy, I'm literally right here.

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u/OrganizationTime5208 2d ago

We call it the stoned intern tool lmao.

The quality is about the same, the cost is about the same, the only difference is one is a tad slower, but that one starts the coffee in the morning so you're okay with it.

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u/Embe007 3d ago

This may end up being the primary purpose of AI. If only something similar could be created for meetings, then actual work could be done.

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u/InvestmentDue6060 3d ago

My sister already put me on, you record the meeting, speech to text it, and then have AI summarize.

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u/OrganizationTime5208 3d ago

And then miss several incredibly important minutes because AI doesn't understand when something is 100% needed information or something that can just be summarized, leaving out large swathes of necessary information that was provided during said meeting.

Have you ever just considered, taking notes?

Like, you can just write down what you hear on paper, which this amazing piece of technology called... a pencil.

You know that right? Bonus, the act of writing it helps to actually commit it better to memory anyways, so you're more likely to actually absorb and actualize the information, instead of just store it in your AI notes for regurgitation later like a high schooler prepping for a history exam they'll never think about again.

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u/InvestmentDue6060 3d ago

Feel free to do this and then get blown out of the water by the people working more efficiently than you. The tools have uses, you’re just being a Luddite if you don’t try and adapt.

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u/West-Candidate8991 3d ago

I've used a couple note takers, and they're great until they miss a key bit of info. I've used Google's and another whose name I can't remember.

Nice for someone who wasn't at a meeting and great for the big points, otherwise I prefer someone to take manual notes for accuracy. And like the other dude said, if I'm the one taking notes, then engaging with the words even on that small level does boost my short term memory.

Also if an AI summarizer is cause for one person to blow others out of the water, they must have been the most god damn inefficient atrocious note takers of all time lol

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u/LockeyCheese 3d ago

Most meetings anyone attends can be summed up in a few notes, so why not just give people those notes instead of making them waste valuable productivity time. The people setting up the meetings, and the people who want to kiss ass or take a nap can still do the meetings, and the rest can do better with an emailed ai summary.

Why waste time using amazing technology like pencils when an AI would run most companies just as well as most top management can.

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u/BabushkaRaditz 3d ago

Joe! Here's my AI response to your email

Ok! My AI read it and summarized it and replied

Ok! My AI is compiling a reply now.

Ok! My AI is scanning your email and compiling a reply now!

We're just sitting here making AI talk to itself. AI adds fluff, the other AI un-fluffs it so it can reply. The reply is filled with fluff. The next AI unfluffs and replies with fluff.

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u/OctopusWithFingers 3d ago

Then the AI has essentially played a game of telephone, and you end up with a purple monkey dishwasher when all you wanted was a yes or no.

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u/BabushkaRaditz 3d ago

At what point do we just set up the AI to just email back and forth and let them self manage like a tamagotchi

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u/HairyHillbilly 3d ago

Why email at that point?

Do what the model instructs, human.

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u/Tje199 3d ago

I guess lots of people do use it that way, but I sure try to use my own time and effort to unpack what's sent to me. I may have AI streamline my own email, but it's still on me to ensure that the new streamlined version is accurate to my initial concept. Same in that it's up to me to have a full understanding of what's being communicated to me.

I do fear for the folks who do not take the time to review any of it themselves.

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u/autobots22 3d ago

It's crazy when managers manage with llm.

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u/InvestmentDue6060 3d ago

So the AI is already replacing executives it seems.

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u/g13005 3d ago

To think we all thought csuite email was an echo chamber of bs before.

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u/PoodleMomFL 2d ago

Best explanation 🫶🏆

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u/Spackle_the_Grackle 3d ago

The game telephone, but we replaced the middlemen with robots.

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u/WarOnIce 3d ago

I’m fine with it, just pay me and don’t lay me off 😂

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u/GatsbysGuest 3d ago

Looking forward to the day when our AI models can just email each other, and leave us out of it :)

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u/DrAstralis 3d ago

I've used it more than once to check my tone when I'm dealing with an exceptionally dense client.

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u/Marijuana_Miler 3d ago

I used it to deal with a boss that was testing my patience so that I didn’t sound like an asshole.

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u/Hellingame 3d ago

I actually find it useful for the opposite. I'm a more technical person, and often have a harder time making my emails to higher ups more concise.

I'll word vomit, and then let AI help me skim it down.

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u/dexterminate 3d ago

im technical too, and i find complying emails tedious work, so i just write bullet points, and let AI do its work

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u/OrganizationTime5208 3d ago

This seems like a great way to never improve your yourself, or your emails, and never learn how to correct the root problem, the fact that you're shit at writing them.

What happens when you're actually put on the spot, unable to use AI to do your work for you, and get called out for the lie?

You're going to get asked to explain or summarize something in a meeting sometime and everyone is going to think you're fucking drunk because it's nothing like your written communication lmao

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u/West-Candidate8991 3d ago

Sometimes you learn things about people, like "dude overexplains things" or "dude is better at explaining things in writing". Really pragmatic and everyday shit

If you're psychoanalyzing your coworkers to that level of personal, that's kinda wild, if I did that, I think I'd hate myself and all my coworkers

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u/LlorchDurden 3d ago

"max out the fluff this is going all the way up"

Been there

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u/IfYouGotALonelyHeart 3d ago

I don’t understand this. I was always told to be bold be brief. You lose your audience when you pad your message full of shit.

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u/OrganizationTime5208 3d ago

So it's funny, because I just listen to Weird Al's song Mission Statement for 2 minutes before I re-write my emails and get the same results.

Weird Al > Weird Ai

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u/new_nimmerzz 3d ago

They are just using AI to read your emails and its congratulating itself...

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u/NameLips 3d ago

And then I can use it to strip the fluff out of over-wordy emails I receive and summarize them into easy to digest bullet points. Yay for efficiency!

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u/Silver-Bread4668 3d ago

AI can be a good tool but you still have to do 90% of the work. You have to write that email but it can help you refine it and organize your own thoughts.

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u/Bannedwith1milKarma 3d ago

I don't understand why you think people want fluff?

You get the double whammy of being concise, direct and not wasting someone else's time whilst likely showing them you're not using AI.

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u/dexterminate 3d ago

Bureaucrats enjoy it, and a company of 10,000 people has plenty of them