Recently, much chatter has been about the lack of ROI in AI. And to an extent, the criticism is fair—there was a lot of hype, and over a year later, there were no earth-shattering corporate transformations to show for it (besides layoffs unfairly using AI as a scapegoat).
However, what is missing entirely from this analysis is that #NotAllAI is GenAI.
AI is not a thing; it's a toolkit. Some of these tools (aka machine learning) have existed for decades. Machine learning is the reason Amazon is a $2T market cap company, Netflix is so good at getting you to binge-watch content, radiology imaging and diagnosis have improved, and your UPS package arrives on time (mostly).
Most AI is behind the scenes - quietly powering products and companies with little fanfare.
Until 2023, AI was simply background software that made things work better, and it was the domain of a data science team that you mostly avoided chatting with at company networking events.
Then OpenAI / GenAI made it a consumer product, with all the hype that comes with that. People imbued this new AI with a super-sentience because it could confidently (although sometimes not factually) answer all their questions. VC money poured in, and a generation of companies ran around with the "just sprinkle some GenAI on this, and it will transform your business" value propositions.
Hashtag #NotAllAI needs bags of money and NVIDIA chips to deliver results. That Big AI mentality is why ROI is so hard for many organizations. Instead of using data and tools to solve narrow business problems, they have fallen in love with a (sold as magic) consumer product that they are trying to find problems to solve.
FOMO-driven development will never work, as scaling costs will always exceed value.
Now, a bit of sobriety is occurring, and some are wondering why NVIDIA has the market cap of many small countries combined and if those billions spent on chasing an automated workforce are paying off. Understandable.
Ironically, while Goldman questions the heavy investment in GenAI and NVIDIA's stock price, their bank and others quietly continue investing in other AI tools to run their fraud, BSA/AML, trading, personalization, and other practices.
Companies have been and continue to get ROI from AI, just not the sexy version you see on TV. Practical AI quietly continues to do its job.
The big secret is that the most boring use cases are the most successful.
This hype will die, but AI isn’t going anywhere; too many products and companies depend on it.
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