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Comment by bArray

14 days ago

> After a year in which trillions of dollars worth of AI investments buoyed global markets and the economy, 68% of CEOs plan to spend even more on AI in 2026

They are too far in to turn back. They got into AI via fear of missing out (FOMO) and now they are too heavily invested to write it off on their balance sheet. To revert now would cause nothing but trouble.

> Less than half of current AI projects had generated more in returns than they had cost, respondents said. They reported the most success using AI in marketing and customer service and challenges using it in higher-risk areas such as security, legal and human resources.

I.e., the best success has been in cutting jobs, not in aiding the productivity of individuals.

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bArray

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ryandrake  14 days ago

The promise of being able to run a business without having to employ people is just too alluring to these guys. They feel like they're nearly on the cusp of it: Like any day now, the technology will be there, and it can just be AI + robots, and the C-suite and shareholders can just pocket all the returns. No more pesky bags of meat to feed and clothe. You can feel it--they are absolutely salivating over the idea. "If we can just get rid of the need for human labor, Line Will Go Up forever!"

  • spwa4  14 days ago

    The whole history of AI from at least the 1930s happened in waves, and each wave could be accurately summarized by what you just said. Oh, and add Bitcoin with the same logic.

    But it never happened. None of the AI waves, not perceptrons, not "deep neural networks", not RNNs, not support vector machines, not ... made zero-human companies possible, or even less-human companies, in contrast to buying from China I might add, and other nations before China.

  • nathanaldensr  14 days ago

    Then they can stand alone on a pile of ashes at The End of the World and then see how much happiness their "money" bought them.

turnsout  14 days ago

Having seen a lot of AI-generated ads, I'm so skeptical that AI is actually improving marketing metrics. Every time I see one of these abominations on YouTube I think "is this working for you?"

With that said, I'm long-term bullish on AI. A lot of companies will over invest, just as they did during the dot-com bubble. But some of those investments will actually pay off, because this technology is not going anywhere.

  • msdz  14 days ago

    Regarding your first paragraph, I've even talked with people who go out of their way to actively _avoid_ said product after encountering AI-generated advertising. So that'll probably continue to have an effect for as long as average people with good eyes can still distinguish "AI"/generative media from "real"/traditional footage.

    • turnsout  13 days ago

      I have observed this as well, and we've already seen some pushback when major brands use AI in their creative. I wonder if we're entering an era where AI will actually taint a brand.

  • bArray  13 days ago

    > Having seen a lot of AI-generated ads, I'm so skeptical that AI is actually improving marketing metrics.

    I'm sure that firing tonnes of marketing people for prompt engineers will be a good return on investment... Perhaps it reveals something deeper - which is that a 30 second Youtube ad doesn't generate that much revenue at all.

    > With that said, I'm long-term bullish on AI

    In the long run, yes. But a lot of people will end up losing their shirts over this.

    • turnsout  13 days ago

      > But a lot of people will end up losing their shirts over this.

      Oh absolutely. In particular, it's hard for me to see a path forward for OpenAI. If they implode, it will be a tsunami.

  • riku_iki  13 days ago

    > Having seen a lot of AI-generated ads, I'm so skeptical that AI is actually improving marketing metrics. Every time I see one of these abominations on YouTube I think "is this working for you?"

    they likely track conversions, so someone is clicking and buying.

  • rsynnott  13 days ago

    Measuring the effectiveness of ad campaigns, particularly in the short term, is notoriously difficult. They likely mostly don't _know_ if it's working at this point (though, yeah, I'd kind of assume it isn't.)

    • turnsout  13 days ago

      Really? It shouldn't be difficult to measure the performance of a YouTube campaign. There are very clear metrics related to watch time, CTR and conversion rate (if applicable).

empiko  14 days ago

> Less than half of current AI projects had generated more in returns than they had cost, respondents said.

Compares to non-AI software, is this a bad number?