But it could also be that the incredible pace of AI advancements and adoption has me thinking that industries are more sensitive to news than they should be. I spoke with Martha Gamble, who leads and collaborates with the Yale Budget Lab Report Finding that AI hasn’t replaced anyone’s jobs yet. What I gather is that Gimbel, like many economists, thinks on longer time scales than anyone in the AI ​​world.
“It would be historically shocking if a technology had an impact sooner than people thought it was going to have one,” she says. In other words, most of the economy is probably still figuring out what AI does, not deciding whether to abandon it.
The other reaction I hear — especially from the advisor crowd — is that when executives hear that so many AI pilots are failing, they take it very seriously indeed. They’re not just reading it as a technology failure. Instead, they’re not moving quickly to pilots, companies lack the right data for better AI, or other strategic reasons.
Even if there’s incredible pressure on public companies in particular to invest heavily in AI, some have taken big swings at the technology only to pull back. Buy Now The company Klarna later dropped the staff and stopped hiring in 2024, claiming it could use AI instead. Less than a year later it was once again in service, Explanation That “Ai gives us speed. Talent gives us compassion.”
Drive-throughs from McDonald’s to Taco Bell have completed pilots testing the use of AI voice assistants. According to experts I spoke to, the majority of Coca-Cola ads aren’t done with generative AI. Despite this The company’s $1 billion pledge.
So for now, the question remains unanswered: Are companies out there rethinking how much their bets on AI will pay off, or when? And if there are, what’s stopping them from talking about it out loud? (If you’re out there, email me!)