back to article Mere minority of orgs put GenAI in production after year of hype

Despite a huge surge in awareness over the last year, just 10 percent of organizations have adopted generative AI technology in production environments, according to a survey by Intel. Overall, 45 percent have made some steps in adopting generative AI, either through pushing solutions to prod, developing the models but not …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Seen this before

    Remember a few years ago when all sorts of companies were investigating blockchain, but there were very few production applications using it? I recall reading articles like this one, differing only by s/blockchain/generative AI/g

    1. elsergiovolador Silver badge

      Re: Seen this before

      Pump and dump.

      Create a start up.

      Get investors all hyped up (usually old people with generational wealth and no clue about technology, but strong with gambling addiction)

      Make sure hiring goes through your mates agency to get some kickbacks

      Get people to build carp

      Get designers to wrap these turds in a nice shiny wrappers

      Get more investors on board

      Get a massive bonus

      Quit

      Rinse and repeat

      1. ecofeco Silver badge

        Re: Seen this before

        Exactly. We've this movie before. Many times.

  2. EricM Silver badge

    AI is given extreme lip service in 2023, but where are real applications of it?

    Nearly every new version of old IT products nowadays presumably contains "AI" capabilities in some form.

    SAP, Excel, Fortinet, Cisco, etc.

    However, if you look closer at the so-called AI capabilities, they usually do resemble closely what was advertised in the last years as simply automation of some kind, "integrated analytics", "big data", "data fabric" or any of the "smart"-somethings of the late 2010s.

    The seemlingly unstoppable trend of AI-in-everything does often seem to result from a marketing department in full overdrive mode, while credibility of claims is built by some interesting and often impressive simulation of text-comprehension by publicly available LLMs - which are still just applied statistics on steroids...

    Contrary to what the companies above (and many others) claim - I still need to see an "AI" implementation in older products that does not just result in a more or less useful text generator, that manages to summarize things it read "on the internet" sometimes correctly.

    1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      AI development

      What are we shipping now?

      Label it AI

      Issue press release

      Job done.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: AI is given extreme lip service in 2023, but where are real applications of it?

      Well said. Especially "a marketing department in full overdrive mode" - which well described Sam Altman himself, and all his TED-like waffles.

      I still need to see an "AI" implementation ... that manages to summarize things it read "on the internet" sometimes correctly

      What I hope to see are summaries embedded with real, not hallucinated, references. I did download and am trying an app "Perplexity" which is focused on doing just that, which seems to index up to date news so that it can be referenced by AI queries. It's actually a layer built on top of a multiplicity of other AI models. The results are hope-inspiring - the summaries do indeed include lots of real references. The question is whether such a model can be economically self sustaining. It doesn't have ads, telling the truth is not as profitable as telling lies, and paid subscriptions (with the exception of Amazon) have never really taken off.

    3. Ian Johnston Silver badge

      Re: AI is given extreme lip service in 2023, but where are real applications of it?

      As I read in this rather good article just a couple of hours ago

      Q. What’s the difference between statistics, machine learning, and AI?

      A. The size of your marketing budget.

      1. EricM Silver badge

        Re: AI is given extreme lip service in 2023, but where are real applications of it?

        _very_ good link. Thank you.

  3. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

    First rule of reading somebody's statistics: ask what the sample is & what it represents.

    What are these organisations? Are they businesses? University CS departments? Small businesses?

    As many as 10% of businesses of all sizes using AI? I wonder what "More or Less" would make of that.

  4. Falmari Silver badge
    Mushroom

    Orgs being sold a pup

    When something is being pushed and hyped as much as GenAI is, your being sold a pup. There is no way GenAI can ever live up to the hype. Even if it solved global warming, delivered world peace while giving you a fucking blowjob.

    The reason only 10% of orgs have dipped their toes in GenAI is because orgs don’t know what to do with it. Then again neither do the tech companies and venders otherwise they would have a GenAI product and not have had to resort to sprinkling AI across their products.

    But it has been a success in the 10% that have dipped their toes in GenAI. ” More than half (51%?) have improved their customer experiences, upped efficiency, and enhanced product capabilities, the report claimed”. That’s probably because the people surveyed are probably the very people who made the decision to adopt GenAI and are probably not going to admit they have been sold a pup.

    Interestingly ”47 percent believed they'd saved money in the process”, so 53% didn’t save money. Also, the 47% only believed, they don’t know, they may not have saved money either. So, 53% - 100% have not saved money in the process.

    BTW I recommend reading the linked McKinsey article it's a masterclass in the art of saying a lot while at the same time saying nothing.

  5. elsergiovolador Silver badge

    CIGO

    Generative AI can be described as Content In Garbage Out.

    It's where the value is lost somewhere in the activation functions.

    It is also a great way to keep over hired staff busy.

    That said, Generative AI can be compared to a shiny object. Business sees the shiny object and is in awe. Then the whole magic disappears and shiny object goes on the shelf.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Shiny shiny

    I know of a few companies that swallowed the KoolAid on GenAI and have thrown lots of resource at it to 'improve the end-user experience'.

    This has resulted in them jettisoning other departments to free up cash to pay for GenAI.

    What they have all failed to realise is that the data feeding this monster is what makes GenAI good - or bad.

    Guess which department specialists they let go to finance GenAI.

    Now want to guess how useful the GenAI answers are?

    1. EricM Silver badge

      Re: Shiny shiny

      > What they have all failed to realise is that the data feeding this monster is what makes GenAI good - or bad.

      True. I think that is one of the more common misunderstandings in the current hype.

      If your business problem can not be described in the form of of detecting weak statistical dependencies (or lack thereof) in very large data sets, then the current GenAI approach will probably not lead to a useful solutions for your business. Which is true for I guess 99% of companies...

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    List of why companies haven't adopted is missing one:

    It's utterly useless!

    I was volunteered to take part in a Copilot, er, pilot (employer's pun, not mine). So far, I've been less than unimpressed. I cannot think of one single decent usage case for it! The examples provided are for people who write a lot of fluffy, low-to-no-content emails, Word documents and presentations, or are too busy to read their emails, or don't know how to do what I'd consider basic tasks in Excel (simple formulas and conditional formatting). The best use I've found is as a glorified "find" feature in large documents... which is slower than hitting Ctrl-F and typing in what I want to find.

    As for the folks who are worried about "AI" (really ML) taking their jobs - they should be. If you can be replaced with a computer, you're not adding much value to the company.

    (I'll go back to programming industrial control systems and reviewing highly technical documents for accuracy now.)

POST COMMENT House rules

Not a member of The Register? Create a new account here.

  • Enter your comment

  • Add an icon

Anonymous cowards cannot choose their icon

Other stories you might like