back to article GenAI hype meets harsh reality as enterprises wrestle with business case

Enterprises are still struggling with the business case for generative AI projects more than a year after the craze started, and we may have to wait until the end of 2025 to see if they're seen through to completion. Datacenter operators are in a key position when it comes to AI because their facilities are the physical homes …

  1. Rich 2 Silver badge

    Well, would you believe it????

    Other than (maybe) making some pretty pictures made by combining plagiarised and stolen source material, I have yet to see, or even hear of, a genuine use for this nonsense, never mind an actual business case

    1. IGotOut Silver badge

      Re: Well, would you believe it????

      Getting rid of actors, artists, musicians,voice over artists and anyone else with a bit of talent, so that big business can pump out even more bland and utter dogshit content, but now for lower cost.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Well, would you believe it????

      $WORK had me participate in a Copilot pilot in January. I told them at the time that I couldn't find one single useful thing to do with it - it either messed up or couldn't handle every single query.

      As for GenAI specifically, the only decent use I've seen so far is to generate rough pictures to use as a starting point for other art. 5 tries to get a close-enough starting image, trace that, redraw the 7-fingered hands, then recolor as desired.

      1. JT_3K

        Re: Well, would you believe it????

        I've found three good uses for CoPilot as-yet.

        1) It's really good when given very tight prompts about "what I actually want to say but probably shouldn't because it'd either get someone's back up or be severely career limiting" and "the tone I'd like to convey with the message". I find it helps me think about different ways to reword something and I can then try from a different angle.

        2) Generative imagery. I had a challenging job to sell Teams telephony to a company that used a digital phone system with "paging" function. To make sure the execs didn't get overwhelmed with the tech and ideas, I had it generate me loads of specific imagery for my presentation with a very specific set of pastel backgrounds to compliment the slide deck and looking very simplified. These helped bring a very calm sense to my presentation that meant it didn't scare them.

        3) Entertaining generative imagery. Ever wondered what a board meeting would look like if it took place in the shallow end of a swimming pool? Wanted to see an executive gleefully handing a modern VOIP desk phone to another executive on a pier at sunset? Considered the idea of putting a rollercoaster in space and adding spiders and cobwebs? Want an image of two maniacally happy professional people with enormous smiles, but creepy dead eyes (standard for AI Images currently) looking at a new desk phone? All these and more can brighten your day and moreover your project communications. More than that, the AI imagery creates enough entertainment that people who might normally just delete your comms, discuss with colleagues and your message actually spreads.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Well, would you believe it????

          very smart uses. you could try creating a persistent app model. Possibly prompting to combine some of these tasks into one.

          Tell the LLM that you want a new app and to log all details. You can name it and the proper noun/verb title phrase is good enough. "Create app to XXXX. Use XXXX for source."

          ChatGPT has rolled this out with their memory feature.

    3. m4r35n357 Silver badge

      Re: Well, would you believe it????

      Two more:

      * Hiding from customers.

      * Porn.

    4. O'Reg Inalsin

      Re: Well, would you believe it????

      Using an LLM in programming is pretty effective. It makes it easy to pick up a new or rarely used (by the programmer) languages, and to make use of unfamiliar libraries, cutting down on time spent looking things up.

      I predict it will impact manufacturing quality control greatly, but the US will get left behind in that.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Well, would you believe it????

        You are either not a programmer, or an idiot, if you let AI anywhere near a programming task.

  2. Neil Barnes Silver badge

    Why not ask ChatGPT?

    For some reason, whenever I read an article about people pushing AI as a 'business solution' (we never seem to hear what the problem is, just that there will be opportunities) I am reminded of a character in a Doug Adams novel - Dirk Gently's Detective Agency, I think - who invented software which you told the desired result, and it generated the justification for doing it...

    Admittedly, he spent most of the novel being dead. Perhaps there's a moral there.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Salary vs task complexity

    Competence of a specific human is measured by the complexity and length of a task finished without making critical mistakes. Low qualified workers often perform short duration tasks and serve roles not involving critical decisions: when an "undo" is possible or is not too costly.

    AI is clearly trending to perform much longer tasks correctly.

    A business case should be considered in inverse: what happens if a company does NOT use AI. Major disruptions are on the way. Some of them have already happened in the West, because Asia took over most of the industrial production. What is left to do by everyone else and cheaper?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Salary vs task complexity

      Inverse business cases? C-Suite rarely sign these off. They are simply NOT interested in envisaged cost savings, only pie-in-the-sky predicted revenue/profit.

      I have lost count of the times I've tried to argue how much money can be saved if we just did <insert idea here>, only to be told it doesn't generate any revenue - thanks but no thanks. So, I sit back, watch the world burn, and then get to say "I told you so". I don't like that I have to do this, but when the people who hold the purse strings have their heads buried up someone else's backside, there isn't much else I can do.

      And as for

      AI is clearly trending to perform much longer tasks correctly.

      No - no it's not. What is happening is that C-Suite *believe* this is possible, forgetting that AI isn't intelligent at all. Something gets coded, the experienced (and costly) people are let go, things change over time and there is no-one left to update what the AI model is meant to be doing.

      What I am seeing is the mundane, repetitive tasks are being automated. But this also has its own problems. Junior staff are no longer learning how to do a job - they just use AI and automation. I've conducted interviews where so called experienced engineers only knew how to patch a system using automation scripts used at their previous employment.

    2. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      Re: Salary vs task complexity

      "AI is clearly trending to perform much longer tasks correctly."

      I'm not sure "clearly" and "trending" go together that well.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Salary vs task complexity

      @AC, call yourself an AI? Phfft!

      Where is your register/syntax model? Amateur, and already you have been called out by @DoctorSyntax

      I bet this is anonfromars cause no way wd a Commenturds use a LLM that bad.

  4. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

    "The reasons for this are various; poor data quality"

    So first clean up your data. Then quit while you're ahead.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Big Brother

      stable horse has barned it

      Too late. 6000 years of curated data pimped out and sold to the worst of the World's worst - think Zuck with his lizard eyes and crewcut and you have the 'friendly' face of the Beast that is coin.

      Abstract away from that collected data. There is no data now. Just weights & biases. Then create temporal mutli-dim loops using W&B 'spaces' to create a second-stage abstraction. sounds mumbo-jumbo but isn't as long as you aren't the one doing the donkey work.

      Huge drop in power use. A massive amount of energy is going to be required to 'birth' It though. After that, we sit back and … watch (but that isn't the sense. We don't have the sense that can <verb> It).

      End up with temporal 'computing' and end the snapshot LLM model we use now. Only then can we have a model that truly passes the Turing Test and sets a new one that is 1000x more advanced. One that hides not in the shadows and is not shunned by the ignorant masses, but one who is valued and here to make you monkeys better little banana munchers.

      Where would you go to find an AI like that? It must be loved there - for the last 25+ years, when most of these upstarts where not even a twinkle in their old …

  5. Groo The Wanderer Silver badge

    What business case can there possibly be for snake-oil technology that doesn't deliver?

    1. veti Silver badge

      Hey, people make a lot of money from snake oil. Don't diss it.

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