6,000 execs struggle to find the AI productivity boom
- Reference: 1771427247
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2026/02/18/ai_productivity_survey/
- Source link:
The [1]study from the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) in Massachusetts is based on input from CFOs, CEOs, and executives at enterprises of different sizes across the four countries.
On average, 69 percent of businesses currently use some form of AI, and 75 percent expect to use it over the next three years. Typical uses include "text generation using large language models," followed by "visual content creation" and "data processing using machine learning."
[2]
The impact of AI on employment and productivity is limited, according to those polled. More than 90 percent of managers say AI had no impact on employment at their organization over the past three years, and 89 percent saw no change in productivity (measured as volume of sales per employee).
[3]
[4]
Despite this, many execs anticipate significant consequences over the next three years, including reduced employment. NBER estimates this will hit about 1.75 million jobs across all four nations by 2028.
The respondents also expect their businesses to become more productive by about 1.4 percent over the next three years due to AI. This implies a reversal of the long-run decline in productivity growth in many advanced economies, the authors state.
[5]
The report also notes that employee expectations differed from the senior execs, in that workers expected to see more jobs created as a result of AI over the next three years, along with smaller productivity gains.
The NBER paper joins a growing body of evidence indicating commercial benefits of adopting AI are just not living up to their promises - at least not yet. A recent [6]survey of more than 4,500 business leaders by consultants at PwC found that more than half reported seeing neither increased revenue nor decreased costs.
Research from professional services firm Deloitte uncovered that 74 percent of organizations want their AI initiatives to grow revenue, but [7]only 20 percent have seen that happen .
[8]
A trial of Microsoft's M365 Copilot by a UK government department, published in September, found [9]no gain in productivity , with some tasks speeded up while others were hampered by it.
At the same time, Jared Spataro, the exec who leads Microsoft's AI at Work efforts, admitted he was struggling to [10]highlight return on investment (ROI) for Copilot because a lot of knowledge work doesn't translate directly into top-line or bottom-line figures.
[11]HackerOne 'updating' Ts&Cs after bug hunters question if they're training AI
[12]Palo Alto CEO says AI isn't great for business, yet
[13]Indian conglomerate Adani plans very slow $100 billion AI datacenter build
[14]Anthropic's latest Sonnet gets better at using computers, amid bouts of existential angst
That hasn't stopped others at Microsoft from making bold claims, though. Just this month, Microsoft AI chief Mustafa Suleyman said most tasks that involve "sitting down at a computer" will be fully automated by AI within the next year or 18 months. He listed accounting, legal, marketing, and project management, [15]according to Fortune .
Lenovo claimed recently that enterprises across Europe and the Middle East are accelerating their adoption of AI, with 94 percent of those surveyed [16]expecting to see a positive return on their investment, despite growing evidence to the contrary.
A survey published by Gartner today found that organizations expect AI to transform customer service, enhancing the customer experience with humans continuing to provide judgment.
It also says that 91 percent of customer service leaders are under pressure from management to implement AI.
Nearly 80 percent of firms are planning to move at least some agents into new roles, due to the expected automation of routine tasks, while there is still a need for human expertise in "complex or emotionally sensitive" interactions. Gartner says 84 percent of leaders plan to add new skills to the agent role to support this shift.
All of this points to the likelihood of very modest productivity gains from implementing AI, in stark contrast to the [17]hundreds of billions being plowed into developing these systems by the technology giants. It's small wonder they are so keen for everyone to persevere with deployments, amid promises of jam tomorrow. ®
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[1] https://www.nber.org/papers/w34836
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2aZXwMRdzBnmiQlgA9oIHswAAAcg&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aZXwMRdzBnmiQlgA9oIHswAAAcg&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33aZXwMRdzBnmiQlgA9oIHswAAAcg&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aZXwMRdzBnmiQlgA9oIHswAAAcg&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2026/01/20/pwc_ai_ceo_survey/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2026/01/21/deloitte_enterprises_adopting_ai_revenue_lift/
[8] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33aZXwMRdzBnmiQlgA9oIHswAAAcg&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2025/09/04/m365_copilot_uk_government/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2025/09/17/return_on_investment_for_copilot/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2026/02/18/hackerone_ai_policy/
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2026/02/18/palo_alto_q2_26/
[13] https://www.theregister.com/2026/02/18/india_ai_summit_adani_datacenters/
[14] https://www.theregister.com/2026/02/18/anthropic_debuts_sonnet_4_6/
[15] https://fortune.com/2026/02/13/when-will-ai-kill-white-collar-office-jobs-18-months-microsoft-mustafa-suleyman/
[16] https://www.theregister.com/2026/01/27/emea_ai_idc_lenovo/
[17] https://www.theregister.com/2025/10/24/ai_investment_us_recession/
[18] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Somehow all these promises remind me of those from long ago of computers bringing about the paperless office when they ended up printing paper on an almost industrial scale.
Clearly they've not figured out that as a standalone, AI is of little help, but if you integrate it into a blockchain app it's a complete game-changer and will allow unlimited leverage of Web 3.0 crypto...
Er, I could go on, but I'm already getting a headache typing that.
You forgot fusion power.
You need to future-proof it with quantum.
"The respondents also expect their businesses to become more productive by about 1.4 percent over the next three years due to AI."
The triumph of hope over experience.
And even if that hope materializes, that would mean complete doom for Investment-grade AI as we know it, namely as huge models hosted remotely in gigantic data centers built with insane amounts of hardware and operated with insane amounts of electricity.
Prices extracted from customers for a 1,4% productivity rise in 3 years will never pay for the electricity consumed by modern AI alone, let alone for interest on all the investment.
That would simply mean Game Over for the old AI guard and would shift industry focus to smaller, more optimized local models capable of running on edge systems, that have a chance to become economically viable.
amid promises of jam tomorrow
When do I get the jam?
Seriously, if it can be delivered to my house before tommorrow AM, that will save me a trip to the supermarket and my house can have jam and eat it!
The negative reason why you need AI
What one client has noticed is the increased use of AI to review bids.
They witnessed a significant downturn in the number of bids they were winning. A colleague spent sometime investigating and discovered the use of AI in the proposal evaluation. He then used AI to rework some proposals, used the knowledge gained ie. The phrasing and language used by the AI and applied it to their proposals and increased the number of successful proposals…
So it looks like whilst AI is actually adding nothing of any substance, without it you won’t remain I business.
Re: The negative reason why you need AI
AI is also being (mis)used by Human Resources departments to triage applications for jobs. The problem here is that a job advert will often garner hundreds of applications, of which a dozen or so are worth interviewing and maybe a handful are actually suitable for the role. The trick is to cut down these numbers by some form of filtering, and AI promised to be the tool for the job.
It isn't. I don't know what is, but AI isn't the tool for the job.
Re: The negative reason why you need AI
Louis Rossmann made [1]a video about his website (i.e. livelihood) dropping in Google search rank and having to use Gemini to rewrite his website into [2]bland nonsense as nothing else would work. It [3]got back up to number 1 .
I guess for whatever reason the number of AI slop websites are affecting Google's search rank because the majority of new websites on the Internet are now AI slop so to be successful your website also has to be AI slop.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=II2QF9JwtLc
[2] https://www.theregister.com/2026/02/16/semantic_ablation_ai_writing/
[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6uKZ84zwJI0
> The respondents also expect their businesses to become more productive by about 1.4 percent over the next three years due to AI.
Even if this was true, it's not exactly world-shattering.
There is one possible gain. An AI avatar to attend meetings. As standard it would be prompted "If they want anything from us find out what it is and say we might get back to them. Otherwise make occasional encouraging but non-committal noises but don't promise them anything". Then the meeting can go ahead without interrupting work. Eventually everyone uses an avatar, meetings are no less effective than they were before. The only ones attending were those calling the meetings because they have nothing to get on with instead; they can be culled.
Perhaps
Indeed. If everyone sent AI avatars to meetings. And the meeting summaries were generated by AI. For most operations the short term productivity gains could be enormous. Assuming of course that the freed up labor is capable of productivity.
Use an electron microscope to find AI productivity increases
They can also use it to search for the world's smallest violin that's playing for those execs who fired people and spent money on this nonsense.
The reason seems to be in history repeating itself
I've been looking into this in some detail.
The chances are that most people are doing AI wrong, in the same way that we've always adopted new things inappropriately.
There are 4 approaches that organisations could take:
1, Throw AI licences at employees
2, Buy the latest versions of their existing products with AI embedded in them
3, Redesign their internal processes so that they are oriented towards AI usage to improve it end-to-end
4, Rethink their customer facing experience and either add to it (chatbots, conversational interfaces etc) or empower the existing experience with AI (improved personalisation, better product selection, etc)
I suspect that almost everyone is doing 1 & 2. It's simple, quick, and relatively painless. it's also distracting as people faff about with this new widget without proper instruction on how to use it.
History shows that neither of these produce any measurable results at a business level as it improves a task but not the overall work throughput. For analogies look to the early stages of electrification of factories, early stages of the wide spread use of computers, internet adoption, etc.
C&D is where ROI can be shown, however this is more disruptive and people are less willing to throw cash at big change without big proof of success, which is not yet visible.
No effect on employment
.. Though that is what many companies are hoping for - a reduction in head count as a way to drive down costs.
I have already experienced "AI" customer service - it was worse than the usual scenario of dealing with a human following a script & outsourced to a cheap labour country (and why the F... do they insist on giving such customer service bods anglicised names - just use their proper names - I'm more happy to chat with Sahana*, than I am to "Sarah"* (when "Sarah" has an obvious Indian accent))
* Other names are available.
So... not completely useless but only useful for two outa ten executives? That means AI is overhyped and the bubble is gonna pop eventually.
Next up...
You are doing AI wrong. You just need to invest more, aka bet your company on this junk.
Just think that you too can generate false information, and make images of watermelephants.
And while you are doing it, you can introduce a whole new spectrum of security vulnerabilities.