AI Use At Large Companies Is In Decline, Census Bureau Says (gizmodo.com)
(Thursday September 11, 2025 @11:30PM (BeauHD)
from the behind-the-scenes dept.)
- Reference: 0179170584
- News link: https://slashdot.org/story/25/09/11/2123245/ai-use-at-large-companies-is-in-decline-census-bureau-says
- Source link: https://gizmodo.com/ai-adoption-declining-at-large-companies-2000655693
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo:
> [D]espite the AI industry's attempts to make itself seem omnipresent, a new report this week shows that adoption at large U.S. companies has declined. The [1]report comes from the Census Bureau and shows that the rate of AI adoption by large companies -- that is, firms with over 250 employees -- [2]has been declining slightly in recent weeks . The report is based on a biweekly survey, dubbed [3]Business Trends and Outlook (or BTOS), of some 1.2 million U.S. firms. The survey, which asks businesses about their use of AI tools, such as machine learning and agents, found that -- between June and now -- the rate of adoption had declined from 14 to 12 percent. Futurism [4]notes that this is the largest drop-off in the adoption rate since the survey first began in 2023, although the survey also showed a slight increase in AI use among smaller companies.
>
> The moderate drop off comes after the rate of adoption had climbed precipitously over the last few years. When the survey first began, in September of 2023, the AI adoption rate [5]hovered around 3.7 percent (PDF), while the adoption rate in December 2024 was around 5.7 percent. In the second quarter of this year, the rate also rose significantly, climbing from 7.4 percent to 9.2. The new drop-off in reported usage comes not long after another study, this one published by MIT, found that a vast majority of corporate AI pilot programs had [6]failed to produce any material benefit to the companies involved.
[1] https://www.apolloacademy.com/ai-adoption-rate-trending-down-for-large-companies/
[2] https://gizmodo.com/ai-adoption-declining-at-large-companies-2000655693
[3] https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/btos.html
[4] https://futurism.com/ai-hype-automation-decline
[5] https://www.census.gov/hfp/btos/downloads/CES-WP-24-16.pdf
[6] https://fortune.com/2025/08/18/mit-report-95-percent-generative-ai-pilots-at-companies-failing-cfo/
> [D]espite the AI industry's attempts to make itself seem omnipresent, a new report this week shows that adoption at large U.S. companies has declined. The [1]report comes from the Census Bureau and shows that the rate of AI adoption by large companies -- that is, firms with over 250 employees -- [2]has been declining slightly in recent weeks . The report is based on a biweekly survey, dubbed [3]Business Trends and Outlook (or BTOS), of some 1.2 million U.S. firms. The survey, which asks businesses about their use of AI tools, such as machine learning and agents, found that -- between June and now -- the rate of adoption had declined from 14 to 12 percent. Futurism [4]notes that this is the largest drop-off in the adoption rate since the survey first began in 2023, although the survey also showed a slight increase in AI use among smaller companies.
>
> The moderate drop off comes after the rate of adoption had climbed precipitously over the last few years. When the survey first began, in September of 2023, the AI adoption rate [5]hovered around 3.7 percent (PDF), while the adoption rate in December 2024 was around 5.7 percent. In the second quarter of this year, the rate also rose significantly, climbing from 7.4 percent to 9.2. The new drop-off in reported usage comes not long after another study, this one published by MIT, found that a vast majority of corporate AI pilot programs had [6]failed to produce any material benefit to the companies involved.
[1] https://www.apolloacademy.com/ai-adoption-rate-trending-down-for-large-companies/
[2] https://gizmodo.com/ai-adoption-declining-at-large-companies-2000655693
[3] https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/btos.html
[4] https://futurism.com/ai-hype-automation-decline
[5] https://www.census.gov/hfp/btos/downloads/CES-WP-24-16.pdf
[6] https://fortune.com/2025/08/18/mit-report-95-percent-generative-ai-pilots-at-companies-failing-cfo/
Define "adoption" (Score:3)
by Tony Isaac ( 1301187 )
If you ask officials at those companies, they'll give you the official answer. If you ask everyday people at those companies, they might tell you that they are using it without the company's official blessing.
My company has tentatively started allowing use of Copilot, including GitHub Copilot. But they're not paying for it yet. Is that "adoption"? And just about everybody goes to ChatGPT for answers some of the time. Is that "adoption"?
The survey probably defines "adoption" as paying for licenses or partnering with AI vendors. If so, it's not surprising that those numbers might be going down, because there are a lot of AI vendors selling junk, and companies quickly figure out that it's junk.
All I want to consider (Score:2)
Don't trust AI to always give you accurate results or even provide a correct sentence correction if it proposes to make your document more accessible.