CEOS Plan to Spend More on AI in 2026 - Despite Spotty Returns (msn.com)
- Reference: 0180385853
- News link: https://it.slashdot.org/story/25/12/15/0013251/ceos-plan-to-spend-more-on-ai-in-2026---despite-spotty-returns
- Source link: https://www.msn.com/en-us/technology/artificial-intelligence/ceos-to-keep-spending-on-ai-despite-spotty-returns/ar-AA1SkMcE
> They reported the most success using AI in marketing and customer service and challenges using it in higher-risk areas such as security, legal and human resources.
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> Teneo also surveyed about 400 institutional investors, of which 53% expect that AI initiatives would begin to deliver returns on investments within six months. That compares to the 84% of CEOs of large companies — those with revenue of $10 billion or more — who believe it will take more than six months.
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> Surprisingly, 67% of CEOs believe AI will increase their entry-level head count, while 58% believe AI will increase senior leadership head count.
All the surveyed CEOS were from public companies with revenue over $1 billion...
[1] https://www.msn.com/en-us/technology/artificial-intelligence/ceos-to-keep-spending-on-ai-despite-spotty-returns/ar-AA1SkMcE
For them, an arms race with no risk (Score:5, Insightful)
The CEOs aren't spending their own money. If they somehow don't win the arms race, they can always look back and say they needed to spend more. If they can declare themselves winners, they will look brilliant and be able to demand huge pay raises from their companies. Even if they nearly drive their companies to bankruptcy on the matter, they'll have other execs from other companies to point to as examples of people who either did worse, or won by spending more.
It was a good time to be a CEO in January of this year. It's an even better time now.
Re: For them, an arms race with no risk (Score:2)
> Bad CEOs never get punished. They constantly get re-hired. Even after disaster.
As do most people. Look how many times narcc has been fired for harassing a patron and getting his employer sued. And yet he's still somewhere, out there, telling a caller why they shouldn't cancel their cable subscription.
> Even after criminal disaster. No one goes to jail. Ever.
Elizabeth Holmes must have missed the memo.
More managers? (Score:4, Interesting)
Curious why they think AI will increase senior leadership headcount. With fewer lower-level employees why would they need more management? Also, considering the salaries those senior managers feel they deserve, that will quickly eat up any cost savings from the layoffs.
Re: (Score:2)
> Curious why they think AI will increase senior leadership headcount. With fewer lower-level employees why would they need more management? Also, considering the salaries those senior managers feel they deserve, that will quickly eat up any cost savings from the layoffs.
AI will be about reducing headcount. No one will be promising anything about saving money. Especially the executives writing executive bonus policies.
They don't need returns (Score:2, Insightful)
It's not a product it's there to replace wages. The potential payoff is in the trillions so a little bit of short-term expenditure is fine, most of which you will pay for it because there are only a handful of companies left after decades of mega mergers and illegal antitrust violations that were not enforced.
The billionaires have had it with capitalism. Mark my words. They are done with capitalism and they are done with consumers and they are done with us.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm also convinced of the sociopathic aspect of this as well, that even if replacing a worker with AI costs the company more they will be doing it anyway.
There was a time where it more common to the owners and managers of a company it was a great responsibility and honor to have so many people employed at your company, that the productivity they and yourself, that combination of capital and labor, were able to produce allowed them to have families, buy homes, live a life. Nowadays it seems that attitude is
Re: (Score:2)
Oh I forgot to add, I think a large factor to this tension in America is our once again stupid healthcare system because it is in fact a burden in a lot of ways for companies to be responsible for health insurance and its an archaic concept that needs to be shed 6 decades ago. It is bullshit and not really fair for the employer or the employee.
Re: (Score:2)
That being the case, I wonder why big companies haven't lobbied for national healthcare.
Re: (Score:2)
Its a good question, my guess is it lines up with their political stance. If you support a Republican for their low tax pro business and deregulatory stances well part of that is eating health insurance and that's only because a lot of employees will demand it, that's kinda part of how we get into this mess, it was an enticing incentive to workers and became default. . It's a sticky pickle. I imagine some companies do support it or at least wouldn't oppose it.
Re: (Score:2)
> I'm also convinced of the sociopathic aspect of this as well, that even if replacing a worker with AI costs the company more they will be doing it anyway.
> There was a time where it more common to the owners and managers of a company it was a great responsibility and honor to have so many people employed at your company, that the productivity they and yourself, that combination of capital and labor, were able to produce allowed them to have families, buy homes, live a life. Nowadays it seems that attitude is the exception and most of the owner class see that as a burden.
> Now the race is not who can make the best product at the best price it's who can shed their human workforce as fast as possible, so many of them seem downright obsessed with it.
It’ll be interesting when they get desperately obsessive about their 40% drop in revenue.
You know, after Greed fires the human workforce responsible for fueling a revenue stream far too dependent on the discretionary spending no one has in a recession caused by CEO sociopaths.
Re: (Score:2)
Gonna have to get politically accepting that this country produces a fuckload of wealth and productivity and we have not been taxing it anywhere hard enough.
Re: They don't need returns (Score:2)
Musk absolutely believes that an AGI under his control with Optimus robots to "maintain the world" for him and his harem of baby factories.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, Musk is a half-educated idiot that got lucky and now thinks, like so many idiots with some luck, that his skills are superior.
Re: (Score:2)
We're now in a state that's covered in game theory but I can't remember the exact term for it, it's a form of modified Dutch auction where the winner doesn't pay the full price but only the difference between their bid and the next highest bid, and so on all the way down. So bidders are encouraged to overextend themselves arbitrarily because whoever wins doesn't pay the full cost, it's the others that absorb the body slam.