CEOs Plan to Spend More on AI in 2026 - Despite Spotty Returns (msn.com) 38
The Wall Street Journal reports that 68% of CEOs "plan to spend even more on AI in 2026, according to an annual survey of more than 350 public-company CEOs from advisory firm Teneo."
And yet "less than half of current AI projects had generated more in returns than they had cost, respondents said."
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.
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.
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...
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.
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...
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LLMs are not the internet. Its a hype cycle started by OpenAI in November of 2022, look at google trends. Was AI going to change everything when Bill Hader morphed into Tom Cruise on Letterman? People thought it was incredible, but so aren't a lot of technologies. The reason people seem to be saying it'll change everything is because they are so monetarily invested. Nvidia is such a large share of stock markets that this bubble has been spread around and everyone feels a need to shill to support this scam t
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Low karma is a good thing if you're a right winger. A badge of honor. Mod system has become just "how far left are you?"
This is the dumbest of all dumb takes on Slashdot. Every time I post about the obvious and well-accepted failures of capitalism I get modded down but somehow this place is a haven for leftist thought? No, you are just a shitty person with shitty ideas.
Re: It makes sense. (Score:3)
Re: It makes sense. (Score:2)
Spoken like a true worshiper of prosperity theology.
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The hype was started by others, OpenAI are only the first with a viable implementation. In 2019 OpenAI released GPT-2 and in an anticlimactic way they first refused to release the larger models until other started to reproduce their models on their own. The largest GPT-2 model was 1.5B and by current standard very undertrained, yet they claimed it would be very dangerous because it could be used to generate fake news. If you want to laugh, get your hands on it and try to make something plausible with it.
It
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For them, an arms race with no risk (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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> Bad CEOs never get punished. They constantly get re-hired. Even after disaster. Even after criminal disaster. No one goes to jail. Ever.
One lost at super Mario...
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I'm not a big fan of what's going on in the corporate world by any means, but CEOs usually get paid in part by shares. They have a financial incentive to make things work. They've got skin in the game beyond their salary. Private equity investors, that's what you're probably seeing. The investors don't care about the long-term financial success of the company. They're interested in making a quick profit via sales via price hikes, staff cuts -- often to deeply, and then flipping the company. Remember Sports
More managers? (Score:5, 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.
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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.
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No one will be promising anything about saving money.
Shareholders cheer for layoffs specifically because of the savings. Lower headcount = lower operational costs and higher net profits. If headcount is reduced investors will expect to hear news of what the savings was.
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No one will be promising anything about saving money.
Shareholders cheer for layoffs specifically because of the savings. Lower headcount = lower operational costs and higher net profits. If headcount is reduced investors will expect to hear news of what the savings was.
Good. Wouldn't be the first time investors were lied to about "profit".
Maybe investors can use AI to determine what a good AI investment is. Then perhaps they'll get a clue.
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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.
Once you drop main headcount, there will be a small moment where there appears to be excess payroll funding. If they time it just right, they can hire a bunch of friends into the upper management level to soak up that extra payroll without anyone questioning why they need additional management roles while lowering overall employee headcount. Just imagine the world they're imagining and it all makes perfect sense. I big daycare for the elite, where they can sit and chit-chat about decimating the employment p
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Welcome to the club!
But, don't worry... when they perfect the LLM-AI powered robots to take all the jobs, we're "really hopeful" that "TPTB will find a way for us to continue living" (as fuel to power the machines).
I've been saying exactly that for over a year, and I keep getting told I'm full of it.
They don't need returns (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
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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
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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.
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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: They don't need returns (Score:2)
Because they can negotiate much better health plans than smaller businesses. It's a competitive advantage to retain employees. I have many expensive chronic health issues, and only worked for Big tech mainly for this reason. I never even applied to smaller companies.
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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.
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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:1)
Musk absolutely believes that an AGI under his control with Optimus robots to "maintain the world" for him and his harem of baby factories.
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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.
Flashback to the 90s (Score:3)
Let's see, CEO plan to push into using chatbots, even though they don't do what's needed, but they'll say whatever the CEO wants. And they'll use that to lay off employees.
Flashback to the nineties - can't remember if it was an NYT or a WSJ article that talked about CEOs downsizing (never mind how the company keeps working) until Wall St. stops rewarding their stocks/stock options.
Today's AI is marketing and sales hype! (Score:3)
Smart CEO's will embrace Automation, it just works!