Why AI Projects Flop, and How We Can Stop the Madness
A closer look at why 80% of AI initiatives crash and burn… and how we can avoid repeating these mistakes
Ready for a meaningless statement? Here goes: AI is everywhere, transforming industries from healthcare to defense. Private-sector AI investments shot up by 1,700% between 2013 and 2022 (probably a lot more since). Military AI budgets aren’t shy either, with the U.S. Department of Defense spending $1.8 billion annually on it. But, despite all the hype, it turns out that AI is not the one-stop fix to all the world’s problems that some have been hoping for. In fact, by 2022, over 4 out of 5 AI projects failed according to research conducted in Germany. This failure rate is twice that of conventional IT projects.
Amidst an abundance of seemingly misguided spending, the RAND Corporation (an American think tank) published “The Root Causes of Failure for Artificial Intelligence Projects and How They Can Succeed: Avoiding the Anti-Patterns of AI.” Written by James Ryseff, Brandon De Bruhl, and Sydne J. Newberry, the report offers a look at why AI projects flop and what needs to change for them to actually deliver on their promises.
