McKinsey wonders how to sell AI apps with no measurable benefits

The problem with that, of course, is that one MIT study found that many enterprise organizations have so far seen zero return from their AI efforts.

Buyers are also changing, McKinsey believes. It says purchasing decisions are shifting from the IT department to line-of-business units. These leaders are increasingly making budget trade-offs between head count investment and AI deployment, and expect vendors to engage them on value and outcomes, not just features.

That could be a tricky sell, when trials of AI tools such as Microsoft's Copilot by a UK government department reveal no discernible boost in productivity. Still, the AI firms have to recoup all those billions they've already invested somehow, don't they?

They don't. They don't have to recoup those billions.

They can go bankrupt like businesses that create no value are supposed to.