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95% of Companies See 'Zero Return' on $30B Generative AI Spend

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Re: 95% of Companies See 'Zero Return' on $30B Generative AI Spend

#411

Post by bitmasher9 »

frozenport wrote: post #38
JCM9 wrote: post #16

We are entering the “Trough of disillusionment.” These hype cycles are very predictable. GPT-5 being panned as a disappointment after endless hype may go down as GenAI’s “jump the shark” moment. It’s all fun and games until the bean counters start asking for evidence of return on investment. GenAI folks better buckle up. Bumps ahead. The smart folks are already quietly preparing for a shift to ride the next hype wave…

Yo what’s the next hype cycle that smart folks like us should be working on?

That’s the $100M question. Pick the answer correctly and you’ll get record breaking compensation levels.

Re: 95% of Companies See 'Zero Return' on $30B Generative AI Spend

#412

Post by kami23 »

rawgabbit wrote: post #402
resiros wrote: post #224

Here is the report: https://mlq.ai/media/quarterly_decks/v0.1_State_of_AI_in_Bus... The story there is very different than what's in the article. Some infos: - 50% of the budgets (the one that fails) went to marketing and sales - the authors still see that AI would offer automation equaling $2.3 trillion in labor value affecting 39 million positions - top barriers for failure is Unwillingness to adopt new tools, Lack…

This stood out to me in the report: A corporate lawyer at a mid-sized firm exemplified this dynamic. Her organization invested $50,000 in a specialized contract analysis tool, yet she consistently defaulted to ChatGPT for drafting work: "Our purchased AI tool provided rigid summaries with limited customization options. With ChatGPT, I can guide the conversation and iterate until I get exactly what I need. The fundame…

That's a similar story for me at $DAYJOB. We have copilot for our IDEs and it is so much worse than Claude code or any other CLI integration option. We're so restricted on adopting the features as fast as they are turned on. I try to use it during the day and end up frustrated that the agent mode is restricted and returns "I can't complete that for you" or something similar when asking for pretty reasonable actions.

I've been cranking out personal apps with Claude Code in contrast and my brain is exploding with ideas for day job, but this is such an organic space that the speed that corporations move at they are using the cool tool from last year has left me demoing personal work to coworkers and hoping that starts to move the needle on getting better tooling. I understand the governance and privacy concerns for $DAYJOB, and as such every tool needs to get approved by a slow human process.

We also have OpenAI access and I have found myself using that for research more so than copilot as well, maybe we just picked the worst tool because of that MS vertical integration...

Re: 95% of Companies See 'Zero Return' on $30B Generative AI Spend

#413

Post by doorhammer »

ponector wrote: post #400
lljk_kennedy wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you, I came to say this too. You're mushing your humans harder, and they'll break. Those 5 mins of downtime post-call aren't 100% note taking - it's catching their breath, trying to re-compose after dealing with a nasty customer, trying to re-energise after a deep technical session etc. I think AI in general is just being misused to optimise local minima in detriment to the overall system.

Imagine how AI changed the call center's work: 1. Some agents have been laid off. 2. Survivors got stripped off 5-minutes summarizing breaks between calls and assigned new higher targets of how many calls should they take per hour/day. And it wasn't a good job before AI...

So, I fully agree that we should be aware how AI use is impacting front-line agents--honestly, I'd bet AI is overall a bad thing in most cases--but that's just a gut feeling.

That said, it's possible the agents weren't given extra time to make notes about calls and write summaries; often they're not.

You usually have different states you can be in as a call center agent. Something like: "On a call", "Available to take a new call", "Unavailable to take a new call"

Being on a call is also being unavailable to take a call, but you'd obviously track that separately.

"Unavailable" time is usually further broken down into paid time (breaks), unpaid time (lunch) etc

And _sometimes_ the agent will have a state called something like "After Call Work" which is an "Unavailable" state that you use to finish up tasks related to the call you were just on.

So, full disclosure: I did work for a huge e-com supporting huge call centers, but I only worked for one company supporting call centers. What I'm talking about is my experience there and what I heard from people who also worked there who had experience with other call centers.

A lot of call centers don't give agents any "After Call Work" time and if they do, it's heavily discouraged and negatively impacts your metrics. They're expected to finish everything related to the call _during_ the call.

If you're thinking "that's not great" then, yeah, I agree, but it was above my paygrade.

It's entirely possible that offloading that task to an LLM gives agents _more_ breathing room.

But also totally possible that you're right. I don't know the GPs exact situation, but I feel pretty confident that other call centers are doing similar things with AI tagging and summaries and that you see both situations (AI giving more breathing room some places and taking it away others).

Re: 95% of Companies See 'Zero Return' on $30B Generative AI Spend

#414

Post by doorhammer »

shortrounddev2 wrote: post #340
doorhammer wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, I wouldn't be surprised if someone in charge of a QA/ops department chose LLMs over similarly effective existing ML models in part because the AI hype is hitting so hard right now. Two things _would_ surprise me, though: - That they'd integrate it into any meaningful process without having done actual analysis of the LLM based perf vs their existing tech - That they'd integrate the LLM into a core process their d…

My company gets a bunch of product listings from our clients and we try to group them together (so that if you search for a product name you can see all the retailers who are selling that product). Since there arent reliable UPCs for the kinds of products we work with, we need to generate embeddings (vectors) for the products by their name/brand/category and do a nearest-neighbor search. This problem has many many ma…

Yeah, I don't want to downplay the reality of companies making bad decisions.

I think for me, the way the GP phrased things just made me want to give them the benefit of the doubt.

Given my experience, people I've worked with, and how the GP phrased things, in my mind it's more likely than not that their not making a naive "chase-the-AI" decision, and that a lot of replies didn't have a whole lot of call center experience.

The department I worked with when I did work in call centers was particularly competent and also pretty org savvy. Decisions were always a mix of pragmatism and optics. I don't think it's hard to find people like that in most companies. I also don't think it's hard to find the opposite.

But yeah, when I say something would be surprising, I don't mean it's impossible. I mean that the GP sounds informed and competent, and if I assume that, it'd be surprising to me if they sacrificed long-term success for an immediate boost by slotting LLMs into something so core to their success metrics.

But, I could be wrong. It's just my hunch, not a quantitative analysis or anything. Feature factory product influence is a real thing, for sure. It's why the _main_ question I ask in interviews is for everyone to describe the relationship between product and eng, so I definitely self-select toward a specific dynamic that probably unduly influences my perspective. I've been places where the balance is hard product, and it sucks working somewhere like that.

But yeah, for deciding if more standard ML techniques are worth replacing with LLMs, I'd ultimately need to see actual numbers from someone concretely comparing the two approaches. I just don't have that context

Re: 95% of Companies See 'Zero Return' on $30B Generative AI Spend

#415

Post by ponector »

ryandrake wrote: post #118
jampa wrote: post #42

The biggest mistake people are making is treating AI as a product instead of a feature. While people are doing their work, they don't think, "Oh man, I am really excited to talk with AI today, and I can't wait to talk with a chatbot." People want to do their jobs without being too bored and overwhelmed, and that's where AI comes in. But of course, we cannot hype features; we sell products after all, so that's the sta…

I wouldn't even call it a feature. It's enabling technology. I've never once said "I would like AI in [some product]." I say: "I would like to be able to [do this task]." If the company adds that feature to a product, I'll buy it. I don't care if the company used AI, traditional algorithms, or sorcery to make the feature work--I just care that it does what I want it to do. Too many companies are just trying to spoon…

>> I've never once said "I would like AI in [some product]

But that is exactly what we got. AI washing machine! AI espresso machine! And many more AI tools.

Re: 95% of Companies See 'Zero Return' on $30B Generative AI Spend

#416

Post by doorhammer »

Imustaskforhelp wrote: post #395
doorhammer wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They might not be, and their use-case might not be one I agree with. I can just imagine a plausible reality where they made a reasonable decision given the incentives and constraints, and I default to that. I'm basically inferring how this would go down in the context I worked under, not the GP, because I don't know the details of their real context. I think I'm seeing where I'm not being as clear as I could, though.…

Man firstly I wanted to say that I loved your comment to which I responded to and then this comment too. I feel actually happy reading it and maybe its hard explaing it but maybe its because I learned something new. So firstly, I thought that you meant that they had to listen to every call so uh yeah a misunderstanding since I admittedly don't know much about it, but still its great to hear from an expert. I also don…

Hey, thanks for saying that. I have huge gaps in time commenting on HN stuff because tbh, it's just social anxiety I don't need to sign up for :| so I really value someone taking the time to express appreciation if they got something out of my novels.

I don't ever want to come across like I think I know what's up better than someone else. I just want to share my perspective given my experience and if I'm wrong, hope someone will be kind when they point it out.

Tbh it's been awhile since I've worked directly in a call center (I've done some consulting type stuff here and there since then, but not much) so I'm mostly just extrapolating based on new tech and people I still know in that industry.

Fwiw, the way I try to approach interpreting something like the GPs post is to try to predict the possible realities and decide which ones I think are most plausible. After that I usually contribute the less represented perspective--but only if I think it's plausible.

I think the reality you were describing is totally plausible. My gut feeling is that it's probably not what's happening, but I wouldn't bet any money on that.

If someone said "Pick a side. I'll give you $20k if your right and take $20k if you're wrong" I'm just flat out not participating, lol. If I _had_ to participate I'd reluctantly take benefit-of-the-doubt side, but I wouldn't love having to commit to something I'm not at all confident about

As it stands it's just a fun vehicle to talk about call center dynamics. Weirdly, I think they're super interesting

Re: 95% of Companies See 'Zero Return' on $30B Generative AI Spend

#417

Post by ponector »

doorhammer wrote: post #413
ponector wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine how AI changed the call center's work: 1. Some agents have been laid off. 2. Survivors got stripped off 5-minutes summarizing breaks between calls and assigned new higher targets of how many calls should they take per hour/day. And it wasn't a good job before AI...

So, I fully agree that we should be aware how AI use is impacting front-line agents--honestly, I'd bet AI is overall a bad thing in most cases--but that's just a gut feeling. That said, it's possible the agents weren't given extra time to make notes about calls and write summaries; often they're not. You usually have different states you can be in as a call center agent. Something like: "On a call", "Available to tak…

>> It's entirely possible that offloading that task to an LLM gives agents _more_ breathing room

In theory, yes. But there is no way they are going to save millions by giving more breathing room to agents.

Re: 95% of Companies See 'Zero Return' on $30B Generative AI Spend

#418

Post by jamwil »

kami23 wrote: post #412
rawgabbit wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This stood out to me in the report: A corporate lawyer at a mid-sized firm exemplified this dynamic. Her organization invested $50,000 in a specialized contract analysis tool, yet she consistently defaulted to ChatGPT for drafting work: "Our purchased AI tool provided rigid summaries with limited customization options. With ChatGPT, I can guide the conversation and iterate until I get exactly what I need. The fundame…

That's a similar story for me at $DAYJOB. We have copilot for our IDEs and it is so much worse than Claude code or any other CLI integration option. We're so restricted on adopting the features as fast as they are turned on. I try to use it during the day and end up frustrated that the agent mode is restricted and returns "I can't complete that for you" or something similar when asking for pretty reasonable actions.…

All I have is copilot as well, but with that I can configure Aider to use the copilot openai endpoint, and through that access most of the good models with a capable CLI tool. It’s a pair-programming experience more than an agentic one but I need to stay close to the code anyway.

Re: 95% of Companies See 'Zero Return' on $30B Generative AI Spend

#419

Post by roflc0ptic »

latexr wrote: post #269
roflc0ptic wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m inclined to believe that call center employees don’t have a lot of incentive to do a good job/care, so a lossy AI could quite plausibly be higher quality than a human

For many years now, every time I have to talk with someone on a call centre there has been a survey at the end with at least two questions: 1. Would you recommend us? 2. Was the agent helpful? I have a friend who used to work at a call centre and would routinely get the lowest marks on the first item and the highest on the second. I do that when the company has been shitty but I understand the person on the line real…

Fair point, though I think “did I accurately summarize a conversation” is much harder to check/get away with vs “did I piss off the person on the other end”

Re: 95% of Companies See 'Zero Return' on $30B Generative AI Spend

#420

Post by johnnyanmac »

resiros wrote: post #224

Here is the report: https://mlq.ai/media/quarterly_decks/v0.1_State_of_AI_in_Bus... The story there is very different than what's in the article. Some infos: - 50% of the budgets (the one that fails) went to marketing and sales - the authors still see that AI would offer automation equaling $2.3 trillion in labor value affecting 39 million positions - top barriers for failure is Unwillingness to adopt new tools, Lack…

> AI would offer automation equaling $2.3 trillion in labor value affecting 39 million positions

But

>Current automation potential: 2.27% of U.S. labor value

Given the US GDP right now is 27 trillion, I'm not sure if this is really mathing out in my head. Wwe're going to potentially optimize 61 billion dollars of US labor value while displacing some 15% of the American labor force, and return back 2.3 trillion in value? Who's purchasing all this (clearly not the workforce)? Meanwhile, investments in AI as of 2025 is already hitting half of that.

Granted, GDP is an odd indicator to measure on for this situation. But I'm unsure how else we measure "labor value" here.

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