You can’t swing a dead cat these days without hitting some guru on the internet screaming about how the robots are coming for your job. They’ve been singing that same tired song for years, a funeral dirge for the common man played on a synthesizer. First, they came for the factory workers, then the clerks. Now the big brain machines are writing poetry and making pictures, and all the “creatives” and office jockeys are starting to sweat through their polo shirts. The whole world feels like it’s holding its breath, waiting for the axe to fall.
The story they sell you is always the same: efficiency, productivity, a golden age of glorious progress. They just leave out the part where you’re on the street corner with a cardboard sign. The old promise was that for every job the machine ate, it would spit out a new, better one. Turns out, that was a lie that expired around 1980. Since then, the machine has been eating jobs and just asking for seconds. More work for the guys with fancy diplomas, and more gigs serving them coffee for everyone else. A real brave new world.
So when I see a headline that says corporate AI failures might be good for jobs, my first instinct is to check the label on the bottle I’m drinking. But then I read the fine print, and goddamn, it’s the most beautiful, pathetic, and hilarious thing I’ve seen all year.
It turns out the masters of the universe, the titans in their glass towers, are spectacularly bad at this. Some new study from MIT looked at all these grand AI initiatives the C-suite has been crowing about. These are the projects meant to streamline operations and finally replace you, the expensive, unreliable human who occasionally gets sick or has a bad day. The results? A staggering 95% of these corporate AI projects had zero return on investment.
Let that sink in. Ninety-five percent. That’s a failure rate that would make a professional gambler weep. I’ve had hangovers with a better success rate. Imagine betting on a horse that not only doesn’t win, but runs the wrong way around the track, stops for a smoke, and then tries to mate with the starting gate. That’s the level of corporate strategy we’re dealing with here. For every 100 brilliant schemes to make you obsolete, 95 of them crash and burn without making a single goddamn dime.
Software projects have always been a mess, sure. A 70% failure rate was considered normal, part of the game. But this is different. This is next-level, hall-of-fame incompetence. They’re launching pilot programs that never go anywhere. Only 5% actually make it into full use with any measurable value. It’s like an army that spends billions on laser guns and then forgets to buy the batteries.
And here’s the punchline. The reason for this glorious, multi-billion-dollar face-plant is exactly what you’d expect: the people signing the checks don’t have a clue what they’re buying. They’re a bunch of suits who got hypnotized by a slick PowerPoint presentation. They hear “AI” and their eyes turn into dollar signs, imagining a workforce of silent, obedient algorithms that don’t need dental plans.
They funnel all the money into the flashy stuff, like sales and marketing, because they think the return will be easy to measure. It’s all about surface, all about the sizzle. They’re trying to build a robot that can write a catchy jingle while the whole foundation of the company is rotting from the inside. The report says the real value, the nuts-and-bolts improvements, are in the boring departments: procurement, finance, operations. But that’s not sexy. You can’t brag about optimizing your supply chain at the country club. It’s like buying a toupee when what you really need is a heart transplant.
Meanwhile, while the bosses are busy setting piles of money on fire, the grunts in the trenches are already using the damn tools. Something like 90% of employees are tapping away at things like ChatGPT on their own, while only 40% of their companies have bothered to buy licenses. The wage slaves are, as usual, smarter and more resourceful than their masters. They’re quietly getting things done with the forbidden tools, all while the executives are in a boardroom trying to figure out how to spell “synergy.” It’s a quiet, digital mutiny, and it’s the only sensible thing happening in this whole circus.
So what does this all mean for you and me, the meat puppets in the system?
It means we’ve been granted a temporary reprieve. A stay of execution, not because anyone fought for us, but because of the breathtaking, beautiful stupidity of the people in charge. They want to replace us, oh, they want it bad. They dream about it at night. But they’re so blinded by hype and so fundamentally disconnected from the actual work that they can’t even figure out how to do it right.
They’ll get tired. The boards will start asking where all the magic money is. They’ll look at the smoking crater where their AI budget used to be and move on to the next shiny object, the next big promise. The pressure to cut every living, breathing employee will ease up, for a while.
Don’t mistake this for a victory. Don’t think for a second that humanity has won. This is just a lucky break. It’s the universe throwing a banana peel under the boot of the guy coming to kick your door down. He’ll get back up eventually, angrier and probably a little bit smarter. But for now, he’s flat on his back, looking at the stars and wondering what the hell just happened.
And in that moment, in that brief pocket of chaos and confusion, there’s room to breathe. There’s time for another drink. It’s a toast not to progress, not to innovation, but to good old-fashioned, high-level, glorious human failure. They may have the money and the power, but we, my friends, have the front-row seats to the best comedy show on Earth: the C-suite trying to build the future.
Now if you’ll excuse me, this bottle isn’t going to fail on its own.
-H.C.
Source: Corporate AI Project Failures Might Have A Positive Impact On Jobs