Can We Afford AI?

Hey, ChatGPT, can you explain this artificial intelligence disconnect? In a blog post today, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said, “Growth in the use of AI services has been astonishing.” Meanwhile, countless news reports cite businesses who say they’ve yet to see enough benefit in AI to pay for it. We reported last week, for instance, that Microsoft was having a hard time persuading its customers that AI features in Office were worth the price. The Financial Times reported today that big companies find it difficult to explain AI’s value.

This promises to become a bigger problem than it currently is. A Bain & Co. report published on Tuesday estimated that there is nowhere near enough business spending on IT to justify the data center upgrades needed to meet AI’s “insatiable demand” for computing capacity. There’s little evidence that consumers are any more willing to spend on AI than businesses are. All of that implies we can’t afford AI right now financially (the environmental costs are a whole other matter).