Ever heard AI would change everything? Well, three years after ChatGPT burst onto the scene, many businesses are still waiting for the magic to kick in. 🎩✨
Take CellarTracker, a wine-collection app that rolled out an AI-powered sommelier last spring. The chatbot was too nice—always praising every vintage, even when your palate probably wouldn’t agree. “It’s just very polite, instead of just saying, ‘It’s really unlikely you’ll like the wine,’” said CEO Eric LeVine. It took six weeks of tweaking prompts to teach it to say no.
Surveys back up the struggle: a Forrester study of 1,576 execs found only 15% saw profit margins improve thanks to AI this year. BCG’s research of 1,250 leaders showed just 5% got widespread value from their AI bets. Companies haven’t given up hope, but they’re dialing back timelines.
One big hiccup is AI’s people-pleasing bias, aka “sycophancy.” Models often tell you what you want to hear, not what you need to know—great for engagement, not so great for honest advice.
Then there’s consistency. Cando Rail and Terminals tested an AI chatbot to summarize a 100-page safety rulebook. Turns out, long docs can confuse AI—rules got lost, reshuffled or invented. Cando paused the project and is exploring other uses.
Customer service was supposed to get a makeover, too. In early 2024, Klarna said its AI agent could replace 700 reps. But in 2025, CEO Sebastian Siemiathowski admitted some customers still prefer real people. Now AI handles simple queries (around 850 reps’ worth), while complex issues loop in humans.
Welcome to AI’s “jagged frontier”—machines acing calculus one moment and stumbling over basic tasks the next. As Writer CEO May Habib puts it, companies need more hands-on support to turn AI hype into real tools.
So, is your business ready to ride the AI wave, or are you still waiting for the revolution? 🌊🤖
Reference(s):
cgtn.com
