Crunch Time Is Coming For AI’s Big Spenders

Source Domain: www.forbes.com

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman speaks during the BlackRock Infrastructure Summit on March 11, 2026 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

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Until the escalation of hostilities between the U.S. and Israel on the one hand and Iran on the other, it is probable that the issue causing the greatest concern to the most people was the march of AI. So familiar has the term become in the three years or so since the launch of ChatGPT by OpenAI that we no longer refer to “artificial intelligence.” Just the initials will do. And they are being blamed for everything from the slump in graduate-entry jobs to perceived declines in standards of popular culture.

Somewhat perversely, a lot of the antagonism towards AI stems from statements from executives at some of the biggest AI companies themselves. For instance, earlier this month, Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, acknowledged that the balance between capital and labor was shifting drastically, while others have suggested that there could eventually be an AI-led renaissance — but only after intense disruption of the jobs market. Perhaps even more oddly, given that mass unemployment would pose a major headache for governments, politicians appear to share the companies’ enthusiasm for the technology. The lure here, of course, is that AI promises to produce the hikes in productivity that have been so elusive of late.

But is AI really delivering the gains advertised? Of course, proponents would argue that it is early days yet. But if the technology is so transformative, there should at least be some initial results beyond those irritating chatbots that seem to appear any time you visit a corporate website. And this appears to be a growing view among board members who are seeing companies spending billions of dollars on the technology. According to research published last month by Dataiku, a platform that draws on “human expertise and AI reasoning” to provide intelligence for many of the world’s biggest…

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