Why hasn't AI delivered on its promise?

Despite all this promise, adoption of AI is not where many expected (or hoped) that it might be. Research continues to improve the underlying AI technology--the recent of development of both Midjourney and Stable Diffusion4 is a case in point--and firms continue to invest in AI.5 We even saw a bump in investment during the first couple of years of the pandemic.6 However, a majority of AI projects fail.7 Compelling demonstrations are not transitioning into value creating solutions. Autonomous cars are a prime example, where commercial, mass market, versions constantly seem to be a decade away, despite early success and significant investment. We hear a similar story from AI practitioners working in firms attempting to leverage AI, with carefully developed models and solutions left on the bench as they are either not compelling enough or too fragile to replace existing solutions. There are notable successes, such as machine language translation, however there appears to have been more misses.