Building an A.I. program is easy. The hard part comes after

"I would argue that AI is overkill for the majority of use cases," Drew Perez, chief executive officer at Adatos, said during a panel discussion and added that the benefits of AI are not instantaneous in many cases. His start-up uses AI to study satellite and drone images of agricultural lands to assess things such as tree counts, soil conditions and plant health. "At the end of the day, if you think about it, it has to have a return on investment." Perez told an audience that, most AI programs today are in the "lab phase or innovation phase." He explained that even if there are the right conditions -- including having the right amount of computing power, sufficient data, the right mix of talent and a culture that readily embraces AI -- profitability is not guaranteed.