Article · AI translation
IT Home reported on October 26 that, according to TechCrunch, the chief economist of private equity giant Apollo Global Management recently published a research report arguing that no large company outside the technology sector has yet seen a tangible increase in profits from AI.
IT Home noted that Apollo’s Torsten Slok focused on what he calls the S&P 493 constituents: the companies remaining in the S&P 500 after excluding the seven technology giants Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia and Tesla. The data show that these companies’ profit margins and revenue per employee have remained largely flat, with no evidence that AI has improved their productivity.
Slok wrote: “Despite massive investment in AI and overwhelming publicity, the technology has yet to deliver any financial returns for U.S. companies outside the technology sector.”
Could it simply be that companies outside the technology sector are slower to adopt AI than the technology giants? Slok is skeptical. He believes ordinary U.S. companies will find it difficult to turn increasingly cheap computing power for AI into faster revenue growth and higher profit margins.
“AI may be a powerful calculator, but most of the intelligence needed in business is judgment.” He added: “AI cannot understand responsibility, trust, corporate culture, unwritten rules, ethical trade-offs or fairness, and these factors determine reputational risk and ultimately shape revenue growth and profit margins.”
Several recent studies have reached similar conclusions: AI has yet to produce significant productivity gains.