Exploring the power and pitfalls of Artificial Intelligence.
Enterprise implementation of AI is turning out to be a rocky road. In May 2026, Starbucks abandoned its high-profile AI-based inventory system, after nine months of failing to get it to work. The “Automated Counting” system was deployed at 11,000 Starbuck stores, rolling out from September 2025. Staff were provided with handheld tablets to scan…
In two separate incidents in May 2026 at US graduation ceremonies, guest speakers were loudly booed by the students when they praised AI. Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt was booed at the University of Arizona’s graduation ceremony, and executive Gloria Caulfield seemed utterly bewildered when she was booed by students after calling AI “the next…
One of the areas where large language models (LLMs) like Anthropic’s Claude have made substantial progress is in generating computer code. Just as LLMs can produce outputs in English or Spanish, they can do so in computer languages like Python, Java, Ruby and more. This is all very cutting edge, and the true effect on…
Although Large Language Models (LLMs) like ChatGPT are very much in vogue, there are many other flavours of AI. Some are mostly historical, like expert systems, but others are very relevant to the present. Machine learning, for example, is the technology behind most of the predictive maintenance use cases in industry that you will read…
Has the productivity impact of AI gone missing in action? We are now well over three years on from the launch of ChatGPT in November 2022, since when there has been huge investment in AI across the global economy. No less than 61% of all venture capital ($259 billion) went into AI companies in 2025,…
How would you react if your AI costs went up an order of magnitude next month? AI promises productivity improvements in areas such as software code generation, but at what economic cost? Software budgets in large enterprises have traditionally been heavily skewed towards support and maintenance, with 60% or more of software budgets allocated to…
Enterprises trying to use large language models (LLMs) to access their corporate data are hitting a brick wall. It is easy for a vendor to demo a natural language interface that allows users to write prompts that access corporate data. In the demo, a user types in something like: “show me my most profitable customers”…
Corporations are investing a fortune in large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT and Claude based on the promise that they can automate business processes, reduce costs and provide new insights. The reality has proved much trickier than the sales pitch, but just how reliable are these models at basic calculations and logic anyway? A research…
Despite huge investment, turning AI hype into sustainable profit is proving far harder than expected. Vast amounts of venture capital have gone into AI companies, or at least into companies that claim to be AI companies in their pitch decks. In 2025 no less than $192 billion was invested in AI startups, 61% of the…
The restaurant industry generates over $4 trillion to the global economy, and employs at least 50 million people (possibly as many as 100 million). As with any industry, there is potential for the use of AI in various aspects of it, from back-office operations like booking and ordering systems, through to personalised marketing and staff…