The AI Mirage: Why Corporate America is Funding a Productivity Dead End

Opinion: For years, the narrative surrounding artificial intelligence has been one of inevitable transformation. But as the spending spree reaches a fever pitch, a critical question emerges: who is actually making money from this technology?

As TechCrunch first reported, the answer for the vast majority of corporate America is effectively nothing. Torsten Slok, the chief economist at private equity firm Apollo Global Management, recently published a note revealing that AI has delivered "zero financial payoff" to big corporations operating outside the tech sector.

To isolate the impact, Slok analyzed what he terms the "S&P 493"—a grouping of the S&P 500 that excludes the primary drivers of the AI boom: Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Tesla. Slok reports that revenue per worker and profit margins have remained flat, providing no evidence that AI is actually boosting productivity.

This gap suggests the current AI gold rush may be less about operational efficiency and more about a corporate vanity project. Slok is skeptical that the trend will reverse, arguing that turning "increasingly cheap intelligence" into actual profit margins and revenue growth will be a significant challenge.

The core of the problem, as Slok explains, is that business intelligence is primarily rooted in judgment. AI lacks an understanding of the human elements that drive revenue and manage reputational risk, including trust, accountability, culture, fairness, ethical trade-offs, and unwritten rules.