The cost of being half-hearted in AI and how to avoid the Solow Paradox
Not too long ago, one of the world's most data-driven companies admitted that its AI spending was becoming “harder to justify”. Uber's President and COO, Andrew Macdonald, told the Rapid Response podcast that the company had blown through its entire 2026 AI budget in roughly four months, with around 5,000 engineers leaning on Anthropic's Claude Code.
Uber isn’t alone. Forrester research found that enterprises are deferring around 25% of planned AI spend to 2027, as CFO scrutiny over ROI intensifies. And McKinsey's State of AI report summarized that while 62% of companies are experimenting with AI agents, only 23% have scaled them in even a single business function.
CEO at Nearform.
While these may look like the statistics of a technology that isn't working, they’re actually the statistics of a technology being used in the wrong way.
If we rewind back to 1987, Nobel laureate economist, Robert Solow, observed something...
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