Introducing AI into your company can cost 1,000% more than you think

According to Gartner, a company specializing in analyzing the market and new trends, organizations that adopt AI must learn to manage the emotional and monetary costs generated by the technology while also focusing on obtaining productivity benefits.

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The company offered this opinion today in Australia, where it kicked off the first of its flagship events of the year, the Symposium. “It’s really easy to waste money on generative AI,” Mary Mesaglio explained, and we read in The Register, before asking attendees if they remembered their first cloud computing bills.

“The reaction was probably one of surprise and then confusion about what they were charging you,” he recalled in his speech. The same is likely to happen with AI invoices, he warned, pointing out that “errors of 500 to 1,000 percent can occur in AI cost estimates.”

Price increase, inappropriate use of AI, very curious customers…

One reason for these setbacks is suppliers’ increase in prices. Simply not paying attention to cloud resource costs will also affect AI experimenters.

Another problem is the misuse of AI. Mesaglio said that organizations need to learn when search will be enough instead of using AI for simple queries.

AI can also become a victim of its own success: users enjoy it and start writing longer and more complex queries that cost more in token-based pricing systems.

The cost of AI consultations or workloads can also vary depending on how organizations structure their AI’s access to data.

Allowing AI to work with unstructured data can uncover more information and produce better results, but it is an expensive approach. Consolidating and entrusting the data to IT departments presents its own challenges.

The success of AI can also create other problems. Mesaglio described one as “productivity leakage.” Citing a Gartner study that showed that workers using AI can save 43 minutes per day, she asked if employees would use that time to work more.

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“I would spend that time enjoying a cup of coffee with milk,” he replied, suggesting that many others would do the same and create a “productivity leak” that would represent between ten and thirty percent of the benefits of AI.

The good news, according to analysts, is that all organizations are running their own race in terms of AI: providers are speeding up to try to capture the market, but users can choose to ignore their sprint and move at the pace that best suits their needs.