Artificial intelligence might be booming on paper, but in the real world, there are signs of a major slowdown.

In their latest biweekly survey of AI adoption, the US Census Bureau found evidence of an obvious drop-off in corporate AI use — the largest since the survey began in November of 2023.

The survey, which compiles data from over 1.2 million firms throughout the US, shows usage of AI tools among companies with over 250 employees dropping from nearly 14 percent in mid-June to under 12 percent in August.

While usage appeared to rise slightly in very small businesses with less than four workers, AI adoption also fell or remained flat in mid-sized companies with less than 250 workers but more than 19.

It’s a particularly distressing sign for tech investors and CEOs, whose unfettered spending on AI is now literally holding up the US economy. For the last few years, they’ve held that enterprise AI — stuff that would prop up powerful companies in tech, finance, and beyond — was the key to building a sustainable business model off of AI development.

For example in 2024, the CEO of software megacorp SAP Christian Klein enthused that enterprise AI “will indeed revolutionize how companies will run.” As recently as June of this year, meanwhile, wealth management firm UBS issued a statement arguing that a “peak in overall AI adoption is still a long way off, and accelerating AI use is set to drive further monetization across industries.”

But if a corporate AI revolution is underway, it’s not showing up in the data. Up to this point, enterprise AI has been incredibly unprofitable, with a whopping 95 percent of US companies that took up AI reporting that the software has failed to generate any sort of new revenue.

Though tech stocks continue to break new records on AI hype, some financial onlookers are warning that the tech industry might never recoup its spending on AI, and that innovations around the software have hit a plateau.

It’s all adding up into a pretty disappointing summer for AI overall.

In August, OpenAI’s long awaited GPT-5 model, which was expected to show a massive improvement over previous AI releases, hit the net with a thud. Though it’d been expected to be a leap forward toward human-level artificial intelligence, the latest model performed worse on benchmark tests than its peers.

In perhaps the most telling sign, companies that had previously laid off or stopped hiring flesh and blood workers are now scrambling to refill their ranks, realizing the tech is nowhere near as capable as the hype made it out to be.

Unless enterprise AI can flip a switch and start earning its keep, the latest drop-off in AI usage could just be the start of a steep slope toward the bottom.

More on AI: After Disastrous GPT-5, Sam Altman Pivots to Hyping Up GPT-6

The post Data Shows That AI Use Is Now Declining at Large Companies appeared first on Futurism.

Origianl Creator:Joe Wilkins
Original Link: https://futurism.com/ai-hype-automation-decline
Originally Posted: Mon, 08 Sep 2025 19:09:38 +0000