Apollo Economist: AI Has Delivered 'Zero Financial Payoff' Outside Tech

AI has yet to boost the bottom line of any major corporations outside the tech industry, according to a recent note from Apollo Global Management chief economist Torsten Slok.

Slok examined what he calls the S&P 493 - the S&P 500 minus Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia and Tesla - and found profit margins and revenue per worker appear flat, with no evidence that AI is improving productivity. "Despite massive investments and widespread hype around artificial intelligence, the technology has delivered zero financial payoff to corporate America outside of tech," he said.

Slok was skeptical that non-tech companies are simply lagging behind the tech giants, arguing it will be tough for corporate America to "turn increasingly cheap intelligence into higher revenue growth and higher profit margins."

"AI may be a great calculator, but in business, intelligence is mostly judgment," he wrote, adding that AI does not understand accountability, trust, culture, unwritten rules, ethical trade-offs or fairness - factors that shape reputational risk and ultimately drive revenue growth and profit margins.

Recent studies have also found that AI has yet to deliver significant productivity gains.