AI may be here to stay, but some businesses are finding out the hard way: it’s not quite the employee of the future they imagined.
Buy now, regret later
A recent Orgvue survey revealed that more than half of business leaders who laid off staff to make room for AI now wish they hadn’t. Forty percent of executives said they reduced headcount for AI rollouts, and 55% of them regret it. Meanwhile, S&P Global reports that 42% of companies abandoned their generative AI pilot projects in 2025—more than double the number from last year.
From MVP to MIA
Plenty of companies rushed to crown AI their star performer—only to realize it wasn’t ready for the spotlight. Among the walk-backs:
Klarna: CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski admitted swapping human agents for AI in customer service was a mistake. People, it turns out, still prefer people. The irony? You can now leave feedback for his AI-generated clone via hotline.
IBM: After cutting 8,000 roles—many in HR—and replacing them with its AskHR chatbot, IBM reversed course when it realized that jobs with “human” in the name might require actual humans.
McDonald’s: AI-powered drive-thrus were supposed to speed things up. Instead, they added bacon to ice cream and sparked viral complaints.
Duolingo: The company declared it was going “AI-first” and replaced contractors with bots—until backlash from users forced a rethink.
The AI rush was partly a panic move—no one wanted to be the last brand on the block without a chatbot. But as The Economist notes, most companies don’t need AI that’s “smarter”—they need AI that works. The message is clear: automating without thinking is starting to look a lot like cutting off your workforce to spite your future.