MIT Says 95% of AI Projects Fail? Abeg, Don’t Fall for That Rubbish.

The headline alone had me rolling my eyes.

The headline alone had me rolling my eyes.

MIT dropped a report claiming 95% of AI projects fail. Immediately, I imagined a bunch of boardroom execs sipping champagne, nodding like, “Yes, yes, I knew this AI thing was hype.”

But let’s pause. Have these people actually built anything? Or is this another consultant PowerPoint dressed up as gospel truth?

Because from where I’m sitting inside actual dev communities, my twitter spaces , working with real businesses ,this report is full of holes.

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Why It’s Nonsense

They say 95% of AI projects flop. Big, scary number. Sounds official, right? Until you check the receipts.

Turns out the whole thing is based on:

• 52 interviews (lol, my Discord has more people online at midnight)

• 153 conference surveys (where everyone flexes, nobody confesses)

• 300 “public initiatives” (aka the most surface-level, PR-driven fluff out there)

This is like asking people at the gym in January how their fitness journey is going and then concluding “95% of humanity can’t stay fit.”

Meanwhile, the ones actually grinding quietly in February? You didn’t even count them.

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The 10 Logical Gymnastics in This Report

1. False Choice → Either you fail (95%) or you win (5%). Reality? AI adoption is a spectrum. Small wins compound into big shifts.

2. Tiny Sample = Big Talk → 52 interviews ≠ entire industry. Stop generalizing.

3. Cherry Picking → Highlight failures, ignore working use cases (insurance, logistics, fraud detection, customer support).

4. Fake Cause → “Media disruption = AI’s fault.” Nah, blame streaming wars, ad revenue collapse, and greed.

5. Double Standards → When consumers use ChatGPT, it’s success. When enterprises use it, it’s failure. Make it make sense.

6. Newer = Better Bias → They hype “Agentic AI” (conveniently what they’re building). Old story: bash current tech, sell future magic.

7. Over-Simplification → “The only problem is lack of memory.” My brother, what about governance, procurement, culture, and integrations?

8. Loaded Stats → “70% budgets go to marketing” — based on executives playing with hypothetical $100, not actual spend. Joke numbers.

9. Conflict of Interest → The solution to the crisis? Surprise! The authors’ own product. Consultant deck energy.

10. Short-Term Thinking → Declare projects failures after 6 months. Meanwhile, AWS was called a flop for years. Now look.

(Pause here: if this list is making sense, share it. A lot of execs are reading nonsense reports like gospel — help them see the other side.)

Bezos Said It Best

Jeff Bezos once said: be willing to be misunderstood for a very long time.

If Amazon pulled this MIT nonsense in 2008, AWS would’ve been written off as a failure. Today, it’s the backbone of the internet.

AI is the same. It’s infrastructure. It compounds. Short-term “ROI or bust” thinking is lazy analysis.

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My Take

I don’t buy this 95% failure narrative. I’ve seen too many small businesses quietly ship AI that saves time, cuts cost, and improves workflow. They don’t go shouting at conferences , they just keep winning.

The only divide I see? People building vs. people selling buzzwords.

So next time you see a scary headline like “95% fail,” take it with salt. AI isn’t hype. It’s messy, slow, sometimes frustrating but it’s working. And it’s here to stay.

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