According to Lenovo's third annual study of global CIOs surveyed 750 leaders across 10 global markets, CIOs do not expect to see clear and positive return on investment from their artificial intelligence investments for two to three years.
We should not find this surprising. Consider the last generally-recognized general-purpose technology--the internet--and the lag in perceived benefits.
Early internet technologies (1995, for example) were less mature and reliable compared to today, with slow connection speeds (dial-up internet was the consumer standard in 1995), limited functionality (the shift to multimedia web had just begun in 1995), while enterprises had to allay their security concerns.
The internet disrupted traditional business models, so companies needed time to develop new strategies for marketing, sales, and customer service in the digital space. That took time.
Also, though it seems clear enough now, the potential applications of the internet for businesses weren't fully understood at first. Experimentation was required.
Additionally, assessing the return on investment for early internet initiatives was difficult, as firms lacked the analytics tools to quantify the impact of online marketing, e-commerce, or other internet-based activities.
Complicating matters was the widespread failure of many e-commerce startups in the dotcom bust around 2000. Since whole firms failed, benefits were zero or negative.
That tends to be the case with most information technology innovations, other studies have found, looking at IT in general, e-commerce in specific or productivity.
The point is that, of course it will take some time for CIOs to demonstrate meaningful outcomes from applied AI. That is always the case when an important new technology--to say nothing of a general-purpose technology, is introduced.
Whole business processes have to be redesigned, generally speaking, before the innovations can work their magic and produce measurable outcomes.