{
  "id": 17236750,
  "title": "AI projects not paying off? Keep at it, says Uni Productivity Institute",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/10/30/ai-projects-not-paying-off-keep-at-it-says-uni-productivity-institute",
  "topic": "ai",
  "section": "AI",
  "published": "2026-10-30T13:15:00.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "The Register Science",
    "slug": "the-register-science",
    "url": "https://www.theregister.com/ai-and-ml/2026/10/30/ai-projects-not-paying-off-keep-at-it-says-uni-productivity-institute/5306581"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "The University of Manchester's Productivity Institute has released a report titled \"The AI Ambition Gap\" to examine why organizations have not yet seen the anticipated productivity gains from increased AI adoption. One reason for the lack of results is that upfront investments, such as retraining staff and reorganizing work processes, show immediate costs but do not yield payback until later. Another factor is that while AI tools can improve productivity at the individual task level, these gains do not automatically translate into overall organizational productivity. For instance, software developers using GitHub Copilot have completed 26% more tasks, and professionals using ChatGPT for routine writing and analysis have reduced task completion time by 40% while improving the output by 18%. However, a study of AI development tools found that they have increased coding activity by about 240%, while the number of actual software releases has only grown by around 30%. The report highlights that high task exposure to AI does not automatically make a worker more productive, as jobs typically involve a mix of automatable tasks and those requiring human judgment, coordination, client interaction, and critical thinking. The researchers suggest that AI may both displace existing labor and create new tasks where humans retain a comparative advantage. This could be beneficial for the UK, given its high share of workers in occupations with high AI exposure and complementarity, largely due to its strong financial and professional business service sectors. If sustained, the UK's AI sector could contribute to a significant step change in annual labor productivity gains, estimated between 0.4 and 1.3 percentage points. The report outlines several enablers to help organizations close the AI ambition gap, including setting strategic direction, enhancing worker capabilities through knowledge and data literacy, implementing AI governance, and focusing on applications that can create new products, improve core processes, or solve complex problems. Bart van Ark, a professor at The Productivity Institute, emphasizes that AI's productivity potential becomes real when faster individual tasks lead to better overall business performance. The report concludes that companies must maintain faith in AI investments and address these enablers to eventually reap the benefits, including targeting high-value use cases related to strategy, customer value, and operational bottlenecks, and treating AI as a workplace redesign. Policymakers could assist businesses by identifying relevant opportunities and reducing adoption risks and uncertainties.",
  "summary": "All that up-front investment needs time to take effect, and speeding individual tasks won't necessarily boost the entire firm",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}