smartR AI Founder and CEO, Oliver King-Smith, has had his latest thought leadership piece published in the prestigious AI Journal, challenging common misconceptions about building successful enterprise AI.
We're proud to announce that Oliver has contributed a groundbreaking article to The AI Journal, one of the industry’s leading voices. The article, titled “Why Your AI Project Is Failing (And How to Fix It),” tackles the uncomfortable reality facing large corporations: the vast majority of their AI projects are failing to deliver meaningful value.
The Problem: A Brutal 95% Failure Rate
Oliver draws upon a recent MIT study revealing a 95% failure rate for AI projects in large US corporations. He argues that this number is actually conservative, and the real-world costs—in lost budget, time, and erosion of confidence—are staggering.
Oliver identifies the three core reasons for this widespread failure:
- The Seduction of Control: The costly, mistaken belief that companies must build highly complex AI systems in-house, simply because the technology is "core."
- The Hidden Complexity: The deceptive simplicity of consumer tools (like ChatGPT) masking the hard-won experience required to build robust, production-ready AI.
- Bad Tools in Inexperienced Hands: The use of inadequate, generic software frameworks or vendor tools that were not designed for genuine AI development.
The Path to Redemption: A 67% Success Rate
The article offers a clear, data-driven path forward. The same MIT study showed that when companies brought in specialized outside expertise, their success rate skyrocketed from 5% to 67%.
“Bringing in expertise from outside isn’t a failure. It’s an acknowledgment of reality. The simple ‘hack’ of asking for help gets you to success 67% of the time. The math is overwhelmingly compelling.”
— Oliver King-Smith, CEO, smartR AI
Oliver urges leaders to shed the cultural bias against seeking assistance and embrace Assistive Intelligence—framing AI as a tool to augment human capability, not replace it.
Read the Full Analysis
The complete article is a must-read for any executive, engineering manager, or product leader struggling to get measurable ROI from their AI initiatives.
Click below to read Oliver King-Smith’s analysis in The AI Journal:
➡️ https://aijourn.com/why-your-ai-project-is-failing-and-how-to-fix-it/⬅️
Need to Audit Your AI Project?
If you suspect your project is on the path to becoming one of the 95% that fail, smartR AI's specialists can provide a rapid audit and strategic roadmap.
Contact us today to discuss how we can help you achieve that 67% success rate.