Every week a company announces an AI initiative. Every week another one quietly disappears. The usual explanation is that the technology wasn't ready yet.
I don't believe that. The models improve faster than most organizations can absorb them. Engineering teams prototype in hours what used to take weeks. The infrastructure is mature and the tooling is abundant. Projects still die.
They die for a reason that has nothing to do with AI, and that is worth understanding precisely, because it will outlive whatever model is current when you read this.
The pattern is older than AI
We have been here before. Client-server. The web. ERP. Mobile. Cloud. Each arrived with the same story: a wave of pilots, a wave of enthusiasm, and then a long tail of initiatives that never reached production while a small number of companies pulled away from the pack.
