Shadow AI: From Risk to ROI

95% of AI projects researched delivered no return of value to the organizations surveyed!

This headline came from MIT Report The GenAI Divide STATE OF AI IN BUSINESS 2025 published in July 2025!

It is generating more interest than OpenAI announcement of GPT-5, and continues to be quoted and cited by reporters and analysts around the globe.

The hosts of Three Takes on AI, did something unusual in that they read the report, and found the discussion about Shadow AI much more exciting.

 hosts of ThrTheee Takes on AI, did something unusual in that they read the report, and found the discussion about Shadow AI much more exciting.

Bckground Information

• MIT July, 2025 The GenAI Divide STATE OF AI IN BUSINESS 2025 Despite $30–40 billion in enterprise investment into GenAI, this report uncovers a surprising result in that 95% of organizations are getting zero return.

  
  

• LinkedIn August, 2025 From Shadow AI to Sanctioned AI: Turning Employee Experiments Into Enterprise Strategy, Why MIT’s GenAI Divide Missed the Real Headline The shadow AI economy: employee usage far outpaces official adoption

  More interesting than the 95% failed headline are the comments on employee usage of AI. “While only 40% of companies say they purchased an official LLM subscription, workers from over 90% of the companies we surveyed reported regular use of personal AI tools for work tasks. In fact, almost every single person used an LLM in some form for their work.”

  
  

• LinkedIn September, 2025 From Shadow to Sanctioned: Turning Hidden AI Use Into Enterprise Advantage The MIT report The State of AI Adoption published in July, is being hyped globally for its focus on the lack of ROI in GenAI, it actually highlights something more interesting: the higher return from Shadow AI usage, employees using personal AI tools in their work.