I dislike these types headlines because I've interacted with a lot of people who see this as evidence that ML/AI is BS and destined to fail. The reality is that a project with unrealistic expectations is going to fail regardless of it being an AI project or somebody baking a loaf of bread at home.

It's important to understand why stuff fails. That's the only way to stop things from failing in the future and make sure people are on the right path to not failing. If a large number project failures are management failures, it's useful to know that. Otherwise you try to fix everything except the management structure.

Statistically, though, that's what the people in this thread are saying — that the majority of the projects in ML/AI are destined to fail because they're BS with unrealistic goals.

"Personalization" is in a similar place for digital publishing; everyone wants it, products and services carry big price tags, and few organizations want to invest in foundational work or simple, iterative improvements. So they swing for the stars with unrealistic goals like "micro-targeted messaging perfectly tailored to every visitor, no matter where they are in the customer journey" and the results are predictable…

I take the increasingly grim accounts of project failure rates from analyst firms as a good sign — they can be used to sober up executives with unrealistic dreams.