Oracle warns AI usage does not guarantee business value

Oracle says businesses should measure artificial intelligence investments by their results, not by how much AI they use. Hammad Hussain, Oracle’s Head of AI Strategy, told journalists at the company’s AI World event that some customers risk mistaking usage for value as they struggle to manage unpredictable costs.

Hussain said companies should assess whether AI creates benefits such as greater productivity, more revenue or new products. He also cautioned that the costs of deploying tools in production differ from those of running pilots. Costs can include compute and AI services, as well as infrastructure upgrades and employee training.

Some organizations are looking at ways to use advanced models for demanding workloads while assigning lighter tasks to conventional CPUs or open-weight models. Hussain said dedicated AI clusters with fixed pricing can make costs more predictable, although organizations still pay for the underlying computing infrastructure. He does not expect consumption-based pricing to disappear; he sees companies having more choice between pricing approaches.

Hussain described AI return on investment as a balance of benefits and adoption against costs. He said only around 20% of organizations capture 75% of the value, attributing the difference to their ability to rework or reimagine their businesses using AI. The figures and assessments are Hussain’s, as reported by TechRadar.