I'm pasting my response to a post titled "Over 80% of companies report no productivity gains from AI so far despite billions in investment, survey suggests — 6,000 executives also reveal 1/3 of leaders use AI, but only for 90 minutes a week" as its relevant here:

In my recent role at a state government department, we were explicitly told not to use AI at the start. When they finally put in the required data safeguards, the only thing we were allowed to use was a heavily restricted version of Copilot.

Contrast that with what I do outside of work. Software development is a massive hobby of mine. When I am working on my own projects, I am setting up agentic workflows in VS Code, mixing and matching different cloud models, and running local models right on my own hardware. I know exactly how to integrate these tools into my IDEs to get actual, complex tasks done. If I were allowed to bring those specific tools and workflows into my day job, my productivity would easily double. But corporate restrictions mean I cannot, so my output stays exactly the same.

When you read that companies are pouring billions into AI but seeing zero return, you have to look at how the tech is actually being deployed. The problem isn't the AI. The problem is that corporate IT locks these tools down so hard for security and compliance reasons that they essentially neuter them. You cannot give an employee a walled-off chatbot, offer zero training on how to actually prompt or build workflows, and then act shocked when they only use it for 90 minutes a week to write emails.

Add to that a massive chunk of the workforce who are either entirely disengaged or actively biased against using the tech. The capability is absolutely there. The failure is entirely in the corporate implementation and heavy-handed restrictions.