Corporate America is embracing AI more slowly than the hype suggests—but the pace is increasing

Seeing the never-ending headlines about artificial intelligence, it’s easy to conclude that AI is about to transform society overnight or, just as easily, that it is totally overhyped. We have a different reading than either of those extremes: Adoption across the corporate landscape is coming—not at the blistering pace that some have expected, but steadily and inexorably. At this point, we acknowledge, most big businesses are trundling along in the AI slow lane. We can see this by using a large language model to scour corporations’ federal financial filings and then score each firm over a 10-year period on the text describing its deployment of AI. Through the end of last year, our analysis shows, less than a quarter of S&P 500 companies had AI either deeply integrated into their business processes or were using AI in the production of goods and delivery of services. In the AI fast lane, not surprisingly, is the technology sector, which accounts for two-thirds of extensive AI integration and use. By contrast, fewer than two dozen non-technology S&P 500 firms—including Moderna, Mastercard, Bank of New York Mellon, and GE Healthcare—have achieved full AI deployment. (We define full d…