I worked as consultant for a company, they basically had a database filled with data but they had no way of visualizing it. I quickly threw in an open source MySQL data vizualizer and pitched it as a quick solution until they figure out their larger needs. They were sold by another team with adding ML and AI to their solution and I was tasked with helping with the implementation.

After three months of discussions explanations and meetings and all the jazz, I asked them for a summary of the proposed solutions on their side and the costs as we were already making no progress and the cost estimates they were throwing around were massive. At the end, the cost estimate was huge, and the solution was basically "we're gonna try doing X and at the end it might work, or it might not work because what we do is magic".

So when talking to the CEO of the company whether we should embark on this expensive journey and decided against it. But because they had no other solution, they went with the vizualization tool I added and suddenly they realized it fits all their needs. Since half a dozen years, they've been using just that tool and extracting insane value from it.

I guess I lost my train of thought there, but to conclude, I believe until execs and managers learn to use the tools already available at their disposal, and generate awesome reports with almost 0 SQL knowledge - that can really cover pretty much every traditional business scenario I've encountered so far -, AI and ML are very much outside of their grasp and is more useful for technology businesses.