Post-Peak AI Economics: The Year 4–5 Collapse
The Post-Peak AI Problem Nobody Is Modeling Yet Most companies are currently measuring AI success by the size of the first-year or second-year gains. That metric will quietly become misleading by year 4–5. The pattern emerging from large-scale operational deployments is consistent: The majority of the financial lift (cost reduction, productivity, error reduction) is captured in the first 2–3 years while moving from legacy processes to full model coverage. Once coverage is complete, incremental improvements drop sharply. The remaining gains are mostly small deltas driven by new data sources or minor model tweaks. ...