According to a recent note from the chief economist at Apollo Global Management, artificial intelligence has failed to improve the bottom lines of major non-tech corporations.
Apollo chief economist Torsten Slok examined a benchmark known as the “S&P 493”—comprising the S&P 500 minus the dominant tech giants such as Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, NVIDIA, and Tesla—and concluded that profit margins and revenue per worker are stagnating, offering no evidence of AI-driven productivity gains.
While one might assume this pattern is simply a result of non-tech firms lagging behind the technology leaders, Slok was highly skeptical. He contended that it would prove exceptionally difficult for mainstream companies to transform increasingly accessible AI capabilities into sustained higher revenue growth and improved profit margins.
Slok offered a penetrating distinction: “AI functions well as a mechanical calculator, but within the business realm, true intelligence relies primarily on human judgment.” He further noted that AI lacks an understanding of accountability, trust, organizational culture, implicit rules, ethical trade-offs, and fairness—factors that collectively shape reputational risks and ultimately dictate revenue performance and margin expansion.
Further academic research corroborates this perspective, indicating that AI has yet to produce meaningful productivity gains across the broader corporate landscape.
