Companies pull back on AI as weak workplace collaboration hurts results: Report

NEW DELHI: Nearly one in five organisations have rolled back or abandoned their artificial intelligence (AI) initiatives after facing quality failures and adoption challenges, highlighting that the lack of structured collaboration between employees and AI is emerging as a major reason behind failed AI deployments, according to a CambrianEdge.ai research report.

The report titled, ‘AI at Work: The Collaboration Gap 2026’, said 18 per cent of surveyed organisations have already reversed or abandoned AI projects, warning that companies risk moving backwards if they fail to redesign how employees work with AI.

“The cost of failing to build collaboration infrastructure is regression, not stagnation,” the report said. It added that “18 per cent of surveyed organisations have already rolled back or abandoned AI initiatives entirely, citing severe quality collapses and systemic adoption failures.”

The report is based on a global survey of 775 professionals across 104 organisations, spanning enterprises, marketing agencies, law firms, startups and educational institutions.

According to the report, widespread AI adoption has not translated into proportional business gains. While 69 per cent of businesses now use some form of AI, more than 80 per cent still report no meaningful improvement in productivity, suggesting that organisations are struggling to convert AI adoption into measurable business outcomes.

The study found that organisations with structured AI collaboration systems consistently performed better. Among organisations with no collaboration infrastructure, only 32 per cent reported a significant AI impact. That figure rose to 100 per cent among organisations that had implemented all five key collaboration layers — shared tool access, formal training, prompt libraries, quality standards and mandatory review processes.

It also found that 62 per cent of organisations have no defined process for handing AI-generated work to human reviewers, while organisations with structured handoff processes were almost twice as likely to achieve significant project outcomes.

“The defining variable between organisations that derive significant value from AI and those that do not is not the technology they deploy — it is whether they have built the collaboration infrastructure for people and AI to operate as a continuous system,” the report said.

Commenting on the findings, Harjiv Singh, founder and CEO of CambrianEdge.ai, said many organisations have focused on choosing AI models instead of redesigning workplace processes. “Most organisations spent the last two years asking which AI model to subscribe to, forgetting to ask how their teams were supposed to work with it,” Singh said.

“Adding AI to a system built for siloed work is like putting electric lights in a building designed for candles — the architecture needs to change, not just the bulbs. True economic value only materialises when companies abandon a fragmented stack of individual tools and build a shared, continuous workflow,” he added.

The report concluded that organisations seeking to unlock greater returns from AI investments should focus less on deploying new tools and more on building structured workflows, shared standards and defined review processes that enable people and AI to work together effectively. (ANI)