Algorithmic Management Meets South African Law - Lessons From MIT's "GenAI Divide"

MIT's State of AI in Business 2025 report paints a sobering picture. Despite global enterprise investment of between USD 30 billion and 40 billion in generative AI, around 95% of organisations have yet to see measurable returns. Only about 5% of pilot projects have progressed to production and achieved tangible Profit and Loss (P&L) impact.

Crucially, the divide is not driven primarily by model quality or regulation - it is about approach.MIT identifies the same points of friction that South African employers encounter when AI systems begin to manage people: rigid workflows that fail to reflect daily operations, tools that do not learn from context, and limited integration that makes results difficult to explain or audit.