EY runs its AI Pulse survey every six months and asks 500 US executives about their AI investments.
“we do every six months is we ask 500 executives from around the US”
Person
Dan Diasio
1 episodes · 18 quoted claims
In EY's AI Pulse survey, 97% of respondents reported positive ROI from AI initiatives and 57% reported significant benefits.
“97% say they're getting positive ROI from their AI initiatives, and 57% say that they're getting significant benefits from their initiatives.”
EY's AI Pulse data suggests only about 17% of companies are using AI gains to cut headcount.
“our data suggests that only 17 of companies are using AI gains to be able to cut headcount”
According to EY's survey, for each company cutting headcount with AI gains, more than twice as many are reinvesting in their people.
“For every one company cutting and and reducing their headcount, more than twice as many are reinvesting in their people.”
Dan Diasio says companies investing $1 million or more in AI mainly focus on employee productivity and operational cost savings.
“major areas of focus, tend to be around employee productivity and operational cost savings”
Dan Diasio says companies investing over $10 million in AI reduced their focus on employee productivity and operational efficiency over the previous six months.
“there's been a significant drop in their focus on employee productivity and in terms of operational efficiencies”
Dan Diasio says CEOs who are building AI into core processes are no longer delegating AI initiatives to the CIO or CTO but are driving them personally.
“those CEOs are no longer delegating it, they are starting to drive it”
Dan Diasio says EY found early on that executives could no longer be taught about AI through PowerPoint and needed hands-on experiences.
“In the early days, we realized that with executives, we could no longer teach them in PowerPoint.”
In EY's executive workshops, participants were given a computer and an objective that was unlikely to be completed within 45 minutes.
“we brought a computer in front of them, we gave them an objective. Chances are, that objective was gonna be impossible to do inside of 45 minutes”
One EY workshop task had executives plan a snack company, including recipe, packaging and marketing, using AI tools.
“One of the things that we had them do was to build out, um, a a plan to be able to create a snack company.”
Dan Diasio says EY observed that snack products and packaging from different workshop groups looked alike because they all used the same AI models.
“a lot of the packaging looks the same, a lot of the products look the same, they're using the same models, they're getting the same output.”
Dan Diasio says the frontier of AI capability today is in building software.
“the frontier of AI capability today is in the space of building software”
Dan Diasio says he spends four to six hours every week staying current with AI technology.
“I have four to 6 hours a week I spend staying current with the technology”
Dan Diasio said in February 2026 that AI technology had not plateaued and had accelerated for about three months.
“We're talking in February 26, it is accelerating, it's been three months of acceleration, and it is continuing to go.”
Dan Diasio says that when AI speeds up pharmaceutical drug discovery, the bottleneck often moves into clinical development.
“you are going to find this happens all the time that the bottleneck moves now, it moves from drug discovery into clinical development.”
EY uses a framework called the value blueprint that shifts from processes to 'jobs to be done', which are then mapped to AI agents.
“we have something we call our value blueprint. What we say is that we need to move away from processes to jobs to be done.”
Dan Diasio says technical roles are converging, so a computer scientist is now also an AI engineer and a data engineer who needs a product-owner mindset.
“the computer scientist is now also an AI engineer and is also now a data engineer.”
Dan Diasio says many companies spent the previous two to three years investing in their AI technology stack before turning to mindset and skills.
“for many companies, they've invested in the technology stack over the course of the last two to three years.”