New Delhi, Oct. 21 -- In the beginning there was AI, and bosses everywhere lost their minds and said you must all use this technology no matter whether it is useful and no matter how much it costs. And they introduced AI leaderboards and came up with stupid words like "tokenmaxxing". And lo, usage did indeed rise. And then the bosses remembered some very basic concepts like "budgets" and realised that this might not be such a great idea after all. And then a different question rang through the boardrooms, and this question was about returns, and it was harder to answer.

This potted Genesis of AI adoption is not entirely fair. As long as organisations are trying to encourage usage, it can still make sense to look at things like employees'...