US companies love AI. But can’t say why

0:02Good morning from the Financial Times. Today is Wednesday, September 24th, and this is your FT News Briefing. Eli Lilly is frustrated with the UK's cheap drug prices, and Donald Trump had some choice words for the UN yesterday. Plus, American companies are in love with artificial intelligence, but it turns out a lot of them don't really know why. They have this fear of missing out, but none of them could really underline or tell us how they're using it. I'm Mark Filippino, and here's the news you need to start your day.

0:41The head of Eli Lilly has branded the UK as, quote, probably the worst country in Europe for drug prices. Ouch. CEO Dave Ricks told the FT that Britain would miss out on new drugs if it doesn't start charging more for them. He also said the country should get rid of a controversial rebate scheme that's costing pharma groups a lot of money. Pharmaceutical companies have been pressuring the government to restart negotiations over that program. Eli Lilly, Merck, and AstraZeneca all said in the past few weeks they're planning to scrap or pause investments in the U.K.

1:20U.S. President Donald Trump spoke to the U.N. General Assembly yesterday. He talked about Gaza and Ukraine and Iran, but mostly he used the pulpit to chide others, both when it comes to individual countries and the U.N. as an organization. The U.N. has such tremendous potential, but it's not even coming close to living up to that potential. All they seem to do is write a really strongly worded letter. The FT's U.S.-European foreign affairs correspondent Amy McKinnon followed Trump's speech and the reactions to it. Hi, Amy. Hi. So let's start with the speech itself. What stuck out to you besides everything?

2:01Besides everything. A couple of things stuck out to me. One was the split screen between Trump's first speech to the UN General Assembly in 2017 during his first term and the speech now. and the dramatic change in both the content and the tone of those speeches, which I think charts just the dramatically different foreign policy that we're seeing from Trump in his second term overall. You know, in 2017, he spoke about the value of humanitarian aid, of allies, all things that he has really, in the case of humanitarian aid, cut. And when it comes to alliances, he has strained in his second term.

2:39So that was one. And I think the second is just that it was really classic Trump. There was no major news that came out of this speech, but it was long. It was at times lecturing. It was peppered with falsehoods, you know, braggadocio. It was, in a nutshell, just a classic Trump speech. Yeah, it was pretty interesting. I mean, he used the opportunity to chastise European countries for buying Russian oil. They're funding the war against themselves. Who the hell ever heard of that one? What do you make of the way Trump talked to America's allies here? Well, this is something he hasn't shied away from at all in his second term.

3:19He's not shy to take on allies, to air his grievances with them very publicly. And most recently, and he really went into this in some detail in his speech, he has called out European countries for continuing to buy energy from Russia, even though the continent has made significant strides with trying to wean off that dependency since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine and kind of kicking the ball into their court and saying, well, I'm willing to sanction Russia to put tariffs, to kind of pressure the Russian purse, only if Europe is willing to also put tariffs on India, China, and also wean itself off of Russian energy.

3:56And he's made no bones about airing that in public rather than doing it kind of more diplomatically or behind closed doors like we may have seen from previous administrations. Amy, as much as Trump focused on the problems with the UN, the US and President Trump are a big part of the UN's problems right now. Can you tell me about recent tensions between the US and the UN and why it matters? So since Trump returned to office at the beginning of this year, the US has not made any payments to the UN's regular budget. And that's deepened a very significant financial crisis. The UN this year is expecting to have to cut its budget by half a billion dollars, something like 20 percent in job losses following a big cut in U.S.

4:41funding. I mean, just to give you some context about the outsized role that the U.S. plays in the UN, the United States funds around a fifth of the regular budget, a quarter of the peacekeeping budget and 40 percent of the humanitarian budget. So then, Amy, what does the U.S. step back mean for the future of the UN? The U.S. is still the biggest player in town financially, militarily. It has that clout. And I think not just the United Nations, but worldwide, I think we are all learning day by day what it looks like when the U.S. decides to pivot or shift its position in that world order. And where that will be felt at the U.N.

5:17is just that question of clout. You know, the U.S. has so many allies around the world, and it just has that capacity to corral UN members around a certain agenda. And it leaves a vacuum if the US is stepping back from bodies like this that we're already seeing countries like China really rushing to fill. One thing that Beijing has been very skilled at is placing its diplomats in small kind of niche UN agencies and offices that people don't really pay a lot of attention to. And so when the US steps back, it leaves a vacuum. And the question is, well, who will then fill that void? and what will that world look like?

5:53That's the FT's Amy McKinnon. Thanks so much, Amy. Thank you.

6:03The Federal Reserve has room for three more rate cuts by next spring, so says the intergovernmental organization, the OECD. That's because the OECD is predicting a slowdown in the U.S. economy due to high tariffs. where specifically the organization says growth will hit 1.8 percent this year that is a full percentage point lower than last year's rate things aren't looking so great on the other side of the atlantic either the oecd is projecting that the uk will be hit by the highest inflation in the g7 this year at three and a half percent but the country's growth is expected to pick up slightly

6:48An artificial intelligence wave is rippling through American industry. Big tech giants like Amazon and Meta are pledging hundreds of billions of dollars to develop the infrastructure these large language models need. But how will it actually improve their business prospects? The FT's AI correspondent, Melissa Hekula, and colleagues trawled through hundreds of corporate filings and executive transcripts, and they found that many companies actually don't know the answer. Melissa joins me now. Hey there. Hey. So how did you go about figuring out what companies are saying about AI and how it's impacting their businesses?

7:25So we wanted to do a very thorough data-led analysis of what companies are saying themselves. And so we took all of the SP500, SEC 10K filings, as well as earnings reports, and then used AI models. We used ChatGPT. Is that a little ironic that you're using AI to figure out this thing about AI? Well, actually, it's a great use case, right? Because this is a massive data set and it would have taken us weeks, months even to do this manually. And so, yeah, so we used the tool to do this analysis and then we went through what it said and then we got our findings. And what did you find? So we found this massive difference and what companies and CEOs were saying in public in earnings reports.

8:12Some CEOs were raving about the technology, saying it would bring things like a Cambrian explosion of innovation, a flywheel of innovation, you know, insert buzzword here. But then when you look at the actual filings, which, to be fair, tend to be more risk-averse, people are talking more about AI, but in a more sober way. The main concern was things like cybersecurity, legal or regulatory risks, the cost of technology being too high. But the thing that really stood out was that a lot of these companies, they have this fear of missing out, meaning if they don't use technology or implement it, their competitors will, and that could harm them.

8:52But none of them could really underline or tell us how they're using it, like what exactly they're doing to implement this technology in their companies. Were there any benefits that were mentioned in these filings? So some companies, yes. I mean, obviously, big tech has benefited from this hugely, as have companies that are in this data center boom supplying materials or infrastructure to build out data centers. Huntington Ingalls, which is a military supplier, is applying AI for battlefield decisions. And Zoetis, which is an animal health group, is using the technology to speed up medical tests for horses.

9:31And Dover Corporation, which is a manufacturer, has this new process for tracking hail-damaged vehicles through their repair. But when we looked at the companies I just mentioned, AI adoption hasn't necessarily led to more growth, right? Of the three, we looked at how they had performed in the SP500, if you exclude the Magnificent Seven, the big tech companies. And only one of them has really outperformed. Melissa, there is so much hype around artificial intelligence right now. So what do your findings mean, considering that the industry is driving so much of what's going on in the stock market right now and investor hype?

10:08Yeah, I think the hype hasn't helped in a way. Everyone feels this incredible pressure to use this technology. They've been sold this promise of productivity and abundance. And everyone is, we're in this era of experimentation where people are trying these technologies out for themselves and seeing how they could fit their processes. But it's been a couple of years now, and anyone who's actually used these tools knows just how expensive they are, right? And companies are kind of running out of patience. They need to see a return on that investment soon. And it's not that AI doesn't have amazing use cases.

10:44It definitely does. But that doesn't mean that AI is something that could be used for everything. You know, we should be thinking about how can this actually help me? Do I have a use case? Instead of trying to shove AI into absolutely everything. Because as we can see, shoving AI in absolutely everything doesn't necessarily lead to growth. Melissa Hekila is the FT's AI correspondent. Thanks, Melissa. Thank you.

11:13And before we go, do not forget to look into a digital subscription from the Financial Times because right now you can get access to a reporting from around the world and save 40%. Just go to ft.com slash briefing sale. Again, that's ft.com slash briefing sale. We will have a link to that in the show notes. This has been your daily FT News Briefing. Check back tomorrow for the latest business news.

11:54The latest episode of the Next 5 podcast is all about logic and trust in AI. I speak with Scott Wiltermuth at AWS. With the Gen AI, there's always an error rate. Automate reasoning, there's never an error rate. Mary Martin at BCG. It is culture, not code. Organizational inertia is an incredibly powerful force. And Varun Chikara at ADP. What we should be teaching the next generation is this form of discipline judgment. You can listen to the full episode of The Next Five wherever you get your podcasts. Capital raising is being redefined in real time, from macro disruptions and shifting investor expectations to AI-driven demand and the rise of private credit.

12:34When headlines can tilt markets overnight, how can companies stay on court? Strategic Alternatives, the RBC Capital Markets podcast, explores how corporates and investors are navigating new pathways to raise capital, create value, and drive growth. When conditions change, alternatives matter. Listen to Strategic Alternatives, available wherever you get your podcasts.