Why 95% of AI Pilots Produce Zero ROI | Yasmeen Ahmad, Google Cloud
About this episode
Yasmeen Ahmad discusses the challenges of AI pilots and the potential of Google Cloud's tools to unlock enterprise data.
In this episode, Yasmeen Ahmad, Managing Director of Product Management for Data & AI Cloud at Google Cloud, reveals why 80–90% of enterprise data is "dark" and untouched — and how Google Cloud is building the tools to finally unlock it. Yasmeen shares how BigQuery's new Knowledge Engine captures the invisible business context that human analysts have always carried in their heads, and why this semantic layer is the real unlock for enterprise AI in 2026. Yasmeen breaks down how enterprises are scaling from 50 to 2,000 autonomous AI agents, why continuous evaluation (not unit testing) is the only way to keep agents trustworthy, and what Google learned from seeing 50% of its own code now written by AI. She also explains why 95% of AI pilots produce zero measurable ROI — and why companies that partner with a platform like Google Cloud see dramatically different results. Plus, her contrarian take on governance: it's not the brake, it's what lets you drive 150 mph into the bend with confidence. Key Topics Covered Why 80–90% of enterprise data is "dark" unstructured data that GenAI can finally unlock How BigQuery's Knowledge Engine captures the invisible business context analysts carry…
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