ROI and AI: What is the Paradox? Marco Romero at InforChannel on AI and Business Strategy

Marco Romero, CEO of Grupo Taking, recently published an article on InfoChannel that should be required reading for any executive who still treats AI as a buzzword: "AI and the Midas Paradox."

The title is not accidental. In Greek mythology, King Midas was granted the power to turn everything he touched into gold. Problem: he could no longer eat, drink, or embrace anyone without turning everything into inanimate metal. What seemed like a gift became a curse.

With AI, the risk is the same. And Romero is not speculating; he is observing.

Romero has said in previous interviews: "AI is not a Batman utility belt; it is a toolbox that only generates impact when applied to the right problem."

But the market does not think that way. The market wants to turn everything into AI. Customer service? AI. HR? AI. Sales? AI. Compliance? AI. And that is where the paradox comes in: the more companies apply AI to everything, the less real value they manage to extract.

Why? Because they forgot to ask "why" before asking "how."

In the article, he unpacks this trap and shows how companies are spending fortunes on AI projects that have no clear business objective. The result? 95% of corporate AI projects do not generate significant gains in efficiency or revenue, according to MIT data. It is not a technology failure. It is a strategy failure.

The paradox by the numbers

The data confirms what Romero warns about in the article. In Brazil, only 7% of companies calculate the ROI of their AI initiatives. The other 93% do not even define metrics.

Read that again: 93% of Brazilian companies do not know whether AI is working or not.

It is like buying a car without knowing if it runs. Worse: it is like buying ten cars without knowing if any of them run.

The Midas paradox here is crystal clear: companies turn everything into an "AI project" thinking it automatically generates value. But AI without a purpose becomes a cost, not a result. It becomes inanimate gold.

Marco is not just pointing out a problem — quite the opposite. Grupo Taking has incorporated AI into legal, compliance, HR, finance, and customer service, drastically reducing operational timelines. It created Tate AI, a proprietary framework used by Copastur, Ambev, Tele Sena, and Kraft Heinz.

The difference? We start with the problem, not the technology.

Technology does not replace strategy

2024 and 2025 marked the shift from the buzz effect to demands for tangible deliverables. Companies that spent millions on AI now need to prove it was worth something. AI does not compensate for a lack of strategic clarity. On the contrary, it amplifies it.

If your company does not have a clear strategy for what it wants to achieve, AI will automate the confusion. If you do not have defined metrics, AI will accelerate toward nowhere. If you do not understand the problem, AI will solve the wrong question much faster.

And that is the complete paradox: the more "digital transformation" without strategy, the less real transformation happens. It is the Midas touch in corporate version — everything becomes an "AI project," but nothing becomes a business result.

Read on Infor Channel

Marco Romero's Newsletter on LinkedIn