Businesses Are Hiring AI Specialists Instead Of Data Engineers - And Its A Big Problem
techradar, Friday, December 19th, 2025
More than four in five AI projects fail, according to RAND research - which is around double the rate of non-AI tech projects, and new US employment data could reveal the reason behind this.
According to DoubleTrack, the root cause isn't AI per se, but rather the data it relies on. The main reason AI fails is thanks to poor, inaccessible, or ungoverned data - not weak models. In fact, nearly two in three (63%) organizations lack confidence in their data management for AI.
And to date, hiring trends suggests that many enterprises are yet to understand this, leading them to potential failure down the road. Three in five AI projects without AI-ready data could be abandoned by 2026, per Gartner data.