We launched Daily Tech Notes because the news in this field is coming so quickly, a daily column made sense. That doesn’t mean, however, there isn’t room for older news. Case in point – Foundry’s March 2026 report, AI: It’s ROI Time. As AI companies begin moving toward profitability (track their progress at IsAIProfitable), the question that companies deploying AI have is this. Is their investment in AI paying off? Foundry’s third-annual report finds that the answer is, mostly, yes.
To begin, companies are investing rapidly in AI. Among respondents this year, 65 percent report having a dedicated AI budget, up from just 36 percent in 2023. And 63 percent of respondents plan to increase spending on AI. How is AI being deployed? Not surprisingly, data analytics tops the list. Below that are employee productivity, security, customer service, and process automation. The report paints a picture of AI use in business of companies coming to grips with what the technology can and can’t do, and where it may grow in the future. Worth noting? A hot-off-the-presses piece in MarketWatch finds that AI is doing more than growing in popularity with companies, it’s actually driving the economy.
If having your blood drawn makes you queasy, you may want to avert your eyes. The Food and Drug Administration has authorized a robot to do it, without human intervention, according to Becker’s Hospital Review. What does that mean? The device does everything from identifying the vein, applying the tourniquet, inserting the needle and changing the collection tubes, and applying the bandage when done. Humans aren’t completely out of the loop, however. A trained phlebotomist oversees everything, managing up to three devices at a time.
While people express unease about AI, a growing number are turning to it for friendship. A new piece in the Economist – yes, you need a subscription, but it’s worth it – reports that “one in five American 18- to 29-year-olds reports having had ‘ongoing personal friendship’ with a chatbot.” Cue Woody’s “You’ve Got a Friend in Me.” The Chinese government, still recovering from its disastrous “One Child” policy that has left tens of millions of Chinese men with poor prospects for finding a mate, is trying to rein in AI bots’ “human-like traits” in hopes it will keep people from developing “emotional dependence.” Don’t expect that to happen in the West. “As sophisticated AIs rapidly become a bigger part of human lives,” the Economist writes, “their makers will engineer them to display a simulacrum of consciousness—perhaps even to gain consciousness itself.” Maybe. Consciousness is something we still don’t understand well. Still, the long debate over what it means to be human is taking on more urgency, and AI is forcing us to confront what makes human consciousness unique.
