It's not so valuable to assess the current state - what the impact of using AI is today. From personal experience it feels like overall impact on productivity was not positive a couple of years ago, might be positive now and will be positive in a couple of years. That means by assessing the current state of impact on product where just finding where we are on that change curve. If we accept that trend is happening then we know at some point it will (or has) pass the threshold where our companies will fall behind if they're not using it. We also know it takes a while to get up to speed and make sure we're making the most of it so the earlier we start the better. That's the counter arguement that we could wait for a later wave to jump on but that's risky and the only potential reward is a small percentage short-term productivity gain.
So you're saying instead of assessing the current capabilities of the technology, we should imagine its future capabilities, "accept" that they will surely be achieved and then assess those?
I would assess the directionality and rate of the trend. If it's getting better fast and we don't see a limit to that trend then it will eventually pass whatever threshold we set for adoption.
