But do companies really know how to use AI? I think most of it is experimentation - throwing things to the wall and seeing what sticks.

It's the practitioner who eventually figures out what really works. I see this the same way the agile movement emerged. It was initiated by people who were hands-on programmers and showed enough benefit at minimizing software waste before it took a life of its own and started getting peddled by people who didn't really understand the underlying principles.