There has never been a better time to buy artificial intelligence, and businesses are duly buying it the way they once bought gym memberships: enthusiastically, in January, never to be seen again. The bike shop has a chatbot now. The chatbot writes poems. The bike shop's invoices are still typed by hand at 11 PM by the owner, who has not written a poem in years and had no plans to start.
This column would like to state, calmly and for the record: most businesses are automating the wrong thing. AI's genuine talent is not conversation, and it is not art. It is drudgery. It reads the email, drafts the quote, chases the invoice, and answers the same customer question for the four-hundredth time with the enthusiasm of the first — because it does not know what enthusiasm is and therefore cannot run out.
“The robot answers at 2 AM. You sleep. That is the entire trick. There is no second trick.”
The industry will not tell you this, because drudgery does not demo well. A robot writing a sonnet gets a standing ovation at a conference. A robot quietly sending quote No. 406 before the customer forgets you exist gets nothing — except the customer, which was, if anyone checks the notes, the point.
So before buying anything with “AI” on the label, ask the seller one question: which evening does this give me back? If they cannot name the evening, keep your money. If they begin describing “a transformation journey”, keep your money and also leave the building.
Full disclosure: the author sells exactly one thing — that question, answered honestly, thirty minutes at a time. The first thirty are free, and “AI cannot help you; buy nothing” is a full and popular answer. Asked whether this was a sound business model, he said he had been advised, repeatedly and by professionals, that it was not. His advertisement appears below. He insists it is a very good ad. Our advertising department, legally, agrees.