Lessons from the AI gold rush

There’s an old saying I’m reminded of in the current stampede to AI – “the only people who are guaranteed to make money in a gold rush are the ones selling picks and shovels”. 

And in the gold rush that is AI, the people making the most money right now are the big management consultancies. While the companies that are developing AI tools are losing a lot of investor money to stake their own market share claims, the consultancies are literally downing in rivers of gold. 

Driven by fear and greed

It’s a common playbook, and one the big consultancies have been using for years. With every new technology, or global disruption (hello, COVID), they are the masters of quelling the fears of business owners or advising them on how to make the most of a new opportunity.

But they aren’t building AI models and solutions – they are putting together decks about it and charging eye watering day rates to impart that ‘knowledge’ to a willing line-up of lemmings who don’t want to be left behind.

There’s money in FUD

FUD, or Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt, creates a lot of opportunities for business advisors, agencies and anyone with a slick sales pitch. These days you can’t open LinkedIn without being bombarded by so-called (and self-professed) AI experts and ‘prompt engineers’ about their groundbreaking AI strategy that can solve all your marketing problems in about 28 seconds. 

Of course, it’s not gold they are selling, it’s a turd. And not even a polished turd.

No, the AI moment is like every other gold rush. Money is being made by people who claim to know where the gold is, but they’ve never even dug up an ounce of the stuff to prove it. And they can’t give you a map, all they are offering is digging implements. 

Hold firm and get to work digging

The beauty of AI technology is that it is democratised and readily available to anyone who might want to use it. Given how new the technology is, by definition there aren’t people who bring years of experience in AI to the table.

So there’s no better time than now to have a play with it for yourself to help allay the fear of the unknown. Even better, talk to the experts you already work with (like your agency or copywriter or designer) and ask about how they are using AI. 

Ask them how they use AI for your work. Embrace it, learn about it. And stop paying to get nothing more than shallow advice from people flogging picks and shovels and not much else. Start digging and you might just strike gold.