Every vendor has an AI strategy. Every consultancy has an AI practice. Every board paper has an AI roadmap. And it is, without exception, the most boring content being produced anywhere in business right now, recycled slide decks wearing a new acronym, sold with the confidence of people who know you won’t ask what it actually delivered last time.
Nobody is getting rich off this except the people selling it to you. The hyperscalers want more compute burned. The vendors want more licences signed. The consultancies want a transformation programme, three years, seven figures, and a steering committee that meets monthly to discuss why the benefits haven’t landed yet. The SIs want the implementation contract that follows. The hardware people want you to bin infrastructure that still works because AI apparently needs a bigger box to run a chatbot nobody uses.
And the whole industry has the nerve to call this innovation. It isn’t. It’s the same trick played four times in twenty years, cloud, digital transformation, blockchain, the metaverse, now AI, and every time the pitch is identical: buy this or get left behind. Nobody ever gets left behind. They just get poorer and more confused, with a platform to show for it that someone will quietly decommission in 2029.
What’s missing is anyone in the room paid to say no. Not paid to say “let’s explore a phased pilot.” No. Don’t build it. Don’t migrate it. Don’t replace what’s still doing its job. The reason nobody says that isn’t because it’s wrong, it’s because restraint doesn’t have a day rate. The entire consulting model runs on selling you more, so the honest answer, the one that saves you money and carbon and two years of your life, is structurally unavailable from the people you’re paying to give it to you.
Here’s the bit everyone conveniently skips. Every serious voice in the industry now agrees the AI bubble bursts. Fine. When it does, who’s left holding the client relationship, the write-offs, and the awkward board conversation about the platform nobody finished paying for? Not the vendor. Not the consultancy that’s already three logos further down the hype cycle. It’s whoever sold you the thing and is nowhere near the room when the invoice for it comes due. Somebody always catches the phlegm. It’s never the person who coughed.
The most sustainable server is the one you don’t replace. The most sustainable AI model is the one you don’t run. And the most useful person in the room still isn’t the one shouting “AI-first,” it’s the one willing to lose the fee and tell you the truth instead.
Scott
People. Planet. Progress.
#AI #Sustainability #TechStrategy #ThirdHalf