Knowing where to turn to capitalise on a technical landscape that’s evolving at breakneck speed is enough to send your head into a spin.

One of my responsibilities at Be Bold Media is managing our tech stack. There are fundamental bits of software that underpin the core of our work — like the project management platform I introduced to groans many years ago, which I’d now be pulled apart for removing.

Over time, we’ve added apps to monitor resources, collate and report on data, manage social content, and even automate elements of bookkeeping (though you still can’t beat an excellent human bookkeeper — and we have one of those!).

AI tools: promise and peril

The capabilities emerging in the AI era are on another level — or at least they will be. This isn’t another commentary on AI hype, but more of a cautionary tale.

We’re all in favour of embracing tools, especially when they’re focused on doing a particular job well. We’re not yet in an era where you can ask an AI to do a general task and expect expert-level results across the board. Yet.

While we try to figure out what’s genuinely useful and what’s just another marketing ploy — or an excuse to mark up costs by adding ‘AI’ to a product name — we’re heading into a major shake-out.

The shake-out begins

Lots of clever services have emerged, right at the frontier of what’s possible. Some filled gaps that the bigger, more cumbersome (and in an AI world, that’s a relative term!) players couldn’t yet plug with confidence. Others were trying to be the next Microsoft or OpenAI, racing for first-mover advantage.

Now — and it feels like this has only started in the last few weeks — we’re seeing the leading edge of consolidation. My inbox is filling with “the next stage in our journey” emails from startups acquired by big players who don’t have time to wait for their own developers to build new products.

At the other end of the spectrum are the plucky adventurers whose domain names now deliver only a 404 error because the money or enthusiasm ran out.

The illusion of easy innovation

Great ideas emerge looking like the next big thing, only for someone else to come up with an even better alternative within days.

And while we’re heading into this new wild frontier, we need to be on the lookout for emperors in new clothes. The ability to build a professional-looking product that solves an immediate problem — and launch it in days rather than months or years — is now in far more people’s hands.

With the right tools, you can whip up a beautiful-looking interface backed by full coding and databases, even if you’re not a designer, developer or DB admin. You can ostensibly do things that each of those professionals would have taken years to perfect.

I know because I’ve done it. A proof of concept and a working minimum viable product can be achieved in a matter of hours. You can link it to a payment system (even if you’ve never done that before) and be taking money from people in a jiffy for something that, on the surface, does what you’ve told them it will do.

Risks for SMEs without IT support

However, as a customer, that doesn’t make the thing you’ve just paid for a guaranteed long-term bet. When it tries to scale — without expertise and experience behind it — it could very well break. It might not be built on best security practices or protect your data like an enterprise-grade product would.

It could solve one problem today, only to give you the biggest headache of your life tomorrow. It might have been built by a 14-year-old with a £25-a-month budget.

Large organisations with IT teams won’t face this problem. They have robust policies, expert leadership and processes for assessing suppliers and doing due diligence.

But SMEs — running on tight budgets and small teams, often without a dedicated IT function — might be tempted by the next great thing, only to find it wasn’t ready for prime time and has repercussions for them, their staff and, crucially, their customers.

A cautious path forward

The answer? Ease your way into the brave new world. Use suppliers you recognise until the newcomers become recognised themselves.

It’s not very sexy. It’s not “move fast and break things”. But that’s not where most of us non-billionaires are in our business journey.

Final thoughts: stay sharp, stay safe

This is still wild west territory when it comes to the change AI is bringing — and the cowboys are roaming the land.

Few businesses can afford to ignore this shift, because it will change everything. But keeping a sharp eye out for the charlatans while you dip your toes into the possibilities will stand you in good stead to keep up, stay safe — and avoid having to keep your head on a swivel for the next few years.