I don’t know about you, but I’m exhausted from using AI – it’s my trusty side-kick. It’s probably fair to say I was an early adopter, which isn’t surprising as a technologist.

I’m the founder of Relentica – a digital and AI consultancy – built around my many years of leading technology teams. What made me stand out as a technology leader in those roles is the commercial focus that was often missed by my peers – everything grounded around growing revenue, driving margin, or improving resilience – and also the focus that people are the key to unlocking success. Leadership.

I’m sure many of you already know that the concept of AI has been around since the 1940s. Alan Turing published work about it in 1948 – and yet, 80 years later, finally, it’s actually becoming a reality.

And let’s also remember that AI, as we experience it, isn’t actually intelligence. It’s just an illusion of intelligence. A very sophisticated computer programme with access to lots of data and computing power – that, unlike most programmes, is so complex we can’t actually understand how or why it returns some of the results it does. And that is why it makes it rather scary.

AI is different to other technologies I’ve seen. The adoption rate is huge. The possibilities are endless. And we’re not even close to a finished product.

And that’s what makes AI both an existential threat and a huge opportunity to businesses, organisations, and to us, as people who have to navigate the now – and what comes next.

I’m assuming we’re all using AI every day for our work or personal stuff.

Today, I also want to talk about cyber. Cyber security. Something that is also part of our day-to-day lives – as we fend off spam emails, use multi-factor authentication, and ignore those text messages saying I’m due to have a parcel delivered and asking me to click a random link. But unlike AI, as much as cyber security consultants want to package it as an opportunity – really, to you and your business, it is an existential threat.

Before I set up Relentica, I was the Global CIO for NCC Group. They are just up the road from here – Manchester born and bred, but now renowned for being a global leader in cyber security. As cyber security was the business – I’m not sure how many customers would trust an organisation that had been hacked. It was the ultimate existential threat, and something I was responsible for protecting the business against.

The final piece of the jigsaw I want to walk you through is people. The humans. Our ability to survive and thrive in pretty much any environment is testament to our intelligence, our resilience, and our ingenuity.

World on Fire

Without getting too political – we are a world of haves and have-nots.

And if we layer on this thought about the current state of the planet we live on – the world is on fire.

Trade wars. Climate wars. Cyber wars. Political wars. Proxy wars. Real wars.

And the economy is stagnant. Growth is a distant memory. Margins are tight. And our resilience is at breaking point.

And now we have the most innovative, disruptive technology I’ve seen in my lifetime landing into our lives and our businesses. We’ve stopped talking about cyber. I also feel we’ve stopped talking and caring about people, especially now the pandemic is a distant memory and money is tight. And we just talk about AI.

And is that a surprise? No. Because what really matters to businesses and organisations are those three commercial dials I said I ground my leadership in – grow revenue, drive margin, improve resilience.

And when those dials aren’t moving in the right direction – there is little room for anything else to focus on.

AI

Let’s talk about that existential threat of AI. It’s two-fold.

Firstly, to us personally – will it replace my job? My short answer to this is no, but someone who uses AI better than you will take your job from you – the missed promotion or the next opportunity. We want AI to do our work, but not take our jobs – so skill up. Our jobs will change, and so must we.

Second, the other aspect is what the internet did to the retail and advertising sectors. There are business leaders in this room who, I hope, have assessed the threat of AI to their business model. Maybe this is too close to home this evening – but when I want some legal advice, I previously used Google to find a lawyer and make a call. Now I start with an AI prompt. And when I want to be creative about a new marketing initiative – I talk it through with AI first, and most likely take direct action on the back of it.

AI will disrupt businesses faster than any previous technology. And it’s about turning that threat into opportunity.

If you don’t, someone else will – and they won’t just compete with you, they’ll replace you.

And then AI is an opportunity. It’s not just about how we adopt it to change our business models, but how we change our business operations. It’s actually the things many businesses are still struggling with. And that’s not surprising.

The clients I’m talking with are struggling with it too. There is no clear strategy. Governance is slow to react. IT is risk-averse. There is no clear return on investment. And from a technology perspective – we are layering AI on top of existing technical debt and data debt, much of which built up during the pandemic to keep businesses alive – and this will only make things worse in the long run.

We also need to remember that AI isn’t a finished product.

AI is powerful. And unreliable. At the same time.

It’s immature, unpredictable – in fact, it makes things up. It hallucinates, and it does it with confidence. It’s a grifter.

And like any grifter, it can’t be left alone. It needs a human to watch over it. A human in the loop.

Let me give a little more detail on AI in the legal sector. There have been multiple examples where AI has been used and has entirely made up previous cases and evidence that have then been presented to court as fact – most of these without legal representation, with parties just using AI instead. And whose fault was that? Not Microsoft Copilot, OpenAI’s ChatGPT, or Anthropic’s Claude. It was the person who didn’t do the due diligence, or call the lawyer, the qualified expert, when they should have.

We didn’t wait for it to be ready.

We waited for it to be usable.

But AI is like flying a plane – you can’t rely on autopilot for everything. You are the pilot. It’s your job to check everything.

It’s interesting that AI, for all its issues, still makes us better and delivers more output. I sometimes question the outcomes.

There is a brilliant book by Ethan Mollick, ‘Co-Intelligence’, who suggests that AI benefits the lowest-performing workers the most – it brings them up to a similar level as better-performing workers. I don’t want to agree with him – but I think in some circumstances that might be the case.

I see AI differently. I see it as a multiplier. Those better workers will use AI to amplify their work – better thinking, amplified. But for some people, all that happens is they just produce more slop. Unchecked, unskilled AI usage – like in that legal example – takes away the benefits AI can actually bring.

AI is our responsibility – we are the humans in the loop. To make effective use of AI, personally or in our businesses, first we have to understand it and get the basics right.

Or it’s going to be about you and your business becoming irrelevant.

Cyber

The conversations about AI have replaced the conversations we were having about cyber a few years ago. But unlike other technologies where the hype legitimately moved on with our adoption – the internet, mobile connectivity, cloud and SaaS – cyber hasn’t.

AI has only made the problem worse. From a technical perspective, the ability for cyber criminals to create and exploit weaknesses has just got easier for them.

And as much as our boards are talking about AI – neglecting cyber is a mistake.

Cyber doesn’t grow your business.

But maybe, like AI, your prioritisation of cyber will ultimately decide whether you still have a business or not.

Cyber security is also about human behaviour. I talked about the world being on fire. Cyber criminals and nation-state adversaries love a world when it’s on fire. When chaos reigns, people are under pressure. That’s when mistakes happen.

So as much as you might prepare your defences and train your staff, it’s also important to know what you need to do when an incident does occur – and that’s not an IT problem alone.

There might be technical controls, but cyber is actually just about risk management. A cyber incident in your organisation is not about if – but when.

And just like AI, cyber is about getting the basics right – and building up from that.

Humans

And here we are. The humans. Stuck in the middle of it. The glue to all this technology – collectively holding on to the AI rollercoaster, frantically typing on our laptops, avoiding clicking on the phishing email as we do another spiral.

Literally the human in the loop of it all.

It’s you, me, our colleagues, friends, family – that have to make all this work and also live with it at the same time.

It’s a mindset.

Slowing down to speed up. Just as we have to learn new skills, we also have to unlearn old ones.

With AI, yes, and technology generally. But also our business processes, our policies, and our expectations and understanding of the very essence of work.

How many times have we heard, “But I’ve always done it this way”? OK – that’s more often from my mum after another update from WhatsApp – but it’s the reality. Technology is changing faster than we can keep up. No wonder it’s exhausting.

AI adoption in our businesses isn’t just about technical debt – it’s about complex processes, legacy thinking, and lack of vision.

We have to go back to the basics. AI doesn’t just change what we do. It changes what we’re capable of doing.

And of course, AI isn’t accountable for this. You are.

The real challenge isn’t whether AI thinks for us… it’s whether we stop thinking for ourselves.

We are at an inflection point with all this – as people, as leaders.

We have a choice to ignore the existential threats and massive opportunities right now – or we can lean in. I’m going to make a bold statement – we are all leaders. Leadership is not defined by the size of the team you have, or don’t have – it’s defined by action, behaviours, values, and vision.

In our world on fire, with a challenging economy and a revolutionary emerging technology – we have a choice to either survive or thrive. That applies to ourselves and our businesses.

The survivors will still be gripping on to that AI rollercoaster. The people that thrive will have transformed their lives and those of their organisations to grow revenue, drive margin, and improve resilience by embracing change with consistent curiosity and the ability to take strategic action.

What Do We Do

So what do we do? Because this isn’t about slowing down. That’s not an option.

First, learn it properly. Not headlines, not hype, not demos. Understand what AI can actually do and what it can’t. If you don’t understand it, you cannot lead in a world shaped by it. And don’t be afraid to share your learning – if you have a team or a business, help them be super-powered too.

Second, focus on value. If it doesn’t drive revenue, margin, or reduce risk, it’s just expensive noise.

Third, fix your foundations. Data, process, ownership. AI will not save a broken business. But it will make the cracks impossible to ignore.

Fourth, lead. Don’t hide behind your IT function. And if your IT function is only talking about risk, you have a problem. The best technology leaders don’t just protect the business. They push it forward.

We are still writing the story of AI.

But it will not wait for you.

Understand it.

Shape it.

Share it.

Lead it.

Or it will quietly make you – and your business – irrelevant.