The AI vendor-confusion event, explained in plain language.

Every technology vendor on earth now has an "AI solution." The label is on every deck, every renewal call, every cold email. Most of it is the same product it was two years ago with a new word bolted to the front — and telling the difference is the single most expensive skill a decision-maker can lack right now.

This is a field note, not a pitch. Here is the plain-language version of what's actually happening, and the three questions that cut through it.

What the "AI event" actually is

There was no single moment. What happened is that the cost of sounding like you have AI dropped to near zero, while the cost of having AI that changes your economics stayed exactly as high as it always was. That gap is where the confusion lives, and it's where budgets go to die.

If a vendor can't tell you what decision their AI makes better, faster, or cheaper — they've sold you a feature, not an outcome.

The three questions

Before you sign anything with "AI" in the name, ask these, in order, and watch how quickly the room changes:

• What decision does this make for me? Not "what does it do" — what specific human decision does it replace, speed up, or de-risk. If there isn't one, it's decoration.
• What happens when it's wrong? Every model is wrong sometimes. A serious vendor has an answer for the failure mode. An unserious one pretends there isn't one.
• Who owns the data it learns from? If the honest answer is "we do," you are the product, and the price on the invoice is not the real price.

The short version

You do not need to become an AI expert. You need someone in the room who is on your side of the table and isn't selling you anything — someone whose only job is to ask those three questions on your behalf, every time. That's the whole game.