Columnist

AI scepticism is healthy. Inaction isn't.

I like a sceptic.

In fact, when someone tells me they don't believe everything they're hearing about artificial intelligence, I’m usually quite relieved. Because neither do I.

We’ve been promised that AI will transform businesses, revolutionise productivity and change the way we work. 

Somewhere between the headlines, LinkedIn posts and endless new tools, it’s understandable that some business owners have decided to wait until the dust settles.

There’s just one problem. I’m not convinced the dust is going to settle.

The UK Government has set an ambition for our SMEs to become the most digitally capable and AI-confident in the G7 by 2035.

Yet there’s an interesting gap between businesses saying they're using AI and actually embedding it into the way they work.

That's where scepticism can quietly become resistance to change.

I hear perfectly reasonable concerns. Is AI safe for my business? What happens to our data? Will it replace jobs? How much is this going to cost? And perhaps the most common: where on earth do we start?

Those are questions businesses should be asking.

What concerns me more is when “I’m not convinced” becomes “we’ll deal with it later”.

We’ve been here before.

Businesses resisted websites because customers could telephone. Some dismissed social media because it was something teenagers did. Cloud software sounded unnecessary when the server in the cupboard worked perfectly well. AI will have its own version of that story.

And no, that doesn’t mean every North East business needs an AI strategy involving expensive consultants, dozens of tools and a boardroom presentation with lots of arrows on it.

Sometimes getting started means sitting down with someone who understands your business and looking at what actually happens between Monday morning and Friday afternoon.

Where is time being wasted? What gets typed twice? Which report takes three hours every Friday? What information is trapped in someone's head? Then ask whether AI could help.

That human support matters because adopting AI isn’t simply a technology project. It’s change.

People need permission to ask questions without feeling stupid. 

Teams need guidelines about what they can and cannot put into AI tools. 

Leaders need enough understanding to challenge an answer rather than blindly trusting it.

And businesses need to know when AI is not the answer.

The companies that get this right won’t necessarily be those spending the most money. They’ll be the ones prepared to experiment carefully, learn quickly and bring their people with them.

Healthy scepticism protects businesses from hype. But there is a difference between being sceptical and simply doing nothing.

You don’t need to understand everything about AI, and you certainly don’t need to use every new tool that appears. 

You do need to understand enough to decide what could genuinely make a difference to your business.

Start small. Ask questions. Get some help if you need it. Then decide what works for you.

Because doing nothing is still a decision, and in a world that’s changing this quickly, it might eventually become the more expensive one.

Kaye Nicholson is founder of artificial intelligence support provider GrowthZone AI

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