Core question
How do I tell a real AI expert from someone selling hype?
Short answer
Ask what business roles they have held. A great many AI experts have never sat in a leadership seat, never signed off on a profit and loss statement, and never cleaned up after a half-finished implementation. Their solutions are looking for a place to land. Do not be that place.
The illusion is real, and business leaders are the ones left holding the bag.
The pitches are consistently impressive. Chatbots that sound human. Smart workflows that run your operation. Scoring tools that predict your next customer. Here is the part nobody wants to say out loud: a lot of what is sold as AI transformation is a magic act. It looks slick in a demonstration. Try to scale it in the messy, complex world of real customers and real operations and it breaks, invents facts, and introduces reputation risk.
As business owners and managers, we do not get to enjoy the show. We have to deliver results and protect the bottom line.
The screening questions are not technical. Have you run a business? Do you understand what my operation actually does? Can you explain what could go wrong with this and who owns it when it does? Would you tell me if the right answer here is not AI?
Someone with real business experience knows the difference between cash flow and making payroll, and knows that a solution which disrupts a critical process has cost more than it saved. Someone without it can offer many novel solutions to imagined problems.