[Opinion] The agentic AI hype is bullsh*t!

I keep hearing about how "Agentic AI is going to solve all the world's problems" and how partners are missing the boat about not jumping in now and selling it.

Sell what? That is what I want to know.

Most of our systems have crap set ups and poor data; let's put hallucinating technology in between two core business applications to integrate vital business functions!

Sounds clever right? Well most of the vendors driving the messaging seem to think so...

What is missed in this conversation is that there are things we need to do to help our clients now, like understanding how they operate, what systems they use to do what, what roles and functions own what systems, and helping them improve their data and their security.

[These are] all logical things – all things I said to start looking at and doing three years ago.

What is forgotten is that businesses don't change fast, no matter how much FOMO is there; established businesses are slow moving beasts no matter the size

Look at how long it took for businesses to convert to the cloud and to start considering their security posture.

This is no different. There are a bunch of changes businesses will need to make, but transformation takes a long time – I tell my partners it's three to five years to implement more mature practices, be more profitable and get to the next stage of their business. No amount of technology is going to change that.

Are there going to be start-ups that embrace this kind of technology? 100% there are, but how many of them have the money to hire tech partners? How fast will they actually grow and establish themselves as decent sized businesses...?

Don't let people that don't even understand end clients, our partner businesses, nor business operations, let alone "AI" technology, create FOMO for things that aren't actually happening at scale.

The technology is coming, it is improving and it will solve problems, but even if it was ready now, most businesses aren't – they need time and help to adopt it.

We only need to look at how many legacy apps there are out there...

But it's always the people that don't understand well enough that are the loudest pushing things. For us, it's the vendors with a product to flog.

The products are as much vapourware as the sales people/executives really understanding things.

I'm not sure I can get hyped when the people hyping things say something with conviction, to only be challenged and flip their conversation lines to agreeing with me like they came up with the idea.

There are good people out there that are helpful and saying the right things, but they are being drowned out by generic "AI" thought leadership rubbish and false FOMO.

I am here to tell you, you aren't missing out. Very few SMB clients and partners are doing anything substantial. The majority haven't even got their act together with cyber.

So don't get caught up in it, but do learn, engage and continually improve. You'll need it, but you aren't going to miss out on everything in the next six months.

James Davis is chief strategy officer of The TSP Advisory, which provides fractional leadership and technology advisory services to technology solutions partners looking to grow and modernise their businesses.

This article was previously published on LinkedIn by James Davis. It is re-published here with his permission.

techpartner.news provides a platform for guest opinion articles such as this one to foster debate within the IT industry. The views expressed in these guest opinion articles are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of techpartner.news or its publishers.