The AI Dilemma

By Eliabe Bastos

Does it make sense to use AI in my business? The honest answer has two sides: AI isn't all that — and, at the same time, it is.

AI isn't all that

"In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king."

With so many people caught up in the excitement, anyone who questions the value of AI looks like the one letting the opportunity slip by. The "right" thing to do today is to blindly trust the most outlandish promises made by tech CEOs and keep spending more and more — not their money, yours.

While everyone keeps saying that "AI will replace everyone," the market waits, fearfully, for the day it finally makes good on that threat. Meanwhile, it still fumbles basic tasks in our day-to-day work. Everyone notices, but few have the courage to say that the emperor has no clothes.

The problem with rushing into this race without a clear direction is simple: the money and the risk are yours.

• What if AI becomes much more expensive down the road? Would your business survive without today's subsidies?
• If your company gets sued over something the AI did, will Anthropic (or OpenAI, or Google) answer for you?

Taking on that responsibility would give anyone pause. But fear matters: it's a sign that you're facing something that truly has value. Here, fear isn't weakness — it's prudence.

Now that I've burst a few bubbles, let me tell you what AI actually does.

AI is all that

AI has revolutionized software development by making code generation faster. With these tools, developers can be more productive and deliver value to companies in less time.

Agentic tools let us operationalize tasks that used to be laborious and brought no direct value to the core business — the kind of red tape that eats up hours and doesn't move the needle.

What's more, AI is here to stay. We will never again have a world without it. Even if the big companies locked away their models tomorrow, there are countless open-weight models, with quality close to the big players', freely available on the internet. Sure, running one of these models takes a lot of memory and hardware, but they don't belong to the self-proclaimed "masters of the world."

The dilemma

It really is confusing. Let me elaborate.

AI is not humanity's final invention — the one that will become self-aware, replace us, and destroy us. If something like that ever happens, it won't be because of the technology itself, but because of the conscious will of the people who control it.

On the other hand, AI is a great tool. One that will take us places we could hardly reach without it.

But notice: I called it a tool.

At the turn of the century, someone might have said that Google would replace libraries for good and that they would wither away until they disappeared. To my surprise, when I visited BECE (the Ceará State Public Library, in Brazil), I found a huge collection of printed newspapers. Talking to the librarian, I learned that the archive held newspapers going back to the 19th century — and that only a few of the most recent ones had been digitized.

The truth is that technologies coexist. Horse-drawn carts share the same world in which rockets are launched into space. One day, LLMs will be our horse and cart — and a new end-of-the-world threat will have to be invented.

So, is AI right for my business?

Only one thing affects your business right now: using AI today is extremely cheap, thanks to the massive subsidies AI companies receive. It's worth testing now, because it will probably never be this cheap again. (Shout-out to Lucas Montano, from the Lucas Montano channel!)

Test AI — this time without fear or anxiety — and let it show you what it's really good at. With prudence, I insist.

What's next

Enough theory and sales pitches. Over the next few days, I'll be publishing a series of proofs of concept (PoCs) showing, in practice, how to adapt AI to different kinds of businesses. No filter, no hype, focused on what actually works.

Follow me at @eliabebastos and keep up here at ghidorah.com.br — I want to hear your feedback on each experiment.

And tell me: which process in your business do you think AI can't solve?