Die Antwort wird billig, die Verantwortung nicht

I have sat on the board of an energy company in Kloten for over four years. A model can now produce most of the analysis that reaches us, but it cannot do the one thing the meeting is for:

Stand behind the decision when it is wrong.

That is the shift I keep noticing. AI is making the answer cheap, but it's not touching the accountability for being wrong about it.

As models get better, better intelligence and automated admin work become harder to defend against. Anyone can buy the answer now.

What stays valuable is being the one who has to deliver an outcome, stand by a claim, and accept the consequences either way.

That sits outside the model layer. A better model does not simplify your operations, solve your regulatory complexity, or make you willing to carry the risk.

This includes what we do @Gopf

The intelligence part of my work is also being commoditized. Scraping, analysis, and reports are all getting cheaper. I pay this tax first, so I am not going to pretend it only happens to you.

And the frontier labs will not rescue you here.

When the CEO of one of them wakes up, the priorities are lawsuits, staying on the good side of the government, anticipating what other countries or markets will do, and raising enough capital to compete.

Taking on your liability is nowhere on that list.

Which is the part manufacturers miss about their own position.

You already own the hard part. You ship a physical product with your name on it, you stand behind the tolerances you warranty, and you carry the liability that rides on that machine long after it leaves your floor.

That is exactly why a better model does not disrupt you.

But look at everything around that accountability. The quoting, the research, the monitoring, and the paperwork. You apply almost no AI to any of it.

So the threat is a competitor who owns the same accountability you do and runs faster because they use the leverage you left on the table.

The question to carry into your next Monday meeting is this: what do we stand behind, and are we using AI everywhere that isn't that?

(Image credits to Julie Yoo)