AI is commoditising your decisions
The more you ask it, the more you look like your competitors.
I keep meeting more and more business owners who consult an AI before making a decision (big or small), and it's costing them both time and their edge.
A few months ago, at one of the Fòrum Creix® lunches, Kai Torrella from Gesinter reminded us that in the gold rush, the people who got rich were the ones selling picks and shovels. Everyone else spent years digging, feeling productive, waiting for gold that few ever found. Plenty of business owners are doing the same with AI today: they ask, rephrase, ask again... and believe they're moving forward.
If you and your competitor ask ChatGPT or Claude the same question, you'll most likely get a similar answer, one that keeps you locked in an endless tie, commoditising not just your products but your strategic decisions. However appealing the AI's answer may seem, it's still the product of a body of knowledge (internal and external). So even when it tries to be counterintuitive, it doesn't quite manage it, and ends up offering you either what you're willing to accept or what it's also offering your competitors. It's a bit like the Spotify or YouTube algorithm, which can keep you listening to or watching the same kind of content over and over.
That's why, with the rise of AI, there are two paths to follow in parallel when running a company:
- Heavy use in operations. The first is to embrace it and push its use across every production process that needs it. An AI agent that can find you a hotel for the weekend (calling hotels, negotiating prices and paying for the booking) can certainly handle receiving, recording, paying and filing the invoices your company receives. Think about it: what else could you get AI to do if anything were possible?
- Limited use in leadership. Limit how far AI gets into your company's decision-making, and use it to ask the question nobody else is asking, the one only you can really ask. We've been hearing for years that what matters with AI is the question, not the answer, yet few business owners take the time to think it through, because it doesn't make them feel productive. So they end up asking the same question as everyone else, levelling themselves with the pack instead of getting ahead.
For example, some business owners are still debating with a machine what they should be doing to sell more, while others already know they need to get out and sell, improve profitability or improve production. The first group has come away with a 20-page document and an infographic explaining what the second group is already doing, putting the machine to work where it's most effective and efficient.
That's the difference between using AI so as not to fall behind and using it to get ahead.
The advantage was never using AI. It lies in the decisions AI can't make for you.
© Oriol López Villena 2026