Where Would We Be Without AI?
Not in the future - right now...
The invisible dependency problem
Most leaders still talk about AI as if it has just arrived. A new capability. A new wave. Something to “adopt”. But that framing is already outdated.
We haven’t just entered the AI era. We’ve been building on top of it for decades. Quietly. Incrementally. Often invisibly. And that creates a blind spot.
Because if you stripped AI out of the last 70 years of progress, large parts of modern business wouldn’t just slow down. They would stop working.
AI isn’t a layer we’re adding. It’s a foundation we’ve already built on.
The obvious gap: productivity collapses
Let’s start with the bit everyone can feel. Remove AI from today’s workflows and the immediate impact is brutal.
No copilots, no agents, no intelligent automation
No fast synthesis of large volumes of information
No scalable content generation, coding acceleration, or research augmentation
What happens next is not subtle. Engineering velocity drops. Content teams slow down. Analysis takes longer, and often becomes shallower. Decision-making stretches out because the time to insight increases.
In portfolio terms, this is where it lands hardest:
FTEE moves backwards, not forwards
Teams need to re-expand to deliver the same output
Cost bases increase, while speed decreases
You don’t just lose efficiency, you lose competitiveness.
The less obvious gap: systems start to break
This is where it gets more interesting.
Because the real dependency on AI isn’t just in the tools we use day to day. It’s embedded in the systems we take for granted. Take AI away, and a number of “normal” capabilities degrade quickly:
Search becomes less relevant and less useful
Recommendation systems lose accuracy and impact
Fraud detection weakens, increasing risk and loss
Pricing and risk models become cruder
Logistics and routing become less efficient
These things don’t disappear entirely, but they become:
Slower
Less accurate
More expensive to operate
And that matters, because many modern business models rely on those systems being highly effective. When they aren’t, the economics start to wobble.
The second-order effects: entire markets look different
Now zoom out… If AI had not been quietly advancing over the last 70 years, we wouldn’t just see slower companies. We would see different markets.
Fewer winner-takes-most platforms, because personalisation and optimisation are weaker
Less effective digital advertising, which underpins a huge proportion of the internet economy
Slower evolution of data-driven SaaS businesses
More reliance on human-heavy operating models
For Private Equity, and investor-backed businesses, this is particularly relevant. A significant proportion of value creation over the past 15 to 20 years has been driven by:
Data leverage
Operational efficiency
Scalable delivery models
All of which are strengthened by AI foundations. Remove those, and:
Margins are thinner
Growth is slower
Defensibility is weaker
Many investment theses simply don’t hold in the same way.
Have we already crossed the line? (Yes)
This is the part most organisations haven’t fully internalised…
We are no longer deciding whether to adopt AI. We are already dependent on it. The question is not “Should we use AI?”, it’s “Are we keeping pace with a dependency we already have?”
Because if you’re not, you’re not standing still. You’re falling behind a baseline that has already moved.
What this means for leaders
This is where it becomes practical. If AI is already embedded in how modern businesses operate, then:
Ignoring it is not a neutral decision
Delaying it is not a low-risk strategy
Dabbling in it is unlikely to be enough
Meanwhile:
Competitors are compounding capability daily
Teams are learning how to combine human judgement with machine speed
Entire workflows are being redesigned around what is now possible
The gap doesn’t grow linearly. It compounds. Which means the cost of inaction compounds too. The shift to human+machine is not a future state. It is the current baseline. And the organisations that recognise that earliest tend to move fastest.
Read more about this compounding effect here…
Paid Subscriber Exclusive
AI Dependency Audit: Where Would Your Business Break First?
If AI is already embedded in your business, the most useful question you can ask is:
Where are we already dependent - and where are we not yet taking advantage?
A simple way to approach this is through a 3x3 lens…
