Humanity's Last Stand? When the Algorithm Comes for Your Business.

Here's the uncomfortable truth that most business owners won't admit: we're terrified that AI will make us obsolete, but we're also secretly hoping it will solve all our problems without any effort on our part.

Thirty-two years ago, when we ran the watersports centre in Bala, North Wales, I remember my dad sitting down with a small pile of paper cutouts, all with handwritten writing. These would then be placed in the correct positions on an A4 sheet and stuck down with Pritt Stick glue, along with the photos and cut-out images from magazines. That was how we made brochures back in the day.

This draft was then taken to the local Prontaprint, where they would flesh out the idea and print it.

If you wanted to, you could simply hand over the entire project to them, and they would handle it.

My claim to fame: The back page of the brochure was a stunning CorelDRAW! production with a tinted gradient. I thought it was awesome, but probably not so much these days! The whole file had to be uploaded to a real-world printer that specialised in converting CorelDRAW! Files after they had been uploaded by modem. No internet back then.

If Phillip (our designer) saw it, he'd probably hide himself in a dark room for a few days!

When I first heard someone say that AI would "revolutionise everything", My immediate reaction was Eye-rolling scepticism.

But here's what's really happening: this time, they weren't wrong. They were just telling half the story.

For those of us who built our businesses when the internet was still a novelty and "smartphones" sounded like science fiction, the pace of technological change isn't just fast—it's genuinely terrifying. And that fear is making us react in exactly the wrong way.

Comparing that painstaking process to today's instant digital creation highlights just how much has changed – and perhaps, what we've lost in the process. Some blindly click buttons, while others think and create.

The Headlines That Keep Us Awake at Night

Let's be honest about what's really bothering us. It's not just the technology—it's what the headlines are telling us about our future relevance.

China's population is shrinking. We are already asking the question Is this peak humanity? China's infamous one-child policy has created an irreversible demographic decline—projections suggest a drop from 1.4 billion people to just 1 billion by 2100. And it's not just China, the global birthrate is decreasing worldwide.

Tesla owner and rocket man Elon Musk seems to be on a mission to reverse all this single-handedly with 14 children and counting.

Climate change is real, we are already well on the path to self-destruction. We appoint idiots to run our governments. Who can equate building another runway at Heathrow with the goal of reducing carbon emissions?

The digital world doesn't pause for our existential crises. We've transitioned from building static HTML websites with blinking GIFS to grappling with artificial intelligence that can write, design, and code better than 99% of most humans. Maybe not the writing, but the coding, definitely yes.

Not long ago, coding was a skill learned over years of dedicated practice. Programmers were the logical thinkers, the problem solvers, the architects of the digital world. Now? AI can create solid code in seconds that would take humans days.

And it's not just that machines can create code. They do it cold-bloodedly, logically, precisely. They look up the correct code libraries, and they know how your desktop development environment should be set up. They don't sleep. They don't get tired.

This isn't just technological progress. This is the fundamental redefinition of what it means to build a business. And most of us are handling it terribly.

The Brutal Reality: Everything I Thought I Knew Was Wrong

Here's what nobody wants to talk about: watching AI effortlessly handle work you once charged handsomely for creates a slow, creeping erosion of purpose. But that's not the real problem.

The real problem is how we're responding to it.

Twelve months ago, I would have told you that building a comprehensive business application required months of planning, coding expertise, and substantial investment. Today, that maxim has been completely turned on its head.

For a long time, I've had an idea for a digital SEO audit tool—something that could automatically analyse websites, identify problems, generate professional reports, and track client progress.

It's not an "audit tool" per se. It's a driver/copilot to show you where you can improve the most, in the fastest time, picking all the low-hanging fruit as you zoom past on your way to an inevitable utopia.

A month ago, I knew virtually nothing about Python or Django development tools.

Today, that business growth tool is alive. It processes hundreds of web pages, integrates with Google Sheets, manages client relationships through a sophisticated admin interface, and delivers professional-grade reports that would have cost thousands to develop just a few years ago.

But here's the kicker: Once you start building with AI it begins to gather context. The more code you develop, the quicker the AI reacts to your prompts. Once you have the first version of your app developed in ChatGPT or a Claude.ai project it knows which direction you are going in. Because this is the pattern that has been repeated before, and AI recognises the patterns instantly.

You've developed an App in Python/Django and it authorises against Google Sheets using your API credentials. You must be going down this path because it's been trodden before: now you need to install a full stack development environment and start working with React.js to produce a complete SAAS tool. Want me to scaffold that for you? Are you still with me?

I stare at the screen incredulously. What is going on? In two shakes of a lamb's tail, I have transitioned from awkwardly developing a flaky scraping App to overseeing a full-stack development SAAS project.

Now, of course, there is a caveat. You have to know what is going on under the hood. You have to understand code version control so that when the AI messes up (which it does frequently) you can go back to the last known good configuration. You need project management skills, and you need to document all your code so that you understand what each function does.

This is the key point: you don't need to understand the Python function, you need to understand what the Python function does and what it is used for.

You become the conductor of a vast orchestra within your field of expertise.

The Real Problem: Existential Dread Disguised as Business Strategy

The real pain we're feeling isn't about slow websites or outdated software. It's about three fundamental fears:

• What if your skills no longer matter?

• What if everything you've learned is being overwritten by machines?

• What if the future has no meaningful place for people like you?

  
  

These fears are real. But they're also leading us to make terrible decisions.

My AI Awakening: Understanding How To Prompt

I spent months avoiding AI tools because I was convinced they were designed to replace me. Every article about AI automation felt like a personal attack on my livelihood. Sound familiar?

But working with AI to build that audit tool didn't feel like being replaced—it felt like being amplified and liberated

The AI couldn't conceive of the business problem. It couldn't understand why store owners struggle with SEO, or what kind of reporting would actually drive action, or how to structure the user experience for maximum business impact.

But what AI could do was translate my business expertise into working code at lightning speed.

The revelation that changed everything: AI doesn't replace domain expertise—it democratises implementation.

Where once I would have needed to hire developers, project managers, and designers, I could now directly translate my understanding of what businesses need into functioning software. The barrier wasn't my inability to think logically about problems—it was my inability to prompt correctly. Once you understand how to prompt, everything falls into place.

AI became my translator. And suddenly, I wasn't obsolete—I was unstoppable.

The Choice We're All Avoiding

Here's the uncomfortable truth about the demographic collapse, digital overload, and erosion of human connection: they're not inevitable outcomes of AI adoption. They're the result of how we choose to engage with these tools.

My audit tool succeeds not because it's automated, but because it solves real human problems that I understand intimately, having worked with struggling businesses for years. The AI handles the technical implementation, but the business logic, user experience, and strategic direction all derive from human expertise.

The difference between AI as liberator versus AI as oppressor comes down to this: Are you using AI to replace human insight, or to amplify it?

Most business owners are getting this completely wrong. They're either:

1. Hiding from AI (and falling behind competitors who aren't)

2. Expecting AI to do everything (and getting mediocre results)

3. Using AI without strategy (and wondering why it doesn't work)

   
   

What the Teenagers Understand That We Don't

Teenagers are rejecting digital overload because they instinctively understand something we've forgotten: technology without human purpose is meaningless.

But technology with purpose—technology that serves human flourishing rather than replacing it—that's transformative.

The question isn't whether AI will change everything. It already has and it will continue to do so picking up pace.

The question is whether you'll use it strategically or let it use you.

The Path Forward (If You're Brave Enough to Take It)

I won't pretend this is easy, but I'll give you the truth: the future belongs to business owners who learn to orchestrate the AI choir, not fight it or surrender to it.

Here's what that actually looks like:

Stop hiding behind "AI isn't relevant to my business." Every business will be affected. You can be proactive or reactive—but you can't be ignored.

Start with your expertise, not the technology. What problems do you solve better than anyone? Use AI to amplify that advantage, not replace it.

Focus on human connection, not automation. The more automated everything becomes, the more valuable genuine human insight becomes.

Learn the basics now. You don't need to become a programmer, but you need to understand what's possible.

The goal isn't to become obsolete. It's to become irreplaceable.

The Choice Is Yours (But Not for Much Longer)

The businesses that will thrive in the next decade aren't the ones that resist change or surrender to it completely. They're the ones who use AI strategically to amplify their human advantages.

But here's the thing about competitive advantages: they don't last forever. While you're deciding whether AI is relevant to your business, your competitors are already using it to serve your customers better.

The choice is still yours. You can view AI as the end of human relevance, or you can see it as the ultimate amplifier of human insight and creativity.

But you need to choose. And you need to choose now.

Because if there's one thing I know after 20+ years of building businesses, it's this: the human element never goes out of style. It just finds new ways to matter.

The question is: will you be the one showing it how?