Finding the best AI tool still requires talking to humans | Opinion

Finding the best AI tool still requires talking to humans | Opinion

The conversation usually starts innocently enough: "Has anyone tried this new AI tool?"

Within minutes, someone in Australia replies. A member in London shares a completely different experience. Someone in California posts screenshots. Another member says, "Don't bother — we tried it for two weeks."

A few months ago, I joined an online group of fellow businesspeople who are all trying to navigate this new world where artificial intelligence is presenting both a real threat and a rare opportunity.

It’s a peer-to-peer ongoing discussion where we share our experiences with AI. We swap ideas, ask questions, share wins and occasionally admit that we've just spent two hours trying to get an agent to do something it clearly had no intention of doing.

I’ve been living and breathing AI for the past few years. Books, podcasts, building my own agents, coding, not to mention asking ChatGPT to teach me about itself. It’s all been helpful. But ironically when it comes to AI, the most valuable resource for my learning has actually turned out to be other humans.

"We cut our proposal time by 70%."

"This looked impressive until we actually deployed it."

"Don't waste your money on this one."

These are real entrepreneurs working in the trenches, sharing what happened after the excitement wore off. It may be old-school, but these conversations have proved to be worth more than 100 AI prompts put together.

A few weeks ago, someone in the group asked if anyone had used a particular tool for sorting through customer support tickets. I'd been one click away from signing up for it myself. Within the hour, three people who had actually run it in their own shops told me exactly where it broke down — and one of them pointed me towards a different, better tool that I never would have found on my own. That single thread probably saved me a month of trial and error and a few thousand dollars.

As artificial intelligence becomes more capable, authentic human intelligence becomes more valuable to all of us. Not because people know more facts. But because they provide context, experience, judgment and credibility. AI can tell me what could work. A fellow entrepreneur can tell me what did work.

That's a meaningful difference.

Part of what makes this group so effective is that nobody in it is trying to sell anything. There's no vendor on the other end trying to close a deal, no marketing campaign, no polished demo, no case study picked to make a product look perfect. Just people who spent their own money and their own time, and are willing to tell you the truth about how it went. When someone running a business the same size as mine says a tool isn't worth it, I pay attention. That kind of transparency is getting harder to find, and it's worth more every year.

Technology will continue to change at an incredible pace. There will always be another model, another platform, another breakthrough.

But I suspect the most enduring competitive advantage won't come from having access to better AI tools. It will come from surrounding yourself with smart people who are willing to share what they've learned from their own unique experiences.

JJ Rosen is the founder of Atiba, a custom software development firm, and Atiba Network Services, a Nashville IT support company. Visit Atiba.com for more info.