ai… Big Tech and the BIG CON
Success Through the Many Lessons of History
In the timely release of the new book, Power and Progress: Our Thousand-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity; from the bestselling co-author of Why Nations Fail and the bestselling co-author of 13 Bankers. MIT Professors Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson deliver a bold and factual representation of technology’s role in history. Countering the many false narratives and myths around technology and human progress. The book demolishes the prevailing technology is everything narrative that essentially says how technology alone is responsible for civilizations’ progress. Through evidence and critically objective analysis, they explain how it’s the effective choices we make about technology that are most responsible for human progress.
A thousand years of history and contemporary evidence make one thing clear. Progress depends on the choices we make about technology. New ways of organizing production and communication can either serve the narrow interests of an elite or become the foundation for widespread prosperity.
The applied intelligence (ai) process gives us a framework to effectively analyze data and make comparisons for optimal decisioning, which incorporates as many relevant variables as possible. Also, being underpinned by historical examples provides invaluable insight that bolsters and legitimizes analysis towards building winning strategies.
So surrendering our individuality and free thinking to Big Tech and its billionaires only furthers their dominance over us, empowering them to continue solidifying their control — arbiters over our lives.
One of the big co-conspirators with Big Tech is the big consulting industry, the likes of PWC and McKinsey and more. Big consulting reinforces Big Tech’s power by being supportive and parroting whatever the Big Tech aristocracy pumps out.
Consultants claim to be subject matter experts in all things and provide expert “partners” in doing so. But what you usually end up with are fresh-out-of-college juniors who know absolutely nothing about your business. In the classical bait-and-switch model, it’s the juniors you end up with, executing cut-and-paste jobs. Effectively, you’re paying for nice PowerPoint presentations and templates that your competitors also have.
All things being equal, if everyone has access to the same textbook strategies, how can you possibly have an advantage? Consultants sell the illusion of expertise and value but “businesses are better off internalizing their strategy process, consultants are basically “telling you what you already know,” and much of the information we can find ourselves.” (Forbes)
Winning in the digital era requires making decisions with enormous speed and precision. So the more you can effectively streamline and internalize the process and integrate both internal data with external demand-side data. Then turn that over into insight, and quickly the more value you can produce for your organization over the long term.
Consultants are not special, not superheroes, they can’t save you — you can do it yourself. You can access the same information they can too and when provided with the right tools you can achieve extraordinary things! You can outperform for the benefit of both your career and your organization’s value, at a fraction of the time and cost of hiring consultants.
Accordingly, the applied intelligence | ai system accompanied by its ap3 software solution is the next level of knowledge generation. That turns insights into strategies for useful real-world applications. ap3 empowers users to craft their own strategies and drive their own insights from data. It’s human-centric enterprise software for strategy development that absolutely anyone can use. It integrates data ecosystems and the functional utility of generative AI into the workflow, seamlessly assisting in building winning organizational strategies. Highly relevant to the times.
Strategy is agnostic and applies to all decision-making. In a survey from Harvard Business School…out of 10, 000 senior leaders, 97% said strategy is the most important thing to their organization’s success. However, 96% said that they lack the time and the right tools to effectively engage in strategy development within their organizations. ap3 gets us there!
So the ultimate goal of ap3 is to make strategy accessible to all! To enable the many without technical backgrounds with the ability to develop highly effective strategies without having to learn complex software or digital tools.
Acclaimed professor Mariana Mazzucato, exposes the consulting industry, in her most recent book titled THE BIG CON — How the Consulting Industry Weakens Our Businesses, Infantilizes Our Governments, and Warps Our Economies. Says that the overuse of consultants by private businesses and governments around the world, “stunts innovation, obfuscates corporate and political accountability, and impedes efforts to fight climate change.”
THE BIG CON is an accurate indictment of a dubious industry which hampers organizations from building capacity and capabilities internally. From public companies to non-profit organizations and governments — have all handed mission-critical functions over to management consultants. This effectively strips them of the expertise they should be developing to enhance their learning and provide value to their enterprise. You can’t outsource growth; sustainable and dynamic growth can only come from within.
As Brett Christophers, author of Rentier Capitalism says, “A management consultant is someone who borrows your watch to tell you the time — and then keeps the watch.” So with the ease of accessing information today and the availability of tools like applied intelligence–ap3, employers should not be paying management just for them to turn around and hire consultants. Accessing information, learning and executing projects themselves retains the knowledge and expertise within the organization, which effectively produces enormous long-term value and performance for that organization.
The consulting industry is a perpetrator of the deceptive art of illusion and dishonesty — as the common saying goes ‘nobody ever got fired for hiring Mckinsey.’ Moreover, if things don’t work out you can blame the consultant — in this world, management no longer takes responsibility nor accountability. Owners end up paying twice — for salaries and bonuses and consultants to tell management what they already should know, and be doing.
As an example; Microsoft strikes a $2 billion AI partnership with KPMG. Over the next five years, they will co-develop cloud and generative AI tools. And rival consulting giants like PwC and Accenture have also made large-scale commitments toward AI-powered changes. Big Tech and ‘The Big Con’ industry work together to dominate our lives! They stifle entrepreneurship diversity and innovation and build inefficiencies into the workplace— effectively harming competition which is the bedrock of capitalism and high inclusive growth economies.
The unchecked intensification of multi-layered, intertwined oligopoly companies and their billionaires is not helpful to the productivity of society. It obfuscates things and creates significant imbalances in global economies, contributing to increased inequality. So, not advocating to get your say in technology development results in stagnating creativity, choice, and diversified entrepreneurship, for those outside the white male circle.
Leaving the world one-dimensional and colourlessness — just boring different shades of pale grey. All of this works against balanced growth and a more inclusive global community. Which degrades our humanity and creates more problems to solve.
Power and Progress study of the last 1000 years of technology and civilization, prosperity and human advancement objectively shows that “the broad-based prosperity of the past was not the result of any automatic, guaranteed gains of technological progress. [It’s] because our ancestors, citizens and workers in earlier industrial societies organized, challenged the elite-dominated choices about technology and work conditions, and forced ways of sharing the gains from technical improvements more equitably.”
We are once again at a familiar point in the history of industrialization technology and change! History, therefore, provides authentic comparative examples to learn from, in successfully navigating this period of technological change. Or at the very least, history provides us with useful data for decisioning that can help us from repeating the same mistakes of the past.
Our time here is infinitesimal, don’t waste it in obscurity. Don’t get trapped in dogma created by others for their own financial benefit. Feed your intelligence! Have the courage to edit out the distractions and control mechanisms in embedded in society. Apply applied intelligence and always seek the objective truth. Walk your own path, and make your time on earth your own which requires not delaying making the hard decisions first. Nothing in this universe is ever predetermined — it’s always about what you do next!
