{
  "id": 15844362,
  "title": "AI won’t tidy your business. It just moves the mess faster",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/10/21/ai-wont-tidy-your-business-it-just-moves-the-mess-faster",
  "topic": "ai",
  "section": "AI",
  "published": "2026-10-21T03:30:15.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "e27",
    "slug": "e27",
    "url": "https://e27.co/ai-wont-tidy-your-business-it-just-moves-the-mess-faster-20261018/"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "AI adoption in businesses often leads to more problems than solutions, as highlighted by Robert Lai, founder of performance agency Kaliber. He argues that most AI efforts are wasted because they're applied to faulty processes. To illustrate this, Lai shares his own experience of living in chaotic living conditions, where his ability to quickly locate his wallet indicated the effectiveness of a disorganized system. He draws a parallel between this and businesses, where valuable expertise resides in the memories of a few key individuals rather than being documented in standard operating procedures (SOPs). The gap between the documented SOPs and the actual workflow often hides bottlenecks that are difficult to identify and automate. Lai's readiness model consists of four factors: context, people, process, and platform, with the weakest factor determining the level of AI adoption. He emphasizes the importance of context, as AI models often lack brand guidelines and past campaign data, leading to generic AI outputs that may not be relevant to a specific business. He provides an example of his own sales process, which was previously solely based on his memory. To improve efficiency, he implemented a closed-loop system where all communications were logged, transcribed, and tracked, but some tasks remained human-led due to the need for human judgment. Lai emphasizes the importance of roles rather than mandates when it comes to AI adoption. He appoints builders, users, and approvers to maintain, run, and ensure the quality of AI systems, allowing everyone to benefit from AI without everyone needing to build it. He cautions against resistance stemming from standards and instead advocates for focusing on outcomes, such as cost per output, time to output, error rate, and profit impact, rather than simply counting AI users or agents. Lai also notes that independent agencies in Southeast Asia are particularly vulnerable to the gap between platforms offering AI features and the need for customized solutions that incorporate unique client data. He recommends automating known, measured steps through agentic workflows and leveraging specialized models that have access to specific data, rather than relying on general-purpose large language models (LLMs).",
  "summary": "I build AI tools for marketers, and run an AI marketing software firm in Singapore, so I spend a lot of time hearing about AI adoption. A recent talk by Robert Lai, founder of performance agency Kaliber, stuck with me because it opened with an uncomfortable claim: most of the AI work in the room […] The post AI won’t tidy your business. It just moves the mess faster appeared first on e27 .",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}