AI & Automation, Without Hype

Automation follows fixed rules you set in advance — if this happens, every time. AI makes judgement calls on things it hasn't been explicitly programmed for. They solve different problems, and mixing them up leads to buying the wrong tool. I've written a full guide to the difference if you want the detail.

Probably somewhere, but not everywhere, and not first. The biggest wins usually come from fixing and automating your existing processes before adding AI on top. Automating a broken process just produces mistakes faster. These guides help you work out which jobs genuinely suit AI, which suit simple automation, and which are better left to a human.

You can, but be careful. Google's systems reward content that demonstrates genuine experience and expertise, and pages of unedited AI text rarely do either. At worst they can drag down how the whole site is assessed. AI works well as an assistant for research, outlines and drafts. It works badly as a replacement for someone who actually knows the subject.

It can when it's applied to a process that already works. The pattern I see repeatedly is businesses automating a workflow that was flawed to begin with, which just multiplies the errors at speed. Map the process first, fix it manually, then automate the fixed version. Done in that order, the savings are real and they compound.