Keeping Hold of the Tiger’s Tail

Tim Baker

A converted sceptic with 40 years of scar tissue

TCB Consulting Ltd | April 2026

For most of my career, my reaction to the Next Big Thing in technology has been a well-honed mixture of worried, dismissive, and slightly intrigued. Artificial Intelligence was no different. My initial thoughts ran a predictable course: it’s dangerous, it’s overhyped, the world might end, and in any case, the criminals and the people with no scruples will be far ahead of the rest of us before we’ve even figured out how to switch it on.

This is the healthy scepticism of anyone who has spent 40 years on the bleeding edge of technology. You see enough promises to last a lifetime. You see enough projects go wrong to fill a library. You learn that for every genuine breakthrough, there are a dozen dead ends, a hundred misapplications, and a thousand consultants selling snake oil. So you learn to wait. You watch. You listen. You are in no hurry to jump on the bandwagon.

And then, sometimes, something genuinely changes. For me, that happened in the closing days of 2025. It was not a single Damascus road moment, but a slow-dawning realisation. The gap between what AI could do and what most organisations were doing with it was no longer a gap; it was a chasm. The dismissive part of my reaction gave way to a grudging excitement. The worried part remained, but it was now joined by a new concern: the risk of being left behind was rapidly becoming greater than the risk of moving forward.

This is the paradox of AI. It is simultaneously a great enabler and a potential destroyer. It has the power to free people from the drudgery of what they have to do, and allow them to focus on what they want to do. It can automate the repetitive, analyse the complex, and generate new ideas at a scale we are only just beginning to comprehend. The potential for companies to achieve huge new efficiencies and create entirely new services is immense.

But the reverse is also true. The potential for destruction through unwise choices and ill-considered moves is just as great. We have already seen what happens when AI is used without proper thought: the biased algorithms, the security breaches, the erosion of confidentiality, the potential for manipulation. The motive is not always malicious; often it is simply a failure to understand the technology, its limitations, and its second-order consequences.

The more you find out, the more you realise you don’t know. The more you think about applications, the more you realise there are more applications than you can possibly think of. It is a dizzying, exhilarating, and frankly terrifying prospect.

But here is the bottom line: the tiger is out of the cage. It is coming, whether we like it or not. We cannot ignore it. We cannot wish it away. The only choice we have is how we react to it. Do we run from it, and get eaten? Do we try to fight it, and get mauled? Or do we find a way to get a firm grip on its tail, hang on tight, and try to steer it in the right direction?

This series of articles is my attempt to answer that question. It is not a definitive guide. It is not a set of easy answers. It is a collection of thoughts, observations, and hard-won lessons from a reluctant convert who is still trying to figure out how to keep hold of the tiger’s tail. I hope it will help you to do the same.