No, AI won’t take your business away. Your competitors who use it will.
Right, let’s start with the headline that made you open this: no, you’re not going to end up unemployed because of a robot.
You can stop giving the toaster sideways glances, waiting for it to rebel.
So can I relax, then?
Absolutely!
...Or maybe not.
Perhaps before you completely relax, we should talk about what IS happening, because it’s more subtle and more dangerous for many businesses than any robot with bad intentions.
Here’s a snapshot of the average self-employed person in Galicia using AI in 2026: they have ChatGPT open in a tab.
They ask it "how do I write a complaint email to Movistar without sounding too rude", "what’s wrong with my geranium, it’s turning yellow”.
And, on days when inspiration strikes, "give me 10 ideas for tomorrow’s Instagram post" (which they never publish).
That’s all well and good.
It’s useful, it’s free, and it makes you feel modern in front of your brother-in-law.
Well, free unless you’ve decided to pay a monthly subscription to get help with those fascinating topics.
The problem is, that’s not having an automated business.
That’s having a very clever intern you ask general knowledge questions.
It’s like buying a wildly expensive delivery van and only using it to buy bread on Sundays.
The tool is there, it costs the same whether you have it switched on or off, and you’re using it for the least profitable thing imaginable.
Still, you’re the king or queen of useless facts.
Meanwhile, two streets away from your hair salon/clinic/academy, there’s someone who doesn’t ask AI any "fun" questions.
That person has their diary properly connected: when a WhatsApp message comes in asking for an appointment, something replies in 40 seconds (not several hours, which is your average response time, and we both know it), checks the actual available slot in the calendar, confirms the booking, and sends a reminder 24 hours beforehand so the client doesn’t forget and leave your Friday 5 pm slot empty — that slot which, added up over a year, is literally a salary you’re throwing away.
That business doesn’t have a smarter employee than yours.
They don’t work longer hours than you.
They simply stopped using AI as an oracle of trivia and started using it like a plumber: to keep things flowing through the business’s pipes on their own while they’re in front of the client, instead of in front of their phone at 10 pm typing "sorry for the late reply".
That’s the danger you really need to watch out for; it’s not "AI versus you”, it’s "you asking your phone about your geranium" versus "your competitors using the same thing to avoid losing another appointment”.
And that race is lost quietly, one client at a time, without any notification saying "today you lost €40 because you took too long to reply”.
You notice it at the end of the year, when you look at your takings and can’t quite work out why they haven’t gone up.
So the question isn’t "will AI replace me?”.
It’s: "how many times this week have I asked ChatGPT some amusing bit of nonsense, and how many times have I let it organise something that actually helps me?"
If the answer is "0 to the second one", don’t worry.
You’re not the only one.
But now you know where you’ve got a leak.
Manu.
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