The Survival Test

An AI proposal can describe something the technology does well and still leave the business case unclear.

I want to know whether the result is worth the cost for this company, including the work of implementing and running it. Testing the price assumptions is one way to examine that.

So here is a test you can run this week, on whatever you are being sold, including the thing you are selling yourself.

The one question #

Does this still make sense if the hype disappears completely, and the price of the technology moves by a factor of ten in either direction?

That is the whole test. The trick is that it has two directions, and most people only check one.

Ten times more expensive #

Start here, because it is the uncomfortable one.

If the model you are building on got ten times more expensive tomorrow, would you still do this?

If the answer is no, price sensitivity is a risk to understand. The project may still be worthwhile at today’s price. Check how much a price increase would affect the overall cost and what options you would have to change providers, reduce usage, or stop.

Ten times cheaper #

Now the one that feels like good news and often is not.

If the technology got ten times cheaper, does your advantage grow, or does it quietly evaporate?

Cheaper technology may lower your costs while making the same capability easier for competitors to buy. A head start can still have value, but it is different from an advantage that depends on your data, processes, or experience. Separate those benefits and ask which would remain if access to the technology became commonplace.

Know how much your decision depends on the price remaining where it is.

Strike every sentence that needs the technology to be new #

There is a faster version of the same test you can do on any pitch, including your own memo.

Go through it and cross out every sentence whose persuasive force depends on the technology being new, exciting, urgent, or something a competitor is doing. "Everyone is adopting this." Gone. "We cannot afford to fall behind." Gone. "This is the biggest shift since the internet." Gone.

Read what is left standing. That is your actual case, and it is usually a lot shorter than the pitch. Sometimes there is a real, boring, durable business underneath, a workflow that got shorter, a decision that got faster, knowledge that stopped living in one person's head. Sometimes, when you cross out the excitement, there is nothing left. Better to find that out now than eighteen months into a build.

Get another person to examine the case #

Here is the part that makes the test hard, and it is not a matter of intelligence or discipline.

It can be difficult to question a plan you have spent time developing. I have talked myself into things this way, more than once, with good slides. Ask someone who was not involved to examine the assumptions and explain where they disagree.

We also built an exercise to help organize that review.

A small tool that argues back #

We put a free version of this test online. No signup, no email, and nothing you type is sent to us. You paste in your case, it walks you through the questions above, and then it hands you a prompt that makes an AI argue against your own case as hard as it can.

You can run it here: The Survival Test.

Treat the arguments from the assistant as material to check. It can produce a convincing case in either direction. Compare the assumptions and evidence in both answers, and verify the parts that affect your decision.

Use what you learn #

We use AI in our work. This exercise helps separate the expected benefit of a project from the assumptions around its price and adoption.

A failed scenario is a reason to examine a dependency, not an automatic verdict on the whole project. You may need a smaller scope, better evidence, or a plan for changing the system if costs move.

Try the exercise on a proposal you are considering. Bring the assumptions it exposes into the next discussion with your team.