The simplest test of your AI strategy
What happens if your current AI provider doubles its prices, changes its terms, or stops serving your use case? Could your team keep working without losing its knowledge, workflows or historical decisions?
Vendor dependence is sometimes a sensible tradeoff. The mistake is making that tradeoff without knowing its price.
Four questions worth asking
Knowledge: Can you export the information, context and decisions your people have created in a usable format?
Operations: Which workflows stop working when one provider fails or changes access?
People: Can employees explain the process, challenge the output and operate an alternative?
Economics: Do you know the total cost of switching, not just the monthly subscription?
Dependence is a design choice
NIST's AI Risk Management Framework encourages organizations to govern and measure AI risks across a system's lifecycle. Provider concentration and operational resilience belong in that assessment. Open standards and portable formats can improve options, but may also introduce costs and complexity.
At Cyber Agency, the practical question is how much control your business needs, what it can reasonably maintain, and where a managed dependency is worth accepting.
Take the 12-point independence check ↗
Further reading: NIST AI Risk Management Framework ↗ · Center for Humane Technology ↗