Supercharging consultancy in the age of AI

Illustration generated with AI assistance (OpenAI)

 The advent of AI and its deployment in the field of consultancy has many people believing that this industry and its professionals are at something of a crossroads. However, far from encouraging businesses to stop using the services of such professionals, AI actually helps them get better bang for their buck by combining technological abilities and human ingenuity and inventiveness to help them maximize productivity and truly fulfil their potential.

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The leading consultancies of the world are able to use generative AI as well as predictive artificial intelligence to allow their customers to strategically capitalise on strategic openings to transform their businesses and help them outperform themselves. They are able to help their clients get the most out of GenAI, allowing them to make paradigm redefining changes to important functions and come up with all-new business models.

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However, it is not just the large and established consultancy firms that stand to gain from AI. As a matter of fact, AI can help supercharge small firms and even solopreneurs, setting them up for incremental growth.

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Golden Age of Solopreneur Consultants

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While in the past, the consultancy business  was viewed as the sole preserve of the large legacy consultancy firms with exclusive access to the knowledge and experience that helped them become so valuable to their clients in the first place. The internet and AI have helped democratise access to such knowledge and experience, with more and more people being able to learn from the availability of a large number of case studies and well-trained language models, allowing them to become proficient business consultants. In fact, they will now be able to give the big firms a run for their money as they focus on value, rather than extended projects and fatter billing.

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In fact, lean and solopreneur management consultants can be better performers than legacy consultants, even when they don't have access to the resources commanded by the former.

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Don't become the type of consultant AI will replace

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There is a growing concern with some legitimate basis that AI will replace consultants. That fear may be largely misplaced unless one ensures that one does not become the type of consultant that AI will surely replace. Smaller AI firms can, in fact, learn to leverage AI effectively to deliver much more than a larger agency much faster, cheaper and better. That will only make such consultancies grow exponentially.

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Clients these days don't want to pay big money for generalist advice, but expect specialists and domain experts to give them more value than what they could obtain themselves by providing prompts to AI. For this, you need the right kind of expertise with regard to a business vertical, as well as the size of the companies you have experience working for. In other words, you know your stuff inside out. You can then position yourself as a niche consultant and own that space for yourself.

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You can make it work better because, unlike traditional consultants who rely on hordes of junior analysts and consultants to do the research, synthesise data and then present their deck to the client, you  rely on much leaner teams with specialised knowledge, allowing you to depute the right specialists in the vertical that your client is in. They will naturally be able to address the challenges and issues facing the company in an optimal manner.

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How AI can help supercharge consultancies

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Far from pushing consultancies on the path to oblivion, AI is, in fact, revolutionising the consultancy process by coming up with data-driven insight, as well  as enabling automation, in the process ensuring that the customers obtain bespoke services and experiences that speak to their concerns and requirements in the best possible manner.

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Because consultants can now obtain rapid access to highly structured data, they are able to make decisions considerably faster than before and thereby substantially reduce the project delivery time. Besides, the use of AI improves accuracy by its ability to flag biases and any possible copyright issues, thereby ensuring that the consultancies come up with stellar output and reduce the risks to a minimum.

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AI is a transformative technology which, if deployed in the right manner, can help supercharge business consultancies by enabling them to provide super value to their customers across industries.

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AI will not replace consultants

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One thing that can be predicted fairly confidently is the fact that there is as much likelihood of AI replacing consultants and consultancies altogether as there is of AI replacing presidents and prime ministers as rulers and administrators of a nation.

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While the  news about AI consultants being sacked or laid off by major AI consultancies (the Big 4) has sent shock waves in the industry, there is naturally a fair bit of anxiety and even dread about the future of consultants and consultancies. Tools like ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot can easily step up to the plate and help perform in a matter of minutes what would take junior consultants weeks in the past.

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But when it comes to the strategic component of consulting, AI will come up short on its own. It cannot, for example, earn the trust of a client- the kind borne of a long-term, successful human-to-human relationship. No one will easily accept the advice of carrying out an elemental change in the direction of a business given by AI, whereas the same advice offered by a trusted human consultant will be received favourably. Besides, clients have no way of articulating their problems to AI, but can express these quite easily to someone they can communicate with, again,  at a human-to-human level. All organisations are run by human beings and are, therefore, essentially emotional in their instinct rather than logical like machines.

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For those who have watched the old TV sci-fi series Star Trek with the run-ins between the very deeply human Captain Kirk and  the ever logical and unemotional Mr Spock, it is pertinent to note who the captain of the ship is. Metaphorically, for clients, it is the human consultants who are the captains of their strategic destiny and not AI. The buck always has to and should stop with the humans, and for that reason, you will always need consultancies to help you negotiate the contingencies of business, and plan ahead for optimal success.

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Is Mediocre Better than Brilliant?

 

Image generated with OpenAI’s DALL·E based on the author’s prompt

Striving for excellence is something that we are given to understand will get us ahead in life. There are those who achieve it with consummate ease, and then there are those who struggle, plod, and somehow drag themselves to something approaching excellence. Yet, it is not always the former who necessarily get ahead in life. How often have we seen that those who were extraordinary in school lag far behind their, at that time, seemingly dull and unimpressive peers later in life?

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What explains this odd phenomenon? Is there some reason why some obviously brilliant and gifted people do so much more poorly than their not-so-well-endowed contemporaries? Perhaps, there is no mystery to this phenomenon, as brilliance is probably more of an aspirational quality that people worship and does neither exist in the real world. If at all it does, it exists as an artificial construct. In a scenario such as this, the average person goes about living life in a realistic and practical manner, allowing them to achieve far more than those trapped in trying to live up to the unrealistic expectations of a society that desires superheroes who are perfect at everything they do.

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The child prodigies who peak too early, trying to live up to the unrealistic hype their early successes generated, get caught in a lifestyle that requires them to appear smarter, brighter and more intelligent than their peers all the time. This lasts only as long as it can, for the peers not burdened with such self image and the expectation of others, go about learning real lessons about how to go about improving their prospects in life and with time, far surpass their sometime formidable super achieving peers.

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In school after school, there are incidences of trail-blazing students seeming to excel at everything they try their hand at, but coming up with below-average performances in high school or college. There are, for instance, the many examples of  those brilliant celebrity child actors expected to transition to super stardom as adults, who absolutely fail to make a mark when they grow up.

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What we have to understand is that as humans, we are all endowed with different strengths and suffer from our own specific types of weaknesses. Some take to reading naturally, while others have a facility for music. Then there are those who excel at athletics or sports. Some are charming and some dour. You cannot know for sure as to who achieves worldly success in the sweepstakes of life. A lot depends upon the circumstances of your birth, the kind of education you received, who your peers were growing up and how lucky you have been in life. One thing you can be sure of is that being perceived as brilliant or exceptionally gifted does not guarantee success. What can help you get there is how gritty you are in your efforts to enhance your skill sets and improve yourself.

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Average performers are the most prolific

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Interestingly, it seems that it is neither the low performers nor the high performers who are the most prolific.. Let us look at this bell curve, which puts the number of low performers in any group of people like golf players  at 20% , the highest performers also at 20% and the average performers at 60%.

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                                 Image generated using OpenAI’s DALL·E.

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In a sense, then, the world is a cohort of average people, and those who chase brilliance are destined not to do well in a system that is rigged in favour of the average people. The only way to stand out and be exceptional is to devote an extraordinary amount of time and energy to the pursuit of whatever you choose to excel at. This may make you so good at doing that thing that nobody is able to compete with you. But this often comes with great sacrifice and missing out on other important aspects of life like spending time with family and friends, travelling, or the pursuit of leisure. Most people try to strike a balance and therefore end up being average at what they choose to do in life, but likely live a happier and probably more fulfilling life.

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Those of the Baby Boomer and Gen X generations  who were brought up on a diet of striving for excellence and chasing achievement, no matter what the price, are appalled and nonplussed at the sight of seemingly directionless Gen Z youngsters prioritising personal happiness and comfort over the rewards that accrue from following the brutal corporate hamster wheel culture. Perhaps they are a spoiled generation afraid of biting the bullet and facing life squarely, or maybe they are smarter than the earlier generations in that they get it that the price of "progress" is not worth paying.

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In the old days of empires and slavery, the empire builders chased wealth and grandeur  on an epic scale and to achieve this, they built ruthless systems of exploitation of subjugated peoples, in the process ruining and impoverishing many old and thriving civilisations. The corporations of today are the empire builders of this age, and while they may not literally chain their employees to their desks, they do control their lives in a substantial manner. That has led to the latter becoming acutely aware of what their true priorities really are, especially in a scenario of growing uncertainty about employment opportunities against the backdrop of the growth of AI.

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The pandemic especially made many realise that the dream jobs with corner offices for which they incessantly trained and prepared for meant nothing when the chips were down. It was each person for themselves, and what they excelled at professionally would not account for that much. So people began to reassess their professional plans, and many adopted the flexible working model that allowed them to work from home and often set up their own independent consultancies. It was okay to be average in your desires and expectations, as long as that kept you happy.

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"Jack of All and Master of None" is a Good Thing

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Flipping conventional logic on its head, it is much better to be average  in a lot of things than be exceptional at something which AI would likely complete much faster without breaking into a sweat. If you are average at something, consider that as a good sign for excessive efficiency is for machines. We are not like the Greek gods and the Marvel Comics heroes and heroines who effortlessly carry the weight of the world upon our shoulders. We are humans with limited and finite abilities, which are best used at helping each other to lead a better life.

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Brilliance as a trait is not a dependable one. It may, from time to time, achieve a breakthrough or inspire others, but it will not deliver steady and constant output. Mediocrity, on the other hand, can be relied upon to deliver on a regular and consistent basis. With time, it achieves much. You can compare it with steadily and patiently investing in stocks of solid companies with proven credentials over a long period of time to build wealth, rather than bet everything on a single buzzing stock, hoping that it will make you an overnight billionaire. The real world rewards consistency over flashes of brilliance. This is as true of organizations and people as it is of our personal relationships.

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Will AI sound the death knell of the digital marketing agency?

 

Illustration generated using DALL·E, an AI image model developed by OpenAI, based on the author’s prompt.

With AI no longer being peripheral to the digital marketing process, but increasingly assuming a central place in any business’s digital outreach process, are we looking at the death of digital marketing agencies as we know them?

​While increasingly leveraging AI tools like ChatGPT to expedite and optimise the creative process across the board by using these to help with both copywriting and enhancing the effectiveness of marketing campaigns, digital marketers are increasingly experiencing existential angst about their role in the times ahead. In a scenario like this, digital marketing agencies, especially the large ones employing many, may be looking at a not so bright future.

​Why would companies hire them if they can outsource their role to AI platforms at a much lower cost? AI can do everything from creating ad copy and analysing marketing performance to market segmentation to carrying out A/B testing much faster and for less money. Is it any surprise then that  “AI in Marketing” is expected to be valued at $217.33 billion by 2034?

Are digital marketing agencies no longer required?

Given that the old template of digital marketing agencies with large teams taking a fair bit of time to achieve creditable results is no longer tenable or desirable, is it time to bid adieu to digital marketing agencies altogether?

Not really- for doing so would be tantamount to throwing the baby with the bathwater. We cannot look at the issue merely from an operations and execution prism. When it comes to core strategising, getting the positioning just right and, of course, creativity, the human element represented by a digital marketing agency still wins hands down.

AI can discern what worked well in the past and is quite stellar at achieving automation, but it can deliver the best results only when directed by real flesh and blood humans who use emotion as much as rationality to help connect with the target market.

AI has no idea about how to navigate an ever-changing and evolving cultural scenario and the manner in which a highly competitive market will behave, shaped as it is by the mercurial human psyche. That is something digital marketing agencies with some years of experience behind them can handle quite well.

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Agencies as strategic partners

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Digital marketing agencies needn’t fear redundancy on account of AI, but should learn to leverage the technology and reorient and position themselves as tech-enabled and empowered consultancies. By merging human insight with the efficiency of AI, they will allow businesses to strategically grow their businesses in a business landscape defined by cutting edge technology. The days when digital marketing agencies could get by with largely manual execution are over. This is the era of deploying AI tools that help automate the marketing process and using predictive analytics to deliver growth that is quantifiable. Providing bespoke marketing solutions and steady ROI is the mantra that digital marketing agencies in 2026 swear by. No wonder then that 56% of marketers are of the view that their company is proactively considering implementing and using AI.

Make no mistake, however, digital marketing agencies will risk redundancy if they don’t inject AI into their DNA.  This will not help them automate repetitive tasks, freeing up the bandwidth for greater creativity and thereby help them offer deeper insights and better marketing solutions to their customers.

Expect the digital marketing teams in 2026 to be smaller, but more focused and specialised. There will be newer skills like prompt engineering, data interpretation, the ability to forge sharper and very concise brand strategies and the ability to navigate across multiple channels in demand, rather than the old rule book of project execution. However, overriding all this, the human element will continue to remain. Businesses hire agencies because they trust people and not merely because the use of technology promises more efficient output. At the end of the day, they want people who offer them both perspective and accountability, which is only possible when there is a partnership that delivers that. For that, clients need to bond with people, not machines.

Algorithms do not possess the ability to assume responsibility or make a judgment call if a campaign fails to take off or there is a fundamental change in market dynamics. That is something only a dyed in the wool marketing expert with a perspective derived from real life business situations can be relied upon  to offer the right advice and guidance.

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Conclusion

The role of AI in digital marketing is growing inexorably and exponentially, as evidenced by the fact that global AI marketing revenue is projected to touch $107 billion by 2028. The sooner that digital marketing agencies adapt to this new truth, the better it is for them. As a matter of fact, AI provides a fantastic opportunity for digital marketing agencies to scale up and have their best growth yet.

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AI in Everyday Life

 

Illustration generated with AI using OpenAI’s DALL·E, based on original content by the author.

AI has been around far longer than most people imagine. As a matter of fact, it had its real beginnings seventy years back when it was formally categorised as such at the Dartmouth Work College in 1956. Earlier, in 1950, mathematician Alan Turing came out with his revolutionary paper, “Computing Machinery and Intelligence,” which for the first time grappled with the question of whether it was possible for machines to demonstrate human intelligence. He came up with something called The Imitation Game, also known as the Turing Test, which has since become the foundation of modern AI theory. Conceptually and philosophically, AI or the pursuit of it goes back to 380 BC Greece with the myth of Hephaestus, the god of crafts and metalworking, who brought a few gold handmaids into existence, granting them the knowledge of the gods.

We may be in a time of AI frenzy, where, while mega tech companies are pouring billions upon billions to fund ever more cutting-edge AI research, people across the world fret and worry about the loss of jobs, owing to that. However, the fact of the matter is that AI has already been mainstream for a very long time.  In fact, AI usage and application really took off in the 1980s with enhanced computing power and the advent of ML or machine learning. Slowly, but surely and inexorably, AI has already crept into the mundane and routine activities of our lives so well that we don’t even notice it or realise it.

Where  do we use AI on an everyday basis?

AI is used in a bewildering array of ways and has so intertwined itself in our daily lives that we already cannot imagine our everyday life without the convenience it offers. Let us try to list down the myriad ways in which it serves us.

Finding one’s Way

Google Maps is ubiquitous, and most people, unless they are the Baby Boomer generation or older, would rather rely on it than take the trouble of asking anyone for directions these days. Now, whether that is a good thing or bad is a question for another day, but this handy AI tool sure does make life easier and more manageable for millions of people. Nobody really has a reason to lose their way, no matter where they are in this day and age and if that isn’t a seminal phenomenon, then what is?

Digital Assistants

We use digital assistants all the time without even giving them a thought. I mean, we interact and use Alexa from Amazon, Siri from Apple, Cortana from Microsoft, Bixby from Samsung, and, of course, Google Assistant from Google and don’t make a big deal of it.  It is simply what we do. To these we can now add Generative AI tools like Chat GPT, Claude and Microsoft Copilot to help take our productivity to unprecedented levels. Everyone these days can be a thoroughbred professional going about their jobs and business in the most optimal manner, thanks to the proliferation of digital assistants. This has had a very positive impact on both business and social interactions, allowing everyone to do and achieve way more than was possible in the not so distant past.

Online Shopping and E-commerce

Online commerce and e-commerce have long been a part of our daily lives, with the lockdowns experienced during the Covid pandemic ensuring that everybody got to use these AI enhanced technologies to order practically everything under the sun from practically anywhere. As a matter of fact, AI helps improve and enhance the user experience in a myriad of ways. These range from personalized product recommendations tailored according to previous buyer behaviour and customer profile , and chatbots handling customer queries, to optimal pricing based on variables like supply, demand and prior shopping activity and information about delivery timelines.  

From the business owners’ perspective, one can optimize inventory management on the back of better demand and sales forecasting with the help of AI. Besides, it can help them segment the market more precisely and create fairly accurate customer profiles, helping increase sales in a substantial manner. Moreover, they can use cutting-edge analytics to obtain a precise and accurate idea about how well their business is faring.

AI Aided Travel and Commute

AI-aided travel and commute is bringing about a veritable revolution in our lives. Already, self-driving cars have made it to some cities in the USA and China and Singapore. Tesla boasts of the Autopilot system, which makes it a sort of pioneer for this genre of automobile travel. Waymo’s self-driving cabs, on the other hand, have made their presence felt on the streets of cities like San Francisco and Phoenix. With their ability to anticipate pedestrian movement, zero in on road hazards and make allowance for weather conditions, self-driving cars give us a glimpse of an exciting future that already exists. What’s heartening is that there are stats which show that such cars perform better than humans with fewer accidents per mile to their name.

AI is also deployed to improve traffic management systems, by using real-time data obtained from strategically placed sensors about things like weather, the traffic situation and the road conditions to make an accurate prediction about the likely density of traffic. What’s more, AI enables the optimal management of traffic signals timing on the basis of real-time vehicle density effecting a waiting time saving of up to 25%! AI also enables ride share app companies to practice dynamic pricing by factoring real-time demand by analysing variable factors like demand and supply, weather and the time of the day to come up with optimal pricing.

Healthcare

AI has had a noticeable impact on modern healthcare, being used in everything from diagnostics for early signs of disease to equipping fitness trackers to read and understand activity data, enabling them to make personalised workout modification suggestions. According to the Harvard School for Public Health, there is a 50% projected treatment cost reduction and a 40% projected improvement in health outcomes when using AI in diagnostics.

Content Creation

Content creation has never been faster or easier than it is in the era of AI. Even the most terrible of communicators can come across like an erudite scholar with the help of generative AI tools like ChatGPT, Claude and Google Gemini. All that you need is to provide these tools with the right brief and prompts, and they will help you come out with outstanding blogs, whitepapers, pitch decks, corporate presentations and e-books.

AI helps you turbocharge the content creation process helping you with everything ranging from SEO/Trends research and conducting an audit of content to help you improve content, to studying competitor data, helping you enhance your content to high-quality image and video generation on the basis of text prompts. Is it any surprise that 87% of marketers say that they use AI to help with their content creation?

Entertainment and Social Media

We are past the stage of surprise at receiving notifications of just the kind of audio and video content we like to consume on our streaming or social media feeds. We are all likely aware that this is no magic but the handiwork of recommendation algorithms.  This may make us lazy and spoiled for choice,  and take away the thrill derived from hunting down old content that you nostalgically pined for, but that is the way the cookie crumbles in this ultra-digital age.

Continuing with how AI has transformed entertainment, we cannot help notice that it has made ace photographers and cinematographers out of all of us. From automatic light adjustments to using filters and lenses as well as blurring backgrounds, AI has democratized image and video creation in profound ways, empowering individuals to express themselves in ways that were impossible to even conceive of not all that long ago.

Enhanced Communication and Productivity

The digitisation of communication has reshaped its paradigm. With speed, reach, and stellar-quality content creation being made available to everyone, the playing field has levelled for everyone to go out there and compete with the biggest and the best in any field. There are so many tools to help us along with this. Gmail, for instance, uses AI to identify spam and even suggests a quick response, making daily correspondence that much easier. Google Translate, on the other hand, helps you communicate in no time across the language barrier. Tools like Grammarly help you improve your writing by checking both your grammar and spelling, as well as giving you a rundown about the tone and readability of what you have written.

Prepare for the world of AI

We are still in unchartered territory when it comes to the impact of AI in our daily lives, as this is a technology that evolves all the time. Already, we have students using Generative AI to complete their assignments, and people from diverse sections of society, ranging from software engineers and doctors to teachers, lawyers and factory workers, worry about their future. Many say that the day is not far when there will be no need for white-collar professionals, thanks to AI taking over their jobs, and the most in demand skills would be the ones pertaining to plumbing!

Yet, we are told not to resist, but accept the inevitable ascent of AI, for it is, after all, another set of transformative technologies-something that mankind has dealt with successfully since its earliest days. Besides, making subtle judgment calls informed by morality is not AI’s strong suit and will always be the preserve of humans. We could help manage and orchestrate AI and use it as an ally rather than view it as an existential threat. But who knows what shape AI in our daily life will take, especially when we are told by technology doyens that Agentic AI (AI capable of taking the initiative on its own, independent of human oversight) is just around the corner.

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AI-the Harbinger of a Brave New World?

 

Image created with AI (OpenAI DALL·E, accessed via ChatGPT), April 2026.

Is it that far from being a threat to global employment as well as people’s free will and a technology that may end up enslaving and eventually destroying mankind, AI may actually be mankind’s greatest hope, the harbinger of a brave new world?

​Despite all the undeniably wondrous progress achieved by mankind, which today seriously toys with the idea of becoming an intergalactic species, it is not as if mankind is not beset with major problems, many of which are existential ones. From wars and famines to medical issues and environmental degradation that threaten its very survival, mankind grapples with a multitude of problems that it seems unable to resolve. Might not AI be the panacea for all of its ills and problems that it seems both unable and unwilling to resolve?  

​With its ability to save time and enhance productivity and efficiency, AI can not only help be the catalyst for economic growth and regeneration for the world, but it can also offer practical and workable solutions for political, environmental, educational and healthcare issues that may presently seem intractable.

​How can thinking machines make the world a better place?

​Can we and should we trust thinking machines capable of making decisions independent of our oversight and supervision to make decisions that have a profound influence on both our day to day lives as well as our very future? The way that AI is progressing, it is not just engaging in the process of augmenting human endeavour but is actually on the cusp of supplanting it altogether. Is it a fair trade-off then,  if it can make critical decisions that have a bearing on our overall well-being across politics, economics, and healthcare in a highly efficient and expeditious manner?

​Will such an AI technology make the world a utopia or a place where mankind may not have a future and be made to go extinct? Could not the human race leverage the awesome power of AI without becoming its victim? The jury is out on whether AI is the greatest boon to mankind or an unprecedented existential threat.

​Already, there is a demand arising from technology mavens, social scientists, governments, civil society and people at large to regulate and rein in AI in a manner that the possibility of it going rogue is completely ruled out. In any case, leaving AI completely unsupervised runs the risk of not only a loss of control over the direction that it may take, but it also leaves one unaware about how reliable the autonomous decisions made by AI  are.

​AI that is being used currently is far from faultless and can’t really be expected to serve any practical purpose unless there is human oversight on its application. It is, of course, expected to get better and better with time, but it will work out best for humans only if they are equal participants in its journey. AI and humans will have to achieve progress in a collaborative manner and should never be at the cost of the latter. That defeats the very purpose of having AI in our midst.

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Imbuing AI with morality

​The other important aspect is to train human beings to not only learn to effectivley leverage the tremendous power of AI, but to use it for the right purpose. So, it may not be a question about our trusting AI to not go rogue against us, but also about it being used by people who have an upright moral compass. Imagine the havoc it might wreak if it falls into the wrong hands. Also, there is the danger of an AI divide, where those with access lord it over those who either don't have access or can't afford it to the detriment of the latter.

​In many ways, AI will prove to be a lot like money- whoever has it, has power and authority, which could be used for noble and constructive purposes or to further personal agenda, which may be far from noble. While it may possess the potential to make the world a better place, the question is whether that is indeed going to be what that technology will really be used for? Democratisation of AI access is, therefore, going to have to be striven for so that everyone is able to  reap the benefits of this revolutionary technology, which promises to refashion the very world we live in with every passing day.

​AI could indeed be the harbinger of a brave new world, but the question is whether that world would be the one that humans want to inhabit. A super efficient, comfortable and safe world where most, if not all, human needs are met, under the impersonal and emotionally barren reign of machines with super human intelligence and strength might not be what we would like to end up with.  A world where human endeavours are not driven by a sense of wonder and innate curiosity, but by preordained programs of activity to keep us occupied, a la The Matrix, could possibly await us if we meekly submit to the dictates of AI, which has become the arbiter of human destiny.

​Would we have ceded all control to such machines, or would we have them work for and under us? If they surpass us in intelligence, as many are sure they will in the not-so-distant future, would it be possible that they would carry out their agenda instead of ours? We have no idea how beings or entities  who are leagues ahead of us in intelligence and all manner of capabilities would treat us. If we go by our own human experience in this regard, where slavery and colonialism were imposed on the weak by the strong, there does not seem to be much scope for optimism.