If you've been to a small business in Sarawak in the last two years and mentioned the word AI, you've probably watched a polite face do a polite thing. A tilt. A nod. A "ya, kawan saya kata about that also." And then the conversation moves on.
It's not that owners here don't believe AI is real. They've seen the news. They've used ChatGPT once or twice. The scepticism is sharper than that — it's the kind that comes from being on the receiving end of two decades of "this will change your business" pitches from people who left town the next week.
So we don't open our pitches with the word. We don't even put it on the proposal sometimes.
Our discovery calls are about the unglamorous stuff. Where do orders fall through? Which task does your team avoid all week? What's the part of your job that wears you out? If a conversation produces an honest answer to one of those questions, that's the project. AI is a tool we might use to deliver it. It's not the headline.
Inside the work, we use it carefully. A triage agent that summarises and routes inbound enquiries. A reminder system that drafts polite, on-brand follow-ups for receivables. A small forecast model that pulls from the client's actual data, not a brochure-grade prediction. Every one of these does its job in the background. None of them ask the user to "embrace AI."
The result is, ironically, that the businesses we work with start trusting AI more than the ones who got it pitched to them at a conference. Because it does the boring work without bragging about it. Because it doesn't break and embarrass them. Because the first time they realise the system helped, it's usually because their inbox is empty at 8 PM.
This is, we think, how AI earns its place in real businesses outside the tech bubble. Quietly. Surgically. With humility about what it can and can't do. With evals, fallbacks, and a human in the loop wherever the stakes are real.
Sarawak's healthy scepticism isn't a problem we have to overcome. It's a quality we respect, and it has shaped a better way to ship. The bar is high. We're glad it's high.