How to evaluate an AI provider without being a technical expert

You do not need to understand how the technology works to judge whether someone is worth hiring. You need to know what a straight answer sounds like.

Six questions

1. "What would you tell me not to do?" Anyone who can't name something is selling.
2. "Which of my problems is not an AI problem?" In most SMEs, at least half of them aren't.
3. "What happens if we stop paying you?" Look for knowledge left behind, not a dependency.
4. "Which tools would you recommend and why those?" If the answer is always the same single vendor, ask what else they considered.
5. "How will we know in 90 days whether this worked?" You want a number, or at least a specific observable change.
6. "Where does our data go?" A clear answer, first time, without a follow-up email.

What good looks like

A good adviser will spend more time on your processes than on the technology, will happily tell you a project is too small to be worth doing, and will write things down in language your team can read.

What to avoid

Long lock-ins, platform builds you can't maintain, and anything sold on fear of being left behind. The businesses that get value out of AI are the ones that started small, wrote down what they learned, and kept going.