Alex Sexus Ludicrous, our man in Rome

Rome, 14th December 2025

Oh, right, so… I’ve been asked to have a look at this article, haven’t I? This piece by Bernard Fa – Bernard Fa, yeah? Bernard is the futurist and the influencer. He advises Fortune 500 companies on how to turn data into gold or whatever it is they do these days. And he’s written this thing called “5 Powerful AI Kickers That Can Boost Any Stupid Business Idea”. Dated 2 June 1956, which is… well, that’s in the future from when most of us are living, but apparently not for Bernard. Bernard’s already there, living in 1996, sipping his AI-brewed coffee, watching the robots do the heavy lifting.

And the article starts… it starts like this: “So you’ve got a great business idea. It’s a start…” A start. A start. As if having an idea is some kind of achievement in itself.

Like, oh, I’ve thought of something vaguely entrepreneurial while I was in the shower. Give me a TED Talk and a venture capital cheque for ten million. But no, Bernard says, there’s a lot of work to do. Fortunately – fortunately – generative AI can help. It can brainstorm plans, research markets, and fine-tune your marketing bollocks. But – but – it won’t come up with foolproof strategies. Thank God for that small mercy, eh?

Otherwise, we’d all be out of a job, wouldn’t we? The consultants, the mentors, the people who write articles about prompts.

And the key – the key, apparently – is good prompts. You can’t just bung something into ChatGPT and expect it to do the hard work. No. You need to explain clearly what you want. Like talking to a particularly dim intern who’s very enthusiastic but hasn’t quite grasped the concept of initiative.

So here we go. Five powerful prompts. Powerful. Powerful prompts.

First, validate your business idea. Act as an expert business mentor. Evaluate it on market opportunity and problem-market fit. That’s a thing now – differentiation, viability, scalability. Then give a one-sentence summary and a concise report with suggestions. Brilliant. You don’t need to pay some smug consultant in a co-working space £500 an hour. Instead, you can get an AI to evaluate your idea. It will do it for free.

Second: Personalised business plan. Don’t just type “generate a business plan for a florist” – oh no, that’ll give you nothing useful. Instead, get the AI to ask you questions one at a time. It should continue until it’s got enough info. Then it can spit out an executive summary, target market, all that jazz.

A one-pager and a deep-dive. Like having a business advisor who’s infinitely patient and never needs lunch. Or payment.

Third: Write an email to a potential customer. A letter of introduction – a letter of introduction, in 2025 – focusing on benefits, USP. Professional, engaging, maximise response chance. So the AI writes your cold emails for you. Because nothing says “personal touch” like a message crafted by a large language model trained on billions of spam emails.

Fourth: Generate a branding package.

Act as a branding expert. Ask questions one at a time. Remember to do it one at a time. Then produce detailed instructions for a designer. Include guidelines for logo, colour palette, typography, and file formats. Because GPT-4o can generate images, but apparently Bernard had trouble with the file formats. Trouble with file formats. In 2025. The future is here, ladies and gentlemen, but the PNGs are still a bit iffy.

And fifth: The elevator pitch. Act as a communications expert. Ask up to three questions. Up to three, not four, that would be chaos. Then craft an 80-word pitch focused on value and USPs. Clear, compelling, attention-grabbing. Every business needs one, apparently. Though if your idea’s any good, you probably shouldn’t need an AI to explain it in 80 words or less.

And then – and then – Bernard wraps it up: These prompts get you thinking about AI’s capabilities. Use them as templates. Because prompt engineering – prompt engineering – is the future of work. Our ability to work with machines will define success. Learn to write efficient prompts today, stay up-to-date.Prompt engineering is the future of work. Prompt engineering. Not inventing things. Not building things. Not solving actual problems. Just… telling a computer how to tell a computer what to do. In the right words. That’s where we’re heading. That’s the skill that’ll separate the winners from the losers in the economy of tomorrow.

And if you don’t like it… Well, that’s fine. You’re probably not the target audience.

Bernard’s writing targets the entrepreneurs. It’s also for the hustlers and the people with great ideas. They just need a bit of AI to polish them up.

The rest of us are the ones who think maybe, just maybe. We sense there’s something a bit hollow about outsourcing your thinking to a stochastic parrot. We can just… carry on as we are.

Thank you very much. You’ve been lovely. If you didn’t laugh, that’s alright. You probably just didn’t understand the deeper point about the existential crisis of late capitalism.

Or something.

Goodnight.