Roles

How to vet an AI expert: 12 questions that expose the pretenders

Daniel Kerambrum Bicourt · Founder, CO-ORDI · September 2026 · 6 min read

"AI expert" costs nothing to put on a LinkedIn headline. No qualification gates it, no professional body defends it, and for plenty of people using the title now, the retraining took a weekend. That does not make everyone claiming it a fraud. It does mean the title alone tells you nothing, and the businesses that get burnt are usually the ones that stopped there.

What the title never tells you

Some of the best people doing this work came from engineering, from operations, from marketing, and learned the tools properly on the way in. Others came from nowhere in particular: a few completed courses, a rebrand, and a rate card. The pretenders are rarely lying outright. They are usually vague on purpose, because vague survives a sales call and specific does not. The twelve questions below draw that line. Ask even half of them and the gap becomes obvious fast.

The twelve questions

• 1. Show me three things you have shipped for a paying client in the last six months, not slides. A real practitioner answers with specifics: what the system does, what it replaced, roughly what it moved. A pretender answers with capability language, "we can do X, Y and Z", and never quite lands on something they actually built.
• 2. What is the acceptance criteria for this engagement, in a number? A genuine scope has a figure attached to it before work starts. A deck seller changes the subject or promises "you'll know it when you see it".
• 3. Who exactly touches my build, day to day? The senior name on the sales call and the person actually configuring your systems are not always the same person. Ask, by name, before you sign.
• 4. Can I speak to someone running what you built, today, not a testimonial quote? A confident practitioner connects you directly. Hesitation here tells you as much as an answer would.
• 5. What happens to the logins, the code and the documentation if this ends? If the honest answer is "it stays with us", you are renting, not buying. Find out before day one, not after a dispute.
• 6. What would you refuse to build for me, and why? Real experience comes with limits. Someone who names a genuine constraint of the tools for your specific case knows the terrain. Someone who only ever says yes is optimising for the sale.
• 7. How is this priced, and does the number move once you understand my business? Vague pricing that only firms up after weeks of "discovery" calls is a stalling tactic dressed as process.
• 8. Who trains my team to run this once you are gone, and when does that happen? If handover is an afterthought in the pitch, it will be an afterthought in the delivery.
• 9. What is the plan if the model or the market shifts under this build in six months? AI tooling moves fast. Someone who has actually maintained a live system has a real answer. Someone who has only sold pilots does not.
• 10. How fast can you start, and what happens in week one, specifically? Pretenders answer in vague weeks and quarters. Practitioners can describe day one.
• 11. What is a trend in AI right now that you think is overrated? Genuine operators have opinions grounded in what does not work. A blanket "everything is transformative" answer is a sales script, not a judgement.
• 12. What happens if it does not work? Is there a guarantee, a walk-away point, or does all the risk sit with you? The answer tells you how much the other side believes their own pitch.

If you only have time for one

Start with the first: three things shipped for a paying client in the last six months, named specifically. It filters out most pretenders on its own, because it cannot be answered with enthusiasm. It can only be answered with facts, and facts are the one thing a rebrand cannot fake.

Vetted still needs matched

A genuine practitioner can still be the wrong fit for your business: the right skills pointed at the wrong problem, or a good freelancer stretched across too many clients to give you real attention. Vetting answers "is this person real". Fit answers a separate question about whether their strengths match what you actually need built, and whether embedding one now beats the months a full hire would take.

This is why CO-ORDI runs its own vetting before a client ever asks the twelve questions above. Every architect on the bench is matched against a specific brief, works flat fee scoped to outcomes rather than a day rate, from around £3,500 to £10,000 a month for an embedded engagement, and everything they build stays with the client, covered by the CO-ORDI Guarantee. See how that work is scoped and priced before you commit to anyone, us included. The point of vetting was never to catch us out. It is the standard every genuine practitioner should want you to apply, including the ones with a real answer to all twelve.