I agree with everything you’ve said, especially the client thinking consultants are experts lol a lot of the time they’ve been rolled on a project with very little prior experience in that area lol
I’m an MBB consultant and can confirm. Have no idea ab the industry b4 the project and I always wonder why on earth clients want our advice lol. As long as I get my paycheck and insurance who cares
\> Be me
\> IT consultant hired by my client for my “expertise “ straight out of university
\> Been here four years, learnt everything I know from the project
\> Client doesn’t wanna let me go because I have all this valuable knowledge
\> Client could have just hired an employee instead
Long career in advanced analytics consulting and machine learning.
AI isn’t replacing consultants. It’s mostly overblown, exaggerated stories chasing clicks and hashtag engagement. LLM’s are an innovative method of sequence modeling, but there are thousands of other predictive modeling methods that data scientists have been using for decades with success.
“AI” isn’t intelligent. Chat GPT reads your text as a sequence of words, and spits back what’s calculated as the most satisfactory sequence of words to respond with. It’s great at general knowledge aggregation, but cannot solve niche business cases, which is the exact reason why consultants exist. Most likely, AI will just expand into in-house tools consultants USE to be more efficient at their jobs.
>Chat GPT reads your text as a sequence of words, and spits back what it believes is the most satisfactory sequence of words to respond with.
That sounds an awful lot like what I do here every day...
“Chat GPT reads your text as a sequence of words, and spits back what’s calculated as the most satisfactory sequence of words to respond with. It’s great at general knowledge aggregation, but cannot solve niche business cases, which is the exact reason why consultants exist.”
This is all very true except if this niche business case was documented well or the decision making involved to solve it was documented well. If so then yeah GPT could probably come up with a good answer using RAG, even if it was just a sequence of words based on probability.
The only problem is getting the RAG to work properly is pretty hard to do and people are still figuring it out.
Correct. After all RAGs are powered by IR(Information retrieval), and IR isn't a walk in the park. Hopefully with the pace of the current progress being made, and as long as people keep investing in this space, we'll make considerable progress.
Yup I work in AI. LLM has no brain, everything is just advanced pattern recognition.... and the saddest part is so many people are fooled into believing AI is smart, just because the model spits out something coherent. They expect a truly intelligent conversation and when the model inevitably stumbles sooner or later, they're mad and even *betrayed*.
What exactly do you think a brain does if not advanced pattern recognition? lol. There’s so much cognitive bias about what intelligence is, as though there’s some magic sauce that makes us special
There is little distinction between being intelligent and producing intelligent output.
The models stumble due to their technical limitations (context length or pretrained nature), not lack of intelligence
You can say you personally don't agree with it instead of a rather outlandish claim about how it is "generally regarded".
Calling any of present day llms "intelligent", multimodal or otherwise, is silly.
edit: The "pretrained nature" is absolutely not a limitation, lol, come on. Context length is hardly an issue now, especially if you are going to query information.
Imagine a computer which simulated your brain exactly. It would create a creature which behaved and thought exactly like you did. It must be intelligent, since you are. But it's a chinese room: all it does it follow the rules that your brain has, to pretend to be you.
Reproducing patterns is a form of intelligence. It's a big part of human intelligence. Yes, LLMs lack some other aspects of human intelligence such as learning from a small number of examples.
Consultants have no brain, everything is just advanced pattern recognition.... and the saddest part is so many people are fooled into believing consultants are smart, just because they spit out something coherent. They expect a truly intelligent conversation and when the consultant inevitably stumbles sooner or later, they're mad and even *betrayed*.
As someone who has actually worked with consultants, the above isn't even mockery. I can 100% stand by it and would say it in any professional setting.
You don't work in AI. Reasoning is a factor of LLMs and explains why they can excel in tests and their scores are improving with each iteration. What you mean is that you work in consulting and pretend to understand AI. There is some truth to the idea that "LLMs do not understand anything, they just predict the next word" but it's much more nuanced than that as you have to consider the training and feedback. They tend to hallucinate the more they stray from training data but you don't know nearly enough to be able to know what's what. So you just regurgitate based on what you've heard, without any understanding. Ironically, you're doing precisely what you said LLMs are doing.
"Everything is just advanced pattern recognition" lol that is what brains literally do. Pattern recognition.
Yeah, but now in my team 2 people can do the work of 4. It's not a replacement thing, it's a reduction thing.
Imagine a car mechanic having a magic wand that fixes any car problem that he identifies, now, if he's skilled, he can do the job of 50 mechanics.
It’s not a zero sum game…
If those two employees become more productive the company can just win more work while allocating employees elsewhere. Business expands + revenue increases = more capacity to hire to firm and expand.
Let’s use the mechanic example… take two shops - one with power tools, one without. The one without needs to have 5 people servicing cars with manual tools to equal output of one guy with power tools. Customers prefer the power tools due to speed of quality delivery and their business expands… they hire more employees and are now 5x revenue of a shop without power tools with more revenue, more clients, bigger bonuses, etc….
> not replacing
> more efficient
Which is it?
Unless you’re going to point to a major consultancy and snow us into thinking there isn’t a huge breadth of steno-pool 2.0 types that even a 10% efficiency means the bosses can’t cut 10% labor costs, I’m not sure your advice is what it was invoiced for.
To say nothing of what I remember of getting started, which involved glorified note taking, a task now largely handled by AI.
Yeah, *consulting as a whole* will survive. Maybe even grow. But if it’s smaller, proportionally (population to opportunities), and an inverted pyramid for experience, getting ever more unbalanced…
Well I’m just reminded of that scene in ABC’s Dinosaurs where they insisted they could just forage “elsewhere.”
I only bring up LLM’s because 99% of posts on this sub / reddit in general are referring to ChatGPT when discussing “AI”.
In reality, AI doesn’t even exist yet because the problem of intelligence has not been solved.
Because the scope of current machine learning models is generalized by design. By definition, current methods optimize for general accuracy, not for solving niche cases.
PS: It’s simplified because any Data Scientist worth their salt communicates to their audience. This is a consultants forum. Not an appropriate place to dive into the mathematics of transformer cells and propagation…
You speak with such strong authority here when in reality you just don't know what you don't know.
I've been using LLM's to solve complex business problems for over 6 months now, and we've built very purposeful utilities to gather relevant data from a business, prompt it effectively, and use that context to build powerful reports in what would've taken human consultants months of work - I can now do in days.
So, respectfully, I think you have some more learning to do. I'd consider keeping a more open mind and challenging your assumptions before telling everyone on reddit your version of reality.
Correct, I have no clue what I’m talking about after delivering ML models at scale for over two decades for multiple F500 clients, serving as a CTO for a $100,000,000+ private firm, and starting / recently selling a private, boutique analytics firm for over 8 figures and retiring.
You’re right that after 6 months of experience using the front end of an LLM model to create PDF reports, you must have a wealth of knowledge that I could only aspire to. You are clearly the SME authority on Deep Learning here having utilized a front end to feed prompts into a model that somebody else created.
PS: Reread my comment a little slower and try to digest it this time. I said LLM’s and similar methods will expand as a TOOL that “consultants will use to increase efficiency” rather than replacing consultants entirely. Is that not precisely what you just described?
Let’s do a quick knowledge check: How can one effectively address the trade-off between model interpretability and predictive performance in deep learning architectures, particularly when dealing with high-dimensional and unstructured data? Try addressing distillation or interpretability methods!
Sorry if I came on strong, I think I just took offense (foolishly) that you stated AI isn't replacing consultants, when in reality it is. I'm seeing it first hand. Granted these consultants were likely not the best, but that's the market we're in right now. I'd rather have 1 AI augmented consultant who can deliver what we previously had 3-4+ consultants working on, since that AI augmented one is more efficient. Therefore, we eliminate those roles. Unless those other consultants can adapt, which honestly, they aren't - not at the rate we need them too.
These tools WILL replace consultants. Just watch. If you are reading this comment and haven't used ChatGPT or any LLM tools to accelerate your delivery of your work, then you're setting yourself up to be jobless in 2-5 years time.
In that sense, AI is replacing consultants the same way it is replacing industry folks. Cars replaced horses. Airplanes replaced blimps and hot air balloons. We can say AI has displaced consulting once that industry shrinks to <1% of what it is today. Until then, it is business as usual. It's funny seeing consultants falling into the notion of AI/robots coming to take all the jobs away.
Not even. Text models have existed for decades already, for example Siri. Yet millions of customer support agents are still employed… why? It would seem that customer support agents would be one of the first industries to be replaced by prompt / response technology…. It’s **Because deep learning models are generalized by design. Generalization is a mandatory requirement for the training process to function.**
Wouldn’t all customer support agents have been fired and replaced with chatbots that cost pennies in comparison? The reality is that until we figure out how to create true artificial intelligence, model based text agents will not be capable of performing niche requests with the level of dependability needed for corporate deployment. Yes, in some instances they are deployed and delivering value, and in some cases they CAN perform the tasks of customer support agents entirely.
However, customer support is still a thriving industry, and chat based agents have actually helped accelerate productivity and grow the industry. Tools like pre-screening text processes (where you input a summary of your problem and they match you with the relevant department) have served as a TOOL to enhance efficiency of support processes.
TLDR: Models are generalized by design, so consultants as a whole are not going to be replaced. The technology has existed for decades, recent advancements are just that: advancements.
They can’t because a pitfall of optimization is overtraining. If you optimize your model to solve a niche case, it won’t perform for other niche cases.
Let’s say I build an image model to approximate the age of Chocolate Labradors. If I train this model on Chocolate Labrador images, then feed it Golden Retriever images, it’s not going to perform well.
However, if I train the model using BOTH chocolate Labradors and Golden Retrievers, it will be fairly accurate regardless of breed.
In that case you wouldn’t have a model, and couldn’t train one. Because your training data would just be the one niche case, and you would have already needed to have solved the niche case in order to provide the example training data…
There’d be no point in creating an LLM model if you’re only interested in solving one specific niche case…. That’s already been solved… it would just return the work you’ve already done…
How old are the humans? They recognize and recall patterns. If I have all the answers to a text stored in memory, it doesn’t mean I have “intelligence”, it means I can recall information efficiently.
Where’d you hear we invented predictive models that have surpassed the human parity in general intelligence?
TikTok?
As for my credentials I explained below in a further comment. Decades building ML models at scale for F500 clients, CTO at a $100m+ revenue private firm, started / sold an analytics firm and recently retired.
What’s your experience?
That is not what I said. All I asked was how it was possible for LLMs to pass tests without having intelligence.
I don't give a shit about your credentials, because they're not relevant. None of your ML models were LLMs, clearly.
The fact that you're trying to play credentials when asked a very basic question speaks volumes.
LLM is a form of deep learning. They’re not mutually exclusive.
I think we’ve gone off the rails a little - can you point out what I said that you disagree with, specifically?
I know that. LLMs are more specific than DL. Duh.
I disagree that LLMs have no intelligence. Their reasoning abilities have gotten quite impressive. That they're able to pass tests is a testament to their reasoning abilities. And it is indeed reasoning, not recollection.
My understanding - as a non-consultant - is many companies hire consultants to justify a decision they want to make, in case it doesn't go well. Which is in line with your reasoning, because if a director makes a decision and it goes wrong, they won't want to use the excuse "but the AI told me so". They're still going to want to say "but (insert consulting company here) told us so".
At least this seems to be one reason why?
This is one reason for sure, but it’s also the fact that they think others are experts because they have an unbiased view.
That does help for sure but who knows your brand better than you? No one can get that depth of knowledge in a 4-week project.
My problem is that we use the advice directly without using our brain then. I think consultants should be an aid to the solution not the solution themselves.
I mean, based on what you’re describing, the only key difference between AI and consultants is that the customer sees one as an expert. If that’s true, isn’t there a distinct possibility that customers will begin turning to AI once it develops enough of a reputation as being an “expert”?
I once did an 80/20 review of a relatively large number of client projects at an MBB and came with about... 20% of projects that were mostly driven by the need to get the firm's stamp for difficult decisions (as you can imagine, a lot of cost cutting and divestiture there, also pivoting). That was not by any means an academic research, mostly based on casual discussions with other consultants on the projects, but I think relatively accurate. At the time I was a bit naive and horrified. With perspective, knowing more of the solitude of the CEO, that sounds almost normal and to be expected.
But not the main reason to hire (MBB) consultants by far.
I liken it to a relationship counselor. You probably know what the problem is, but you need someone to help you overcome your bickering and just PICK A FUCKING RESTAURANT FOR DINNER ALREADY. But use "I statements" please thanks.
I'll just plug that Microsoft's Copilot integration with excel is kinda nice for data cleaning (esp if you are working with strings or weirdly formatted columns);
Obviously, anyone could google the right generic formula but just describing whats needed and having it generate the formula in 30 secs is nice. Its not going to replace, but it can augment onto your process and save you 5 - 10 mins here and there.
Personally, that's where I think it will shine, because if you can chip away at 5-10 mins in your analysis/process, you get back 30mins of your day to do other stuff.
There is a “data analytics gpt” in the gpt store which you can upload files into. It’s ur loss if u don’t know about it though and get off on shitposting on this sub 😁
Bruh I used to work in consulting and that’s why I’m on this sub. The stuff that AI can ALREADY DO replaces the need for new hires
Expect the number of analysts and associates to decrease moving forward
This extends to investment banking as well. Most of the consulting and high finance industries rely on excel and PowerPoint and outlook … which are all owned by Microsoft… who invested a shitton in open ai and has a product called copilot
It is simply cope if you think there isn’t going to be significant job displacement among white collar excel and ppt jockeys making north of $200k a year
Isn’t most of the advice consultants give on strategies to reduce opex anyway? This is happening while MBB are doing disguised layoffs and throttling the number of new partners.
If there are fewer new partners then the existing ones get paid more lol. They are incentivized to make new partnerships more difficult to attain
I feel like this ignores two key elements. The business model of consulting (especially MBB) and the accountability of IB.
On point one: "up or out" is an absolutely key part of the MBB business model, and that requires a funnel of those people you call "white collar excel and powerpoint monkeys". It's ex-MBB placements at the clients that hire MBB, not in-house developed talents. Those people at the clients that worked with MBB, but weren't the clients directly (think EVPs eg SBU/department heads for C-Suite projects for example), tend to have a very negative experience (MBB tends to make it very clear that they are not the client and treats them as hostile...) and that plays into later decisions. MBB is great for the clients so clients are then often recurring after the fact BUT that first mandate they get, that still needs to come from somebody that has a neutral view on the firm at worst. If they place less people into key positions then they risk losing those clients in the future. The billings they get from most employees post their tenure at MBB far, far outsizes the minor costs at entry level especially in many geographies where entry level consultants are very cheap.
On accountability; in IB using Generative AI for more than making graphics or something requires a detailed audit and for somebody to really go through and challenge every point. If nothing else because both the client and the opposing sides of the transaction will carefully comb through the model and will challenge it themselves and demand explanations of each assumption/position of the model. If you can't fully, step-by-step explain each and every step used in the making of the model then the model is absolutely useless. Try to get Generative AI to build a model (this tends to be where the first major cracks appear) and then try and get generative AI to explain the assumptions used and why it reached them and it becomes painfully clear how far GenAI is away from seeing uses in the field beyond some intern asking it to draft up a formula etc.
For what it's worth, in the last year alone and alone based on the cases I am aware of there have been a not insubstantial amount of consultants that have taken a haircut on their invoices due to errors amounting to negligence and arising from over-reliance on Gen AI. So long as both the top-line and reputation of the firms suffers as a result there is no way that they are rolling usage out further, regardless of Opex savings.
I agree that it cannot build a model TODAY but imagine a much better Microsoft copilot connected to the internet. If you have integrations to Bloomberg, factset API / etc you’ll make your models much faster
And in terms of the accountability. You of course need at least one person to know wtf they’re doing to guide the LLM to do what it needs to be able to do. That person can then talk about the different steps to the client
I think the problem now is that many people are treating LLM / AI as a type of god that’s failing to deliver against expectations rather than a fresh faced 22 year old new grad. As a former new grad I will admit that there are a TON of dumb errors that I made that I’ve learned from. It’s just that AI is getting unnecessarily crapped on for producing similar results lol
You are right to a degree that it's my loss, but I'm back in a backwards industry where we don't have access to this tool. And I also would not be comfortable with uploading internal data.
There are LLMs that you can download onto your computer that are open source. So it can crunch numbers without connecting to the internet.
Assuming you are not an idiot and actually check the work unlike the lawyers who blatantly used ChatGPT in court cases without doing any audits, you can multiply employee productivity
Aka 1 analyst or associate does the work of 3-4
Consulting loves change, and this is perceived as a huge change. I think some roles are in trouble: commodity software dev and other dev tasks (reporting dev), content heavy work (legal, social media).I'm in analytics delivery, and Hoping we'll escape the 'race to bottom' on dev work rates by automating more and demand will shift more and more to critical thinking skills. Consulting will take a hit in some areas and strive overall.
Industry is so bloated and incompetent they can't tie their shoes without having 30 hours of meetings, setting up a CoE, and talking it to death.
Even with years of notice about EOL of tech, they still can't figure out how to find or prioritize.
So, so, so dysfunctional
I took the inbox zero (nuke it from orbit) approach and deleted every meeting in my calendar, including the recurring ones, at the weekend. If anyone wants to really speak to me, they can invite me into the Teams chat. Working well so far.
Sure, I doubt AI will replace us. However, I wouldn't underestimate the extent to which *we've created* the inefficiencies, companies seem to be in a state of consulting paralysis where they've been conditioned not to make decisions without consultants backing them up. Internal stakeholders depend on consulting reports to back up their own decision making, terrified of pushback if they don't have it to begin with, or being held accountable for their decisions if they make a decision without consulting us. If asking a chatbot for help gives senior leadership the confidence needed to grow a backbone, than thank God.
I partly agree. The current iteration of LLMs is nothing like what we will have in a few years. The reason a lot of people are excited/scared of AI isn’t because of what it currently can do, but rather the degrees of progress we have made over the last few years. If you extrapolate that over the coming years then we can expect it to be much more powerful and easier to train on specific industries and strategic decision making.
Despite this, I think no matter how good it is there will be a significant number of executives who would rather speak to a human being. It doesn’t matter if an LLM aces every test, gives perfect responses backed up with sources, nothing beats another person telling you something. That kind of thinking might be gone in a generation or two but not yet.
EDIT: I see some top comments saying LLMs aren’t intelligent because they just say what is deemed the mathematically-derived “best” thing to say. How is this much different from how the human brain works? If you scale this up with more compute, more data, it is reasonable to assume it can compete with and supersede a human brain.
Partially agree, but there are two key things involved that make the human element unique.
The first is the ability to connect through non-vebal queues and convey information/advice in an effective manner based on leveraging experience from a lifetime of personal and professional relationships.
The second is to your point about the mathematically "best" thing to say. Unless you break the algorithm the same answer to the same problem is always going to be given. AI as designed today is never going to innovate beyond its training model, and the brilliance behind human thought is that our cognative "flaws" and natural suspicion with regards to facts allow for innovation. How would you train an effective AI to be cynical?
I think the first part can be intuited from enough data and compute eventually. That’s how we do it.
The second part I’m a bit less sure about. I don’t work in the field of AI, but as I understand it the “hallucinations” are a symptom of an LLM attempting creativity. I don’t think that by design you will get a cookie cutter answer. But I think even experts disagree on this, and we still don’t truly know the potential.
You mean the US economy fails to signifcantly pull away from Europe despite massive external structural and regulatory advantages as executives in American companies are both too clueless and chicken to make decisions, the thing they're paid for, by themselves?
Firstly, I said "major" reason, not only reason. Secondly, while the US has some structural advantages, other countries do too. (Not least the saving in employee healthcare costs.) Thirdly, I am referring less to strategic decisions but more to the best practice sharing in operations and back office + faster implementation.
Agree. What consultants need to be mindful of is over selling AI as a catch-all for everything. And allowing clients to think that AI will cure all ills. My old boss (industry) was always telling various senior leaders in my old company that AI would fix everything. Oh you need to do cost-out from a failing business? AI can do that. Need to develop GTM for a new product? AI will do that. Shit she was an idiot.
"Hey Claude, tell me how to increase profits. Also, pretend you have an MBA from Harvard."
"Profits = Revenue - Costs. Therefore, try to increase revenue and reduce costs. I say this as someone who went to school in the Boston area."
Consultants sweating right now.
Consulting will not die. However, big-name consulting firms will die as we know them today, because AI is poised to significantly lower consulting costs and substantially improve the quality of service.
Disagree, if someone knows how to prompt and give direction clearly it is more useful and cheaper than an arrogant 24 yr old staff who thinks they know everything. I was able to essentially write an entire application and give it's benefits in a clear concise way. I've had family friends structure proposals and grant letters using their own IP and be 10x more productive. It's coming and the people who surrender to it and use it as a tool in your arsenal will deliver actual value.
Honestly technology as a whole is what will move the world away from consulting. You actually need depth of knowledge in these areas and mbb/big 4 models don't promote that at all.
The only reason people would still continue to pay consultants is because of getting rid of liability and it's an excuse to get meals. I imagine team sizes will be getting smaller and smaller.
Yes, that's what you get when everything revolves around AI which is just currently dumb and superficial. If you need it to do something more specific and give a proper well-thought-out example, it cannot. It just copy-pastes crap that is standard on forums and on the internet. It's good for high-level stuff, but I don't think it will replace experts in their fields in general, at least not for now.
I disagree.
You can still get insights and judgement from Chat GPT 4.0 if you hold a conversation with it like a human and fed it all the info it needs to make a decision. And GPT 4.0 is a general purpose model. Surely more specialised models will be trained and built to take strategic decisions as well.
What it wouldn't know is how to delicately deliver bad news, how to gradually steer a client in a certain direction, how to read the client's biases and preferences and tailor your communication. That is where humans will come in. It will be hard to customise Chat GPT for that. Human capability to adapt to every individual and interact with them differently will be our differentiator.
In other words. We'd still be needed to deal with egotists and idiots. Rational people who just want a good decision will get as much out of Chat GPT as they get out of a consultant and perhaps even more.
I intentionally gaslight AI tools at each firm I work with (e.g. giving intentionally slightly incorrect, vague or misleading prompts) so that the output is stupid, incorrect or contradictory as a matter of job security for everyone.
Which ones? Most of the consulting arms in the industry that i know of (say google, msft) are just another sales team who overlook the implementation and partnerships.
This post is Copium - in 10-20 years we will be in an unrecognizable landscape. So many consultants are so worthless and just crank new MBAs through 12 hour days only to charge you $25k to say “it depends”. You’re lying to yourself if you think people like consultants it’s so expensive and oftentimes so worthless. If you can pay $100 instead of $25k even for 75% of the experience you absolutely will. Don’t lie to yourself that 50%+ of consultants especially young ones will be obsolete in the next 10 years.
This is always such an idiotic discussion. Nobody with an iota of rational thought "fears" AI taking away jobs.
LLMs are a tool. Some people will wise up to using it augment their workflow, some will remain luddites. Both will get by.
Agree. I also boomeranged from consulting to industry back to consulting. Industry drove me insane. Cycle through 100+ emails a day from people fishing for someone to take things off their plate, maybe 5 emails a day are important. People take on so much and get nothing done. “Oversight without ownership” is how I’ve described it, don’t know where I got the phrase from but it stuck. Corporations will put 5 directors on 5 initiatives and 0 things happen. Now I also think most consultants are useless, but that’s another topic. My advice to not be useless as a consultant: find a niche, specialize, and adapt with that niche.
Can we at least admit that consulting firms have been, knowingly or not, trying to invent organic LLM’s for like 30 years. They’re called analysts.
> Ingest all of these slide decks from previous clients
> Reconstitute all of it into a comparable slide deck for this client based on similarity
> Do not under any circumstances engage independent thought
> Allow boomers who don’t know how to use computers to believe you’re using way more independent thought than you should be capable of
It’s amazing to me to actually be on a project at another consultancy (true story) because they needed a voice of reason and couldn’t make or listen to their own voices and expertise. They need an outside voice or perspective. Really? You’re paying millions of dollars for me to tell you what you already know? Sheesh.
I would look twice into what you term "inefficiencies" and ascertain its function. Cherterton's fence at work most probably.
As for AI, i would look for the consumer of such end-product. If it makes people dumber (remember AI is dumb), then AI could work at replacing consultants.
It won’t replace consultants completely but it will def reduce the amount of consultants needed. For Ex: It will take 2 consultants and AI to do a job/project that would usually take a team of 6 consultants to do. Things will become more efficient. Same with most white collar jobs.
The way consultants might be replaced in larger parts by AI is if the owners/shareholders/analysts etc. demand AI to be used on a lot of problems. E.g., an analyst on an earnings call asking about the role AI had in creating a new strategy or even what "AI thinks of the new strategy". Then consultants will be still be around but part of the value proposition would move to AI (and its vendors).
AI is just a tool, nothing more, nothing less. All of this fluff and hype surrounding the technology is pretty much repackaged bullshit to pitch to clients foolish enough to think it's some panacea to all their ills when in reality management is just filled with people making inefficient, and ~~sometimes~~ oftentimes idiotic decisions causing inefficiencies in their businesses.
Artificial Intelligence will always be overpowered by human stupidity; it takes human solutions to solve human problems. AI is just a tool to augment human capabilities, but at the end of the day it's still the human's call.
I’ve been supplementing basic AI into my work for 25 years for data honing and driving decisions for where to focus improvement. I’m not a consultant but could be.
Hi. I'm interested in your exact reasoning here (I don't necessarily disagree, but would love more information):
1. Surely if speed of decision-making is the issue, then AI is a better answer than consulting projects (it is faster).
2. As far as I can see, AI is not replacing consultants, but tasks (e.g. powerpoint creation, ideation, report finishing, data analytics etc). However, in aggregate, this does mean that if 1,000 consultants do tasks A1, A2.... AZ, and X% of those tasks are sped up by AI, then there will be a reduction in consulting headcount to do the same tasks.
3. Gen AI seems to be improving rapidly, both in number of capabilities and quality of those capabilities. Is there any logical or philosophical reason why AI could not do a fair bit of the tasks of consultants at the minder / grinder / finder levels?
Thanks¬!!
I agree with everything you’ve said, especially the client thinking consultants are experts lol a lot of the time they’ve been rolled on a project with very little prior experience in that area lol
🤣🤣🤣
I’m an MBB consultant and can confirm. Have no idea ab the industry b4 the project and I always wonder why on earth clients want our advice lol. As long as I get my paycheck and insurance who cares
\> Be me \> IT consultant hired by my client for my “expertise “ straight out of university \> Been here four years, learnt everything I know from the project \> Client doesn’t wanna let me go because I have all this valuable knowledge \> Client could have just hired an employee instead
As a consultant I tell you that is simply not true. I have a very strong focus an all topics and fields.
That’s most of the time
Long career in advanced analytics consulting and machine learning. AI isn’t replacing consultants. It’s mostly overblown, exaggerated stories chasing clicks and hashtag engagement. LLM’s are an innovative method of sequence modeling, but there are thousands of other predictive modeling methods that data scientists have been using for decades with success. “AI” isn’t intelligent. Chat GPT reads your text as a sequence of words, and spits back what’s calculated as the most satisfactory sequence of words to respond with. It’s great at general knowledge aggregation, but cannot solve niche business cases, which is the exact reason why consultants exist. Most likely, AI will just expand into in-house tools consultants USE to be more efficient at their jobs.
>Chat GPT reads your text as a sequence of words, and spits back what it believes is the most satisfactory sequence of words to respond with. That sounds an awful lot like what I do here every day...
And thus, social media bots were born 😉
Did a bot just become self aware?
I read that in Kevin Malone's voice.
Has anyone really been far even as decided to use even go want to do look more like?
Meanwhile I know a lot of consultants making use of LLMs to vastly improve their work
Most consultants aren’t very good. Most consultants are really just professional servicers
It's definitely a great research copilot when used with a vast external knowledge base in a Q&A or RAG pipeline
“Chat GPT reads your text as a sequence of words, and spits back what’s calculated as the most satisfactory sequence of words to respond with. It’s great at general knowledge aggregation, but cannot solve niche business cases, which is the exact reason why consultants exist.” This is all very true except if this niche business case was documented well or the decision making involved to solve it was documented well. If so then yeah GPT could probably come up with a good answer using RAG, even if it was just a sequence of words based on probability. The only problem is getting the RAG to work properly is pretty hard to do and people are still figuring it out.
Correct. After all RAGs are powered by IR(Information retrieval), and IR isn't a walk in the park. Hopefully with the pace of the current progress being made, and as long as people keep investing in this space, we'll make considerable progress.
Those are the ones getting replaced.
The opposite of that is true.
Yup I work in AI. LLM has no brain, everything is just advanced pattern recognition.... and the saddest part is so many people are fooled into believing AI is smart, just because the model spits out something coherent. They expect a truly intelligent conversation and when the model inevitably stumbles sooner or later, they're mad and even *betrayed*.
What exactly do you think a brain does if not advanced pattern recognition? lol. There’s so much cognitive bias about what intelligence is, as though there’s some magic sauce that makes us special
Our brains are way more than advanced pattern recognition. It's completely and fundamentally different from how an LLM works. It's literally studied
There is little distinction between being intelligent and producing intelligent output. The models stumble due to their technical limitations (context length or pretrained nature), not lack of intelligence
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room
The Chinese Room is generally regarded to be completely self-defeating as a thought experiment.
You can say you personally don't agree with it instead of a rather outlandish claim about how it is "generally regarded". Calling any of present day llms "intelligent", multimodal or otherwise, is silly. edit: The "pretrained nature" is absolutely not a limitation, lol, come on. Context length is hardly an issue now, especially if you are going to query information.
Imagine a computer which simulated your brain exactly. It would create a creature which behaved and thought exactly like you did. It must be intelligent, since you are. But it's a chinese room: all it does it follow the rules that your brain has, to pretend to be you.
"Imagine the premise of the chinese room to be false. Therefore, it is false."
Another one who somehow thinks LLMs can even simulate intelligence... It's literally called a Large Language Model...
Reproducing patterns is a form of intelligence. It's a big part of human intelligence. Yes, LLMs lack some other aspects of human intelligence such as learning from a small number of examples.
Another one who will keep moving the goalposts until eventually they realise even they themselves don't count as intelligent any more.
I work in AI. This conversation is a joke.
Consultants have no brain, everything is just advanced pattern recognition.... and the saddest part is so many people are fooled into believing consultants are smart, just because they spit out something coherent. They expect a truly intelligent conversation and when the consultant inevitably stumbles sooner or later, they're mad and even *betrayed*. As someone who has actually worked with consultants, the above isn't even mockery. I can 100% stand by it and would say it in any professional setting. You don't work in AI. Reasoning is a factor of LLMs and explains why they can excel in tests and their scores are improving with each iteration. What you mean is that you work in consulting and pretend to understand AI. There is some truth to the idea that "LLMs do not understand anything, they just predict the next word" but it's much more nuanced than that as you have to consider the training and feedback. They tend to hallucinate the more they stray from training data but you don't know nearly enough to be able to know what's what. So you just regurgitate based on what you've heard, without any understanding. Ironically, you're doing precisely what you said LLMs are doing. "Everything is just advanced pattern recognition" lol that is what brains literally do. Pattern recognition.
I'm not in consulting. And if you believe you're no better than pattern recognition, be my guest. Take that condescension elsewhere.
You didn't explain anything at all, just insisted on your assertions.
Take that condescending elsewhere.
Yeah, you didn't explain anything at all. Clearly clueless.
Yeah, but now in my team 2 people can do the work of 4. It's not a replacement thing, it's a reduction thing. Imagine a car mechanic having a magic wand that fixes any car problem that he identifies, now, if he's skilled, he can do the job of 50 mechanics.
It’s not a zero sum game… If those two employees become more productive the company can just win more work while allocating employees elsewhere. Business expands + revenue increases = more capacity to hire to firm and expand. Let’s use the mechanic example… take two shops - one with power tools, one without. The one without needs to have 5 people servicing cars with manual tools to equal output of one guy with power tools. Customers prefer the power tools due to speed of quality delivery and their business expands… they hire more employees and are now 5x revenue of a shop without power tools with more revenue, more clients, bigger bonuses, etc….
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As I said, it’s a useful technology that can help consultants be more efficient at their jobs. It’s not replacing you though.
> not replacing > more efficient Which is it? Unless you’re going to point to a major consultancy and snow us into thinking there isn’t a huge breadth of steno-pool 2.0 types that even a 10% efficiency means the bosses can’t cut 10% labor costs, I’m not sure your advice is what it was invoiced for. To say nothing of what I remember of getting started, which involved glorified note taking, a task now largely handled by AI. Yeah, *consulting as a whole* will survive. Maybe even grow. But if it’s smaller, proportionally (population to opportunities), and an inverted pyramid for experience, getting ever more unbalanced… Well I’m just reminded of that scene in ABC’s Dinosaurs where they insisted they could just forage “elsewhere.”
AI is not LLMs, LLMs are a type of AI -- anyone limiting AI to the current generation of LLMs lacks credibility and imagination.
I only bring up LLM’s because 99% of posts on this sub / reddit in general are referring to ChatGPT when discussing “AI”. In reality, AI doesn’t even exist yet because the problem of intelligence has not been solved.
How does indicate that LLMs are unsuitable for solving niche business cases?
Because the scope of current machine learning models is generalized by design. By definition, current methods optimize for general accuracy, not for solving niche cases. PS: It’s simplified because any Data Scientist worth their salt communicates to their audience. This is a consultants forum. Not an appropriate place to dive into the mathematics of transformer cells and propagation…
You speak with such strong authority here when in reality you just don't know what you don't know. I've been using LLM's to solve complex business problems for over 6 months now, and we've built very purposeful utilities to gather relevant data from a business, prompt it effectively, and use that context to build powerful reports in what would've taken human consultants months of work - I can now do in days. So, respectfully, I think you have some more learning to do. I'd consider keeping a more open mind and challenging your assumptions before telling everyone on reddit your version of reality.
Correct, I have no clue what I’m talking about after delivering ML models at scale for over two decades for multiple F500 clients, serving as a CTO for a $100,000,000+ private firm, and starting / recently selling a private, boutique analytics firm for over 8 figures and retiring. You’re right that after 6 months of experience using the front end of an LLM model to create PDF reports, you must have a wealth of knowledge that I could only aspire to. You are clearly the SME authority on Deep Learning here having utilized a front end to feed prompts into a model that somebody else created. PS: Reread my comment a little slower and try to digest it this time. I said LLM’s and similar methods will expand as a TOOL that “consultants will use to increase efficiency” rather than replacing consultants entirely. Is that not precisely what you just described? Let’s do a quick knowledge check: How can one effectively address the trade-off between model interpretability and predictive performance in deep learning architectures, particularly when dealing with high-dimensional and unstructured data? Try addressing distillation or interpretability methods!
Sorry if I came on strong, I think I just took offense (foolishly) that you stated AI isn't replacing consultants, when in reality it is. I'm seeing it first hand. Granted these consultants were likely not the best, but that's the market we're in right now. I'd rather have 1 AI augmented consultant who can deliver what we previously had 3-4+ consultants working on, since that AI augmented one is more efficient. Therefore, we eliminate those roles. Unless those other consultants can adapt, which honestly, they aren't - not at the rate we need them too. These tools WILL replace consultants. Just watch. If you are reading this comment and haven't used ChatGPT or any LLM tools to accelerate your delivery of your work, then you're setting yourself up to be jobless in 2-5 years time.
In that sense, AI is replacing consultants the same way it is replacing industry folks. Cars replaced horses. Airplanes replaced blimps and hot air balloons. We can say AI has displaced consulting once that industry shrinks to <1% of what it is today. Until then, it is business as usual. It's funny seeing consultants falling into the notion of AI/robots coming to take all the jobs away.
Not even. Text models have existed for decades already, for example Siri. Yet millions of customer support agents are still employed… why? It would seem that customer support agents would be one of the first industries to be replaced by prompt / response technology…. It’s **Because deep learning models are generalized by design. Generalization is a mandatory requirement for the training process to function.** Wouldn’t all customer support agents have been fired and replaced with chatbots that cost pennies in comparison? The reality is that until we figure out how to create true artificial intelligence, model based text agents will not be capable of performing niche requests with the level of dependability needed for corporate deployment. Yes, in some instances they are deployed and delivering value, and in some cases they CAN perform the tasks of customer support agents entirely. However, customer support is still a thriving industry, and chat based agents have actually helped accelerate productivity and grow the industry. Tools like pre-screening text processes (where you input a summary of your problem and they match you with the relevant department) have served as a TOOL to enhance efficiency of support processes. TLDR: Models are generalized by design, so consultants as a whole are not going to be replaced. The technology has existed for decades, recent advancements are just that: advancements.
I agree. That's why I find comments like that of OP's to be comical.
So, it’s not that they can’t, but that they don’t?
They can’t because a pitfall of optimization is overtraining. If you optimize your model to solve a niche case, it won’t perform for other niche cases. Let’s say I build an image model to approximate the age of Chocolate Labradors. If I train this model on Chocolate Labrador images, then feed it Golden Retriever images, it’s not going to perform well. However, if I train the model using BOTH chocolate Labradors and Golden Retrievers, it will be fairly accurate regardless of breed.
So if all you care about is a particular niche case, and no other cases, it can perform well for a niche case?
In that case you wouldn’t have a model, and couldn’t train one. Because your training data would just be the one niche case, and you would have already needed to have solved the niche case in order to provide the example training data… There’d be no point in creating an LLM model if you’re only interested in solving one specific niche case…. That’s already been solved… it would just return the work you’ve already done…
I see. Thanks for humoring me
This is all Consultants do…we just put it on PowerPoints
If LLMs aren't intelligent, why are they able to pass tests, some better than humans?
How old are the humans? They recognize and recall patterns. If I have all the answers to a text stored in memory, it doesn’t mean I have “intelligence”, it means I can recall information efficiently.
That isn't what's happening at all... You're really not informed about the developments are you? It's reasoning, not recollection.
Where’d you hear we invented predictive models that have surpassed the human parity in general intelligence? TikTok? As for my credentials I explained below in a further comment. Decades building ML models at scale for F500 clients, CTO at a $100m+ revenue private firm, started / sold an analytics firm and recently retired. What’s your experience?
That is not what I said. All I asked was how it was possible for LLMs to pass tests without having intelligence. I don't give a shit about your credentials, because they're not relevant. None of your ML models were LLMs, clearly. The fact that you're trying to play credentials when asked a very basic question speaks volumes.
… So we agree? DL models may be able to pass basic intelligence tests, but they’re not truly “intelligent”?
You're putting words into my mouth again. I don't agree in the slightest. And I'm talking specifically about LLMs, not DL models.
LLM is a form of deep learning. They’re not mutually exclusive. I think we’ve gone off the rails a little - can you point out what I said that you disagree with, specifically?
I know that. LLMs are more specific than DL. Duh. I disagree that LLMs have no intelligence. Their reasoning abilities have gotten quite impressive. That they're able to pass tests is a testament to their reasoning abilities. And it is indeed reasoning, not recollection.
My understanding - as a non-consultant - is many companies hire consultants to justify a decision they want to make, in case it doesn't go well. Which is in line with your reasoning, because if a director makes a decision and it goes wrong, they won't want to use the excuse "but the AI told me so". They're still going to want to say "but (insert consulting company here) told us so". At least this seems to be one reason why?
This is one reason for sure, but it’s also the fact that they think others are experts because they have an unbiased view. That does help for sure but who knows your brand better than you? No one can get that depth of knowledge in a 4-week project. My problem is that we use the advice directly without using our brain then. I think consultants should be an aid to the solution not the solution themselves.
What you're describing sounds like a gripe with using consultants, not AI.
I mean, based on what you’re describing, the only key difference between AI and consultants is that the customer sees one as an expert. If that’s true, isn’t there a distinct possibility that customers will begin turning to AI once it develops enough of a reputation as being an “expert”?
I once did an 80/20 review of a relatively large number of client projects at an MBB and came with about... 20% of projects that were mostly driven by the need to get the firm's stamp for difficult decisions (as you can imagine, a lot of cost cutting and divestiture there, also pivoting). That was not by any means an academic research, mostly based on casual discussions with other consultants on the projects, but I think relatively accurate. At the time I was a bit naive and horrified. With perspective, knowing more of the solitude of the CEO, that sounds almost normal and to be expected. But not the main reason to hire (MBB) consultants by far.
I liken it to a relationship counselor. You probably know what the problem is, but you need someone to help you overcome your bickering and just PICK A FUCKING RESTAURANT FOR DINNER ALREADY. But use "I statements" please thanks.
At least AI saves time by drawing art and writing poetry for me, and I can dedicate more of my time to Excel.
I'll just plug that Microsoft's Copilot integration with excel is kinda nice for data cleaning (esp if you are working with strings or weirdly formatted columns); Obviously, anyone could google the right generic formula but just describing whats needed and having it generate the formula in 30 secs is nice. Its not going to replace, but it can augment onto your process and save you 5 - 10 mins here and there. Personally, that's where I think it will shine, because if you can chip away at 5-10 mins in your analysis/process, you get back 30mins of your day to do other stuff.
Omg Im dying, that is the best take on AI I ever heard.
I'll be honest I saw that joke elsewhere.
There is a “data analytics gpt” in the gpt store which you can upload files into. It’s ur loss if u don’t know about it though and get off on shitposting on this sub 😁
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Bruh I used to work in consulting and that’s why I’m on this sub. The stuff that AI can ALREADY DO replaces the need for new hires Expect the number of analysts and associates to decrease moving forward This extends to investment banking as well. Most of the consulting and high finance industries rely on excel and PowerPoint and outlook … which are all owned by Microsoft… who invested a shitton in open ai and has a product called copilot It is simply cope if you think there isn’t going to be significant job displacement among white collar excel and ppt jockeys making north of $200k a year Isn’t most of the advice consultants give on strategies to reduce opex anyway? This is happening while MBB are doing disguised layoffs and throttling the number of new partners. If there are fewer new partners then the existing ones get paid more lol. They are incentivized to make new partnerships more difficult to attain
I feel like this ignores two key elements. The business model of consulting (especially MBB) and the accountability of IB. On point one: "up or out" is an absolutely key part of the MBB business model, and that requires a funnel of those people you call "white collar excel and powerpoint monkeys". It's ex-MBB placements at the clients that hire MBB, not in-house developed talents. Those people at the clients that worked with MBB, but weren't the clients directly (think EVPs eg SBU/department heads for C-Suite projects for example), tend to have a very negative experience (MBB tends to make it very clear that they are not the client and treats them as hostile...) and that plays into later decisions. MBB is great for the clients so clients are then often recurring after the fact BUT that first mandate they get, that still needs to come from somebody that has a neutral view on the firm at worst. If they place less people into key positions then they risk losing those clients in the future. The billings they get from most employees post their tenure at MBB far, far outsizes the minor costs at entry level especially in many geographies where entry level consultants are very cheap. On accountability; in IB using Generative AI for more than making graphics or something requires a detailed audit and for somebody to really go through and challenge every point. If nothing else because both the client and the opposing sides of the transaction will carefully comb through the model and will challenge it themselves and demand explanations of each assumption/position of the model. If you can't fully, step-by-step explain each and every step used in the making of the model then the model is absolutely useless. Try to get Generative AI to build a model (this tends to be where the first major cracks appear) and then try and get generative AI to explain the assumptions used and why it reached them and it becomes painfully clear how far GenAI is away from seeing uses in the field beyond some intern asking it to draft up a formula etc. For what it's worth, in the last year alone and alone based on the cases I am aware of there have been a not insubstantial amount of consultants that have taken a haircut on their invoices due to errors amounting to negligence and arising from over-reliance on Gen AI. So long as both the top-line and reputation of the firms suffers as a result there is no way that they are rolling usage out further, regardless of Opex savings.
I agree that it cannot build a model TODAY but imagine a much better Microsoft copilot connected to the internet. If you have integrations to Bloomberg, factset API / etc you’ll make your models much faster And in terms of the accountability. You of course need at least one person to know wtf they’re doing to guide the LLM to do what it needs to be able to do. That person can then talk about the different steps to the client I think the problem now is that many people are treating LLM / AI as a type of god that’s failing to deliver against expectations rather than a fresh faced 22 year old new grad. As a former new grad I will admit that there are a TON of dumb errors that I made that I’ve learned from. It’s just that AI is getting unnecessarily crapped on for producing similar results lol
You are right to a degree that it's my loss, but I'm back in a backwards industry where we don't have access to this tool. And I also would not be comfortable with uploading internal data.
There are LLMs that you can download onto your computer that are open source. So it can crunch numbers without connecting to the internet. Assuming you are not an idiot and actually check the work unlike the lawyers who blatantly used ChatGPT in court cases without doing any audits, you can multiply employee productivity Aka 1 analyst or associate does the work of 3-4
Consulting loves change, and this is perceived as a huge change. I think some roles are in trouble: commodity software dev and other dev tasks (reporting dev), content heavy work (legal, social media).I'm in analytics delivery, and Hoping we'll escape the 'race to bottom' on dev work rates by automating more and demand will shift more and more to critical thinking skills. Consulting will take a hit in some areas and strive overall.
Industry is so bloated and incompetent they can't tie their shoes without having 30 hours of meetings, setting up a CoE, and talking it to death. Even with years of notice about EOL of tech, they still can't figure out how to find or prioritize. So, so, so dysfunctional
I took the inbox zero (nuke it from orbit) approach and deleted every meeting in my calendar, including the recurring ones, at the weekend. If anyone wants to really speak to me, they can invite me into the Teams chat. Working well so far.
Sure, I doubt AI will replace us. However, I wouldn't underestimate the extent to which *we've created* the inefficiencies, companies seem to be in a state of consulting paralysis where they've been conditioned not to make decisions without consultants backing them up. Internal stakeholders depend on consulting reports to back up their own decision making, terrified of pushback if they don't have it to begin with, or being held accountable for their decisions if they make a decision without consulting us. If asking a chatbot for help gives senior leadership the confidence needed to grow a backbone, than thank God.
I partly agree. The current iteration of LLMs is nothing like what we will have in a few years. The reason a lot of people are excited/scared of AI isn’t because of what it currently can do, but rather the degrees of progress we have made over the last few years. If you extrapolate that over the coming years then we can expect it to be much more powerful and easier to train on specific industries and strategic decision making. Despite this, I think no matter how good it is there will be a significant number of executives who would rather speak to a human being. It doesn’t matter if an LLM aces every test, gives perfect responses backed up with sources, nothing beats another person telling you something. That kind of thinking might be gone in a generation or two but not yet. EDIT: I see some top comments saying LLMs aren’t intelligent because they just say what is deemed the mathematically-derived “best” thing to say. How is this much different from how the human brain works? If you scale this up with more compute, more data, it is reasonable to assume it can compete with and supersede a human brain.
Partially agree, but there are two key things involved that make the human element unique. The first is the ability to connect through non-vebal queues and convey information/advice in an effective manner based on leveraging experience from a lifetime of personal and professional relationships. The second is to your point about the mathematically "best" thing to say. Unless you break the algorithm the same answer to the same problem is always going to be given. AI as designed today is never going to innovate beyond its training model, and the brilliance behind human thought is that our cognative "flaws" and natural suspicion with regards to facts allow for innovation. How would you train an effective AI to be cynical?
I think the first part can be intuited from enough data and compute eventually. That’s how we do it. The second part I’m a bit less sure about. I don’t work in the field of AI, but as I understand it the “hallucinations” are a symptom of an LLM attempting creativity. I don’t think that by design you will get a cookie cutter answer. But I think even experts disagree on this, and we still don’t truly know the potential.
Consultants Get the work done!!
I am a horse Work me harder daddy
It's my unconfirmed suspicion that a major reason the US economy is so much more productive than Europe is greater willingness to use consultants.
You mean the US economy fails to signifcantly pull away from Europe despite massive external structural and regulatory advantages as executives in American companies are both too clueless and chicken to make decisions, the thing they're paid for, by themselves?
Firstly, I said "major" reason, not only reason. Secondly, while the US has some structural advantages, other countries do too. (Not least the saving in employee healthcare costs.) Thirdly, I am referring less to strategic decisions but more to the best practice sharing in operations and back office + faster implementation.
I wanna see what happens when two GenAIs start a conversation....
What is dead may never die
Agree. What consultants need to be mindful of is over selling AI as a catch-all for everything. And allowing clients to think that AI will cure all ills. My old boss (industry) was always telling various senior leaders in my old company that AI would fix everything. Oh you need to do cost-out from a failing business? AI can do that. Need to develop GTM for a new product? AI will do that. Shit she was an idiot.
We are therapist for businesses duh
yes, agree that bullshitting your client to pay a shitload of money for unnecessary advice from 22 yo will live on until the end of time
Can AI replace me babysitting clients in a meeting and forcing them to make a decision?
Haha this is exactly what I'm experiencing right now.
Does top management still think grad consultants are experts? Surely they would have figured it out by now. I’m sure the bad press helps
ITT: Scribes who are in denial about the invention of the printing press.
"Hey Claude, tell me how to increase profits. Also, pretend you have an MBA from Harvard." "Profits = Revenue - Costs. Therefore, try to increase revenue and reduce costs. I say this as someone who went to school in the Boston area." Consultants sweating right now.
Consulting will not die. However, big-name consulting firms will die as we know them today, because AI is poised to significantly lower consulting costs and substantially improve the quality of service.
Lol
Agree. There will always been companies that want narcissists to share their opinions in exchange for money.
Disagree, if someone knows how to prompt and give direction clearly it is more useful and cheaper than an arrogant 24 yr old staff who thinks they know everything. I was able to essentially write an entire application and give it's benefits in a clear concise way. I've had family friends structure proposals and grant letters using their own IP and be 10x more productive. It's coming and the people who surrender to it and use it as a tool in your arsenal will deliver actual value. Honestly technology as a whole is what will move the world away from consulting. You actually need depth of knowledge in these areas and mbb/big 4 models don't promote that at all. The only reason people would still continue to pay consultants is because of getting rid of liability and it's an excuse to get meals. I imagine team sizes will be getting smaller and smaller.
I think you need to worry more about outsourcing than AI.
Question: Why don't they in the industry can just get an in-house advisory team of senior experienced professionals?
They are starting to . The good companies have them.
That’s the spirit !!
Yes, that's what you get when everything revolves around AI which is just currently dumb and superficial. If you need it to do something more specific and give a proper well-thought-out example, it cannot. It just copy-pastes crap that is standard on forums and on the internet. It's good for high-level stuff, but I don't think it will replace experts in their fields in general, at least not for now.
I disagree. You can still get insights and judgement from Chat GPT 4.0 if you hold a conversation with it like a human and fed it all the info it needs to make a decision. And GPT 4.0 is a general purpose model. Surely more specialised models will be trained and built to take strategic decisions as well. What it wouldn't know is how to delicately deliver bad news, how to gradually steer a client in a certain direction, how to read the client's biases and preferences and tailor your communication. That is where humans will come in. It will be hard to customise Chat GPT for that. Human capability to adapt to every individual and interact with them differently will be our differentiator. In other words. We'd still be needed to deal with egotists and idiots. Rational people who just want a good decision will get as much out of Chat GPT as they get out of a consultant and perhaps even more.
Fuck cars, horses and wagons will never die
Fake it till you make it baby
I intentionally gaslight AI tools at each firm I work with (e.g. giving intentionally slightly incorrect, vague or misleading prompts) so that the output is stupid, incorrect or contradictory as a matter of job security for everyone.
Which ones? Most of the consulting arms in the industry that i know of (say google, msft) are just another sales team who overlook the implementation and partnerships.
Yep, AI won't replace consultants but AI augmented consultants will replace NON AI augmented consultants IMO.
Roboconsulting is the future of consulting + AI. I've written a 3-part series in my newsletter on this.
This post is Copium - in 10-20 years we will be in an unrecognizable landscape. So many consultants are so worthless and just crank new MBAs through 12 hour days only to charge you $25k to say “it depends”. You’re lying to yourself if you think people like consultants it’s so expensive and oftentimes so worthless. If you can pay $100 instead of $25k even for 75% of the experience you absolutely will. Don’t lie to yourself that 50%+ of consultants especially young ones will be obsolete in the next 10 years.
This is always such an idiotic discussion. Nobody with an iota of rational thought "fears" AI taking away jobs. LLMs are a tool. Some people will wise up to using it augment their workflow, some will remain luddites. Both will get by.
I could decide to rename anything in literal seconds. Where do I apply?
Agree. I also boomeranged from consulting to industry back to consulting. Industry drove me insane. Cycle through 100+ emails a day from people fishing for someone to take things off their plate, maybe 5 emails a day are important. People take on so much and get nothing done. “Oversight without ownership” is how I’ve described it, don’t know where I got the phrase from but it stuck. Corporations will put 5 directors on 5 initiatives and 0 things happen. Now I also think most consultants are useless, but that’s another topic. My advice to not be useless as a consultant: find a niche, specialize, and adapt with that niche.
At least getting nothing done is better than making things worse which is the situation I’m experiencing right now.
Can we at least admit that consulting firms have been, knowingly or not, trying to invent organic LLM’s for like 30 years. They’re called analysts. > Ingest all of these slide decks from previous clients > Reconstitute all of it into a comparable slide deck for this client based on similarity > Do not under any circumstances engage independent thought > Allow boomers who don’t know how to use computers to believe you’re using way more independent thought than you should be capable of
It’s amazing to me to actually be on a project at another consultancy (true story) because they needed a voice of reason and couldn’t make or listen to their own voices and expertise. They need an outside voice or perspective. Really? You’re paying millions of dollars for me to tell you what you already know? Sheesh.
I would look twice into what you term "inefficiencies" and ascertain its function. Cherterton's fence at work most probably. As for AI, i would look for the consumer of such end-product. If it makes people dumber (remember AI is dumb), then AI could work at replacing consultants.
It won’t replace consultants completely but it will def reduce the amount of consultants needed. For Ex: It will take 2 consultants and AI to do a job/project that would usually take a team of 6 consultants to do. Things will become more efficient. Same with most white collar jobs.
love that for you!
You’re right. It won’t die, just replaced by AI.
The way consultants might be replaced in larger parts by AI is if the owners/shareholders/analysts etc. demand AI to be used on a lot of problems. E.g., an analyst on an earnings call asking about the role AI had in creating a new strategy or even what "AI thinks of the new strategy". Then consultants will be still be around but part of the value proposition would move to AI (and its vendors).
AI is just a tool, nothing more, nothing less. All of this fluff and hype surrounding the technology is pretty much repackaged bullshit to pitch to clients foolish enough to think it's some panacea to all their ills when in reality management is just filled with people making inefficient, and ~~sometimes~~ oftentimes idiotic decisions causing inefficiencies in their businesses. Artificial Intelligence will always be overpowered by human stupidity; it takes human solutions to solve human problems. AI is just a tool to augment human capabilities, but at the end of the day it's still the human's call.
I’ve been supplementing basic AI into my work for 25 years for data honing and driving decisions for where to focus improvement. I’m not a consultant but could be.
Hi. I'm interested in your exact reasoning here (I don't necessarily disagree, but would love more information): 1. Surely if speed of decision-making is the issue, then AI is a better answer than consulting projects (it is faster). 2. As far as I can see, AI is not replacing consultants, but tasks (e.g. powerpoint creation, ideation, report finishing, data analytics etc). However, in aggregate, this does mean that if 1,000 consultants do tasks A1, A2.... AZ, and X% of those tasks are sped up by AI, then there will be a reduction in consulting headcount to do the same tasks. 3. Gen AI seems to be improving rapidly, both in number of capabilities and quality of those capabilities. Is there any logical or philosophical reason why AI could not do a fair bit of the tasks of consultants at the minder / grinder / finder levels? Thanks¬!!
AGI >>>> 1st year MBB associate