AI in Consultancy

Evolution not Revolution

I had a conversation on Friday with someone about how AI would impact consultancy, sparked off a LinkedIn post about how it presents an "existential threat" to consultancies, not a hundred percent agreed on the impact but I think this is not far off the mark and wondered whether others felt the same…

Is AI a Risk to Consulting? – No. The problems we face in doing what we do can be summed up as people not understanding the challenges they face to the right level of depth – usually because it is new/novel or some dramatic change has occurred, and they need to react to it – to be able to solve the problem.

The other issue that often comes up is that problems come from the specifics of the system under change, which are often novel, not well defined, understood or documented and therefore very difficult to model or feed into an AI to create an effective output.

Given these two characteristics, those faced with complex challenges may use AI to give them answers but without the insight or understanding to be able to refine the prompts sufficiently or interrogate the and will still need subject matter experts to help. Solving complex challenges requires a human SME to look across the multi- and inter- disciplinary landscape and understand patterns, behaviours, nuances and levers to come up with the answer. AI will be a valuable tool in the right hands and with the right parameters but will not replace consultants.

That being said, if your business model is based on data analytics, you are going to see some major changes and likely significant downsizing as advanced tools like AI can crunch data faster, in greater bulk and more consistently that a team of people (once set up properly) and has the benefit of being a tool the client business can adopt as BAU without the need to buy in consultants.

Overall, general / generic data processing consultancy is at risk, specific / technically focused consultancy is here to stay.

Thoughts?