Will Consultants be Replaced by AI?

Since we're consultants, we hope not.

But that's thesis of HBR's AI May Soon Replace Even the Most Elite Consultants.

Key quote:

“Quant Consultants” and “Robo Advisers” will offer faster, better, and more profound insights at a fraction of the cost and time of today’s consulting firms and other specialized workers.

The reason, according to the article, is that machines are much better and faster at processing information than humans.

Again from the article:

.. the processing power of four smart consultants with excel spreadsheets is miniscule in comparison to a single smart computer using AI running for an hour, based on continuous, non-stop machine learning.

This is true, but doesn't have us worried about our jobs - at least not yet.

Some of our clients are world class leaders in the application and use of machine learning and AI. We also use AI tools in our work.

So we know the power of machine learning and AI.

We also are well aware of how fast machine learning is advancing. Things that seemed many years away - like an AI beating one of the world's top Go masters - are happening much faster than expected.

But working with AI also exposes us to its weaknesses and limitations. These include:

1. Machine learning requires digital data. This sounds obvious, and it is. But the reality is a lot of data and information consultants work with is not digital. 

2. Training AI systems isn't easy. While the technology continues to advance, there's still a lot of manual, time consuming work to train an AI system. Data tagging is one of the biggest challenges. The Financial Times article Self-driving cars prove to be labour-intensive for humans nicely covers this topic.

3. AI systems tend to be highly specialized. AI systems are quite sophisticated and smart, but generally are only good at one thing. For example, the DeepMind AlphaGo system that defeated the human Go champion is great at Go. But it doesn't know how to play any other game, or do anything but play Go.

Most consulting projects require looking at a diverse set of issues and problems. AI is nowhere near being able to address these types of projects.

4. AI systems are good at answering questions, but not good at asking them. Or, as Pablo Picasso said (maybe), "Computers Are Useless. They Can Only Give You Answers". 

Most any consultant will tell you asking the right questions is the key to being a good consultant.

5. Consulting is human. Most consultants will tell you a big part of the job is relating to and understanding the client on a human level. This includes understanding the culture of the client organization and the political and interpersonal impacts of the study results. Good luck getting an AI to do these things anytime soon.

Having said all that, AI systems make great tools for consultants.

We recently used machine learning to create a bot that scanned, screened and sorted through a very large database looking for patterns.

Without an AI tool, this project would not have been feasible. But without us humans, the bot by itself would have been of little value.

Which gets to the key point.

Humans aided and augmented by AI systems and other forms of automation will make the best consultants (and knowledge workers in general), at least for the foreseeable future. 

Further out in the future, maybe Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking will be right and AI systems will take over the world. 

We don't think this will happen.

But these are two pretty smart people, so we should at least keep an eye on the machines.

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