My experience is that management consultants love AI; they're oddly blind to it compared to other professions, and they're the first to start using it everywhere. The immediate surface appearance of quality is catnip to them.
This should make everyone even more suspicious of the management consultancies claiming to employ the smartest people in the world.
> This should make everyone even more suspicious of the management consultancies claiming to employ the smartest people in the world.
who thinks they're the smartest? how long have you been in the working world?
they're there to present a veneer of credibility to allow executives to make risky moves or justify ugly choices.
you're a executive in a F500 looking at blowing $200M of shareholder cash on something -- do your due diligence and get someone "smart" to tell you what's what.
Whats the point of paying for this report if they cant even be bothered to do it. Mistakes in a 425,000 government report are unacceptable. This is what we are basing years of policy off it needs to be rock solid information. In a sane world the NZ government would never contract them again.
Wouldn’t be all that surprised if quality went up with the use of AI for this stuff.
The word “slop” is tossed around way too much, but these sorts of engagements are a perfect example of replacing low value human slop with computer generated slop.
Probably a net positive to society because a few interns at a consulting company got to spend a Friday night enjoying themselves vs. working on a BS report.
Yes, I might be slightly jaded. But I’m not certain I feel this is hyperbole either.
Someone at work said something along the lines of "so AI is going to write the documents and then people will use AI to summarise them". I think this is a good opportunity to rationalise bureaucracy but I fear we will only mindlessly automate it.
With many bureaucratic systems AI seems to be used to build a better horse when cars and tractors already exist. Everything was built for a paper based world and was never designed with data or automation in mind.
I see it as the first step towards removing entire workflows like this.
Once the humans are removed, there is far less motivated reasoning to keep that process alive if it’s just robots burning tokens passing paper back and forth.
I will likely somehow be proven wrong, but it is one of the main uses I am optimistic for in the AI space.
Yes that is a good point and AI also gives us tools to make traditional systems more quickly. It could actually deliver on some of the original benefit promised by computing.
I wouldn't say they're at threat from AI. Consultancies are most of the time there to partially offload work from the main company, and also to serve as someone to blame when something does not go well. It's rarely about the content itself.
Interestingly they never seem to suffer when they get blamed for their shoddy work. I guess it's free advertising "use us as a third party to blame for terrible decisions and bad data"
Like with bit IT projects I think simple truth is that projects have grown too large for anyone but select handful to sell them as service. So even if you remember bad experience from past 3 you go back to the 4th each single time.
If the whole British Post Office Scandal (Fujistu, btw) in the UK wasn't enough, nothing will be. People literally killed themselves over the accusations/convictions that were 100% false. One of the major people responsible was an Anglican Priest(!) of all people who was so sure that the Computer Is Right... [0]
We're headed for even rougher times if LLMs are going to be taken "at their word".
[0] Now, watching her testimony, it seems she was willfully complicit and it's a disgrace that she isn't in prison, but that's tangential. The "system" was responsible, but without personal accountability, nothing will change. So it goes.
My experience is that management consultants love AI; they're oddly blind to it compared to other professions, and they're the first to start using it everywhere. The immediate surface appearance of quality is catnip to them.
This should make everyone even more suspicious of the management consultancies claiming to employ the smartest people in the world.
> This should make everyone even more suspicious of the management consultancies claiming to employ the smartest people in the world.
who thinks they're the smartest? how long have you been in the working world?
they're there to present a veneer of credibility to allow executives to make risky moves or justify ugly choices.
you're a executive in a F500 looking at blowing $200M of shareholder cash on something -- do your due diligence and get someone "smart" to tell you what's what.
It's because "the immediate surface appearance of quality" is all that management consultants are capable of themselves.
They cannot perceive the difference.
^^ The truth, the truth!
Second level is that their target market is top management that are also incapable of anything except "the immediate surface appearance".
Whats the point of paying for this report if they cant even be bothered to do it. Mistakes in a 425,000 government report are unacceptable. This is what we are basing years of policy off it needs to be rock solid information. In a sane world the NZ government would never contract them again.
Because these consultants are only hired to shift the blame and responsibility away from civil servants.
"It was not my fault, we were just following Deloitte advice!"
It always has been a waste of money
Wouldn’t be all that surprised if quality went up with the use of AI for this stuff.
The word “slop” is tossed around way too much, but these sorts of engagements are a perfect example of replacing low value human slop with computer generated slop.
Probably a net positive to society because a few interns at a consulting company got to spend a Friday night enjoying themselves vs. working on a BS report.
Yes, I might be slightly jaded. But I’m not certain I feel this is hyperbole either.
How could they tell the difference between an AI slop report and a standard Deloitte slop report?
Shocked Pikachu
https://fortune.com/2025/10/07/deloitte-ai-australia-governm...
Someone at work said something along the lines of "so AI is going to write the documents and then people will use AI to summarise them". I think this is a good opportunity to rationalise bureaucracy but I fear we will only mindlessly automate it.
With many bureaucratic systems AI seems to be used to build a better horse when cars and tractors already exist. Everything was built for a paper based world and was never designed with data or automation in mind.
I see it as the first step towards removing entire workflows like this.
Once the humans are removed, there is far less motivated reasoning to keep that process alive if it’s just robots burning tokens passing paper back and forth.
I will likely somehow be proven wrong, but it is one of the main uses I am optimistic for in the AI space.
Yes that is a good point and AI also gives us tools to make traditional systems more quickly. It could actually deliver on some of the original benefit promised by computing.
Was anything of value lost ?
Consultancies are under a direct threat from AI, so they are weirdly trying to over-embrace it in a hope that that will save them somehow.
I wouldn't say they're at threat from AI. Consultancies are most of the time there to partially offload work from the main company, and also to serve as someone to blame when something does not go well. It's rarely about the content itself.
Interestingly they never seem to suffer when they get blamed for their shoddy work. I guess it's free advertising "use us as a third party to blame for terrible decisions and bad data"
Like with bit IT projects I think simple truth is that projects have grown too large for anyone but select handful to sell them as service. So even if you remember bad experience from past 3 you go back to the 4th each single time.
Like here. No one fired, no refund, tax payers happily scammed again.
If the whole British Post Office Scandal (Fujistu, btw) in the UK wasn't enough, nothing will be. People literally killed themselves over the accusations/convictions that were 100% false. One of the major people responsible was an Anglican Priest(!) of all people who was so sure that the Computer Is Right... [0]
We're headed for even rougher times if LLMs are going to be taken "at their word".
[0] Now, watching her testimony, it seems she was willfully complicit and it's a disgrace that she isn't in prison, but that's tangential. The "system" was responsible, but without personal accountability, nothing will change. So it goes.
Yup, they are often just Accountability Sinks.