40 pointsby billybuckwheat7 hours ago6 comments
  • Planktonne6 hours ago
    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.

    • red-iron-pine28 minutes ago
      > 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.

    • vrganj5 hours ago
      It's because "the immediate surface appearance of quality" is all that management consultants are capable of themselves.

      They cannot perceive the difference.

      • lstodd5 hours ago
        ^^ 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".

  • Fizz437 hours ago
    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.
    • casper145 hours ago
      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

    • phil213 hours ago
      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.

  • forinti5 hours ago
    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.
    • 79523 hours ago
      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.
      • phil213 hours ago
        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.

  • MiroslavPokorny4 hours ago
    Was anything of value lost ?
    • 3 hours ago
      undefined
  • dude2507117 hours ago
    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.
    • Maxion7 hours ago
      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.
      • ferrouswheel7 hours ago
        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"
        • Ekaros5 hours ago
          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.
        • brador5 hours ago
          Like here. No one fired, no refund, tax payers happily scammed again.
      • Quekid56 hours ago
        Yup, they are often just Accountability Sinks.