| Having been a consultant, what strikes me about this is the next, to me seemingly obvious question: What if you just removed the consultants entirely and just had GPT-4 do the work directly for the client? If you’re a client and need a consultant to do something, you have to explain the requirement to them, review the work, give feedback, and so forth. There will likely be a few meetings in there. But if GPT-4 can make consultants so much better, I imagine it can also do their work for them. And if you combine this with the reduction in communications overhead that comes from not working with an outside group, why wouldn’t clients just accrue all the benefits to themselves, plus the benefit of not paying outside consultants or dealing with the overhead of managing them? This is especially the case when the client is already a domain expert but just needs some additional horsepower. For example, marketing brand managers may work with marketing consultants even though they know their products and marketing very well. They just need more resources, which can come in the form of consultants for reasons such as internal head-count restrictions. Anyway, I just wonder if BCG thought through the implications of participating in this study. To me it feels like a very short step from “helps consultants help their clients” to “helps clients directly and shows consultants aren’t really necessary.” Especially so if the client just hires an intern and gives them GPT-4. |