AI isn't replacing us yet

There’s no denying that Artificial Intelligence has changed the nature of work, especially in consulting. What once took days now takes minutes. Tools can now extract insights from thousands of documents, draft reports, and even generate strategy slides with surprising coherence. The transformation is real, and it’s already reshaping the expectations of both clients and consultants.

But while the technology is moving fast, the idea that AI can fully replace human experts is still far from reality.

Consulting, at its core, is not just about information: it's about interpretation, relationships, expertise, and truly understanding the markets they are in. Unfortunately there is no way to train ai to negotiate with a group of unhappy creditors in a specific market and reach a desirable outcome. Not to mention understanding the nuances of inter-company politics and navigating government institutions.

Expertise in a domain still matters because AI can be convincingly confident even when it's wrong. In many specialized fields, there simply isn't enough publicly available data for AI to be reliable. So, while AI is clearly advancing quickly, its path to navigating areas that require real-world experience with people and businesses remains unclear.

In fact, we’re now seeing a quiet reversal of last year’s layoffs, where teams were downsized with the hope that AI would fill the gap. As many firms are finding out, some of those roles are now being rehired - not because the tools failed, but because they were never meant to operate alone. The thinking was simple: if AI can do the task, maybe we don’t need the person. But real consulting isn’t about tasks, it’s about judgment.

Yes, AI helps. It’s a powerful assistant. It can accelerate analysis, offer new angles, and surface connections we may have missed. But it still needs a human hand to direct it, to know what to ask, what to discard, and what truly matters in a given context.

The future likely belongs to those who can do both: the consultants who know how to harness AI to enhance their thinking, without outsourcing their thinking to it. As one of our partners recently put it: "AI can write the slide, but it can't tell you if it makes sense."

We should be excited by these tools. They are here to stay. But we shouldn’t confuse speed with wisdom, or automation with understanding.

For now at least - judgment, trust, and experience still lead the way.