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Deloitte to refund the Australian government after using AI in $440k report

theguardian.com

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Re: Deloitte to refund the Australian government after using AI in $440k report

#141

Post by guywithahat »

JCM9 wrote: post #106

CEOs keep taking (mostly misguided) about how GenAI will replace their people. The thing they miss, and this highlights, is that customers will also expect to pay far less for GenAI produced workloads, which likely more than eliminates any cost savings. Congrats clueless CEO… you’re now selling a worse product at lower margins. Success!

> CEOs keep taking (mostly misguided) about how GenAI will replace their people. The thing they miss, and this highlights, is that customers will also expect to pay far less for GenAI produced workloads, which likely more than eliminates any cost savings

Is this bad? This seems good. The end goal being once it's cheaper, you can do more revenue. Also while I obviously don't stand by this Deloitte scandal when done right GenAI work is better

Re: Deloitte to refund the Australian government after using AI in $440k report

#142

Post by icedchai »

oytis wrote: post #3

Can someone explain to me how and why consulting works? If a man had no real skills except giving advice left and right, he would be considered a loser. Now make it a company, and corporations and governments queue up for their advice. Wouldn't your own employees be in a better position to give you advice than people who know nothing of your business and who's only skills are googling and making presentations?

Many of the people hiring the "consultants" simply don't know any better. They are easily persuaded by stuffed shirts with AI generated slide decks yapping about cost savings, scale, and deep domain knowledge. Also, they want someone to blame when it all goes south.

Re: Deloitte to refund the Australian government after using AI in $440k report

#143

Post by kube-system »

SilverSlash wrote: post #37
otikik wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not only "giving advice". "Consulting" includes a range of things, down to implementing software. The customers are big companies with huge budgets, and a lot of red tape. The guarantees they want the most are legal. If things don't go well in a project, or if a project isn't implemented on time, they want to have someone to sue. Someone that will not simply go bankrupt and disappear. "Quality" is almost a nice…

> I once was asked to estimate how much would it cost to change one (static) website's scrollbar color from default to yellow. The quote for that change alone, perhaps 10 LOC change implemented by someone in India, was 3000 euros. This is absolutely insane and, quite honestly, hard to believe.

If you ever dealt with any projects at bloated Fortune 500s, it's not really that hard to believe.

Take five people at $200 an hour and drag them into three meetings. There's 3000 bucks right there.

Or, take one consultant and buy them the last minute plane ticket, to write 10 lines of code, at a customer who insists that everything be done on-site.

There's a whole lot of ways that a bloated company can blow $3000 really quickly.

Re: Deloitte to refund the Australian government after using AI in $440k report

#144

Post by dwattttt »

arethuza wrote: post #116
decimalenough wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From my experience with using a $WITCH for a large support engagement, the A team woos you, the B team is what you get initially, and as soon as they think you've got your eye off the ball, they swap in the Z team. This was for a contract where we made it very clear that quality/skill was paramount and we would happily pay above market rates forever if they could maintain it. Of course they got greedy and lost the de…

Or A subcontracts to B who subcontracts with C and A tries to keep all of this secret until team C end up being involved in a war...

You have to keep a close leash on your contractors: https://www.loweringthebar.net/2019/10/fourth-level-subcontr...

EDIT: I am _very_ sad that link rendering truncated "murder plot" from that

Re: Deloitte to refund the Australian government after using AI in $440k report

#145

Post by BobaFloutist »

coldpie wrote: post #135
trollbridge wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The quality of chiropractors varies so wildly that I would refuse to be treated by a new chiropractor that got bait-and-switched like that.

Skip all the fluff and try being treated by a doctor instead! That's what they're there for.

Perhaps a pt

Re: Deloitte to refund the Australian government after using AI in $440k report

#146

Post by kube-system »

oytis wrote: post #3

Can someone explain to me how and why consulting works? If a man had no real skills except giving advice left and right, he would be considered a loser. Now make it a company, and corporations and governments queue up for their advice. Wouldn't your own employees be in a better position to give you advice than people who know nothing of your business and who's only skills are googling and making presentations?

Consultants are just professional contractors. An organization will call them when they can't/won't/don't want to do it themselves.

Re: Deloitte to refund the Australian government after using AI in $440k report

#147

Post by AlotOfReading »

guywithahat wrote: post #141
JCM9 wrote: post #106

CEOs keep taking (mostly misguided) about how GenAI will replace their people. The thing they miss, and this highlights, is that customers will also expect to pay far less for GenAI produced workloads, which likely more than eliminates any cost savings. Congrats clueless CEO… you’re now selling a worse product at lower margins. Success!

> CEOs keep taking (mostly misguided) about how GenAI will replace their people. The thing they miss, and this highlights, is that customers will also expect to pay far less for GenAI produced workloads, which likely more than eliminates any cost savings Is this bad? This seems good. The end goal being once it's cheaper, you can do more revenue. Also while I obviously don't stand by this Deloitte scandal when done ri…

"GenAI done right" comes across like the famously elusive "agile done properly" and "safe C". If everyone is holding it wrong, are they?

Re: Deloitte to refund the Australian government after using AI in $440k report

#148

Post by kube-system »

vintermann wrote: post #33
oytis wrote: post #3

Can someone explain to me how and why consulting works? If a man had no real skills except giving advice left and right, he would be considered a loser. Now make it a company, and corporations and governments queue up for their advice. Wouldn't your own employees be in a better position to give you advice than people who know nothing of your business and who's only skills are googling and making presentations?

Leaders are usually insecure. They need validation. Management consultants give it, for money. In theory, they can take the blame if things go very wrong. But in practice, management consultants tell you to do what everyone else does, and that means both leaders and consultants are saved by the "nobody ever got fired for buying IBM" effect. But there's more to it than that. Your investors don't trust you if you're no…

The value of validation from a consultant normally doesn't have anything to do with insecurity. Most corporate leaders got where they are because they are quite secure, even to a fault. But, corporate politics is a mess at a lot of large organizations. Bringing in an external opinion, is a helpful defense to politically motivated decision-making.

Re: Deloitte to refund the Australian government after using AI in $440k report

#149

Post by mbesto »

oytis wrote: post #3

Can someone explain to me how and why consulting works? If a man had no real skills except giving advice left and right, he would be considered a loser. Now make it a company, and corporations and governments queue up for their advice. Wouldn't your own employees be in a better position to give you advice than people who know nothing of your business and who's only skills are googling and making presentations?

Consultant here!

Two reasons:

- Expertise

- Bandwidth

That's it. That's the reason you hire consultants. Your team either doesn't have the expertise or the bandwidth to do the work you require. Could you hire for expertise and bandwidth? Absolutely. Is it hard ($$) to do that? Yes, and in most cases it's arguably WAY harder, especially when the effort is episodic.

Re: Deloitte to refund the Australian government after using AI in $440k report

#150

Post by thmsths »

lnsru wrote: post #25
rwaksmunski wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, when you have a bad idea you want to implement but don't want to take responsibility for it, you keep on hiring consultants until you hear what you want to hear. Quality of the consulting is irrelevant and interns or AI will do just fine. When the project inevitably implodes, you blame the consultant. Your own employees will give you advice on what's best for the company, not necessary what's best for you so yo…

Exactly. These are paid villains to craft masterplan for multiple layoff rounds. Because the good and loving CEO loves everybody in his kingdom and can’t hurt anyone. The paid consultants are the evil who laid those nice people off. The consultants are the part of modern faceless mega corporations to outsource decision making. The CEO is not liable for any decisions nowadays.

And yet they still get paid as if they were...
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