PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, one of the world’s largest professional advisory firms, has cut prices for some services as clients raised the fact that the consultancy is using artificial intelligence to complete its work quicker.
“Clients would hear us talking about using AI and say, ‘We want our fair share of those efficiencies,’” PwC Chief AI Officer Dan Priest said in an interview with Bloomberg News. “We certainly, as appropriate, give our clients the pricing benefit of the efficiencies we’re achieving.”
Like it’s competitors, PwC helps clients integrate applications and has used AI to cut the resources required to carry out that work, for example, Priest said. He noted, however, that AI-associated price cuts have “plateaued” because the firm’s use of the technology is also improving the quality of its services. “We’re trying to focus more on the value creation,” he said. “There’s a value to that intelligence.”
The price cuts speak to a long-held belief among some AI experts that the widespread proliferation of the technology will eventually lead to consumers paying less for products. Sam Altman, chief of ChatGPT creator OpenAI, has predicted that the prices of many goods will fall dramatically because of advanced AI systems. And yet, since the start of the generative AI boom, businesses have focused more on the time and cost savings associated with investing in the technology.
Generative AI tools stand to upend the business models of consulting firms in particular as they commonly charge clients based on the time spent on projects. PwC provides a wide range of professional services including audit, tax and advisory consulting.
Priest declined to provide further details on PwC’s pricing, saying that the firm’s broad approach is to “align AI-driven gains with client benefit, whether that’s in efficiency, timeliness, quality or cost.” He estimated, however, that tech consulting firms have improved the efficiency of the systems integration business by roughly 30% with AI.
Those gains were “in large part showing up as price discounts,” he said, before the focus shifted to the increasing value of the service. Priest later said in a statement: “At the end of the day, the biggest benefit for our clients is much more than price, it’s the ability to move faster, operate smarter and trust the results.”
Photograph: Signage at the lobby of PricewaterhouseCoopers Australia office in Sydney, Australia, on Thursday, May 25, 2023. Photo credit: Brent Lewin/Bloomberg
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