MPhil-like thesis paper · Open Access

Proletarianisation of Advisory in AI Settings

LJ, random thoughts

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Executive Summary
Under current conditions, generic AI erodes the judgment that advisory fees and public trust rest on, not by replacing senior people but by removing the work that forms them.

A two-page brief for partners in advisory firms: the business risk, what changes at each career stage, the concerns for firms (identity, voice, sovereignty, knowledge leakage, liability at the signature), four possible futures, and what partners can do now.

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Why this work

AI is changing advisory work faster than the profession is thinking about what it changes. Most accounts are either optimistic (AI empowers advisers) or alarmist (AI replaces them). This work looks at a quieter effect with a longer tail: what happens to the way advisers are formed, and so to the judgment clients pay for, when the tools absorb the work juniors used to learn on. The effect does not show in this year’s productivity figures; it shows in the partners a firm will have in twenty years, and in whether anyone answerable still stands behind the advice. It is written from inside European infrastructure advisory, supported by published evidence, and published openly so that working advisers, partners and their clients can use it. Each chapter has a plain-language version.

Chapters
01
Introduction
AI in consulting is discussed as a productivity question. This chapter argues that the larger business risk...
→ 02
Situating the Inquiry
Before the argument, the map. The chapter describes the market the argument works on: European infrastructu...
→ 03
Theoretical Framework
Why a faster tool can still leave a firm weaker. The chapter sets out the ideas the argument rests on. Expe...
→ 04
The Materialisation of Expertise
How advisory expertise is actually built. In the person, through years of consequential work and watching s...
→ 05
The Political Economy of AI Mediation
Who controls the tools, and whose way of seeing they carry. When firms reason through the same generic mode...
→ 06
Adjacent Professions
Software, law, medicine and audit met AI before consulting did. Their evidence gives advisory firms four le...
→ 07
Three Transformations across the ChMC Formation Pathway
What AI does at each career stage. Juniors: seniors stop delegating and the work that formed them is done b...
→ 08
Futures: Four Scenarios for AI-Mediated Advisory
Four futures for advisory firms, built as thought-experiments rather than forecasts, on two questions: does...
→ 09
Conclusion: Judgment, Responsibility, and the Conditions of Future Capability
What to do about it. Recommendations for consultants (keep doing the parts of the work your judgment comes ...
→ 10
Annexes
Seven conceptual annexes providing extended treatment of the thesis's core analytical apparatus. Tier 1 ann...
→ 11
Glossary
Definitions of 34 key concepts used in the thesis, grouped thematically across eight sections: the central ...
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How to contribute

This thesis is a living document. Corrections, suggestions, and substantive contributions are welcome — from researchers, practitioners, and anyone with relevant expertise or experience.

01
Open an issue on GitHub to flag an error, suggest a reference, or propose a structural change. This is the lowest-barrier way to contribute.
02
Submit a pull request with your proposed edit. Include a brief note explaining the change and its basis. All PRs are reviewed by the author.
03
Accepted contributors are credited in the thesis acknowledgements section and in the repository's contributor list, with a note on the nature of their contribution.

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License
CC BY-NC 4.0 + CLA

This work is published under the Creative Commons Attribution–NonCommercial 4.0 International license. You are free to share and adapt the text for non-commercial purposes, provided you give appropriate credit.

All contributions submitted via pull request are governed by the Contributor License Agreement (CLA) in this repository: contributors grant the author full copyright in their contributions while retaining credit as named contributors. This ensures the thesis can be maintained, updated, and republished as a coherent whole.

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