AI Does Mathy Stuff and Mathematicians Are Annoyed
June 11, 2026
Another dinobaby post. No AI unless it is an image. This dinobaby is not Grandma Moses, just Grandpa Arnold.
Believe it or not: I had a friend. His name was James Terwilliger, Ph.D. He studied mathy stuff. He worked at Halliburton Nuclear with me until a tragic car accident claimed his life. Nevertheless, I remember fondly his standing up in the company cafeteria and saying, “This is Stephen E Arnold. He has a degree in medieval poetry.” The nuclear engineers in the cafeteria roared and hooted. Then, Terdwilliger (my name for him) announced: “Stephen will now recite a poem.” I stood thanked Dr. Terdwilliger and recited William Carlos Williams’ “The Red Wheelbarrow.” It was one sentence and drew a number of nuclear engineering and math wizard responses. Terdwilliger’s took the prize for remarks. He said, “I never read a poem. That’s why.” Halliburton Nuclear employed at that time about 600 nuclear engineers, nuclear physicists, mathematicians, and one person who had a degree in poetry.
Thanks, Midjourney. Good enough.
When I read “Over 150 Mathematicians Warn Governments Not to “Believe the Hype” About AI,” I thought about Terdwilliger. His mindset, as I recall, was different from mine. We had similar interests and our view of humor was congruent. The article could have been assembled by talking to Terdwilliger’s AI simulacrum or other real mathematicians.
I noted this passage:
"There is currently a strong commercial incentive on the part of the technology industry to overstate the capabilities of their products." Terdwilliger would have said, marketers cause more problems than they solve.
The write up adds:
In perhaps the strongest public rebuke yet, a new declaration signed by over 150 mathematics experts from around the world warned governments not to “believe the hype” when it comes to AI’s capabilities to solve complex mathematical problems, throwing cold water on claims of a revolution in the field. In a statement accompanying the 11-page “Leiden Declaration on AI and Mathematics,” International Mathematical Union vice president Ulrike Tillmann argued that AI “raises questions that cannot be left unexamined.” “The future of mathematical research must be guided by human judgment, fair and transparent practices, and the shared values of the global mathematical community,” Tillmann said.
Terdwilliger and other professional mathematicians I have known like Dr. Zbigniew Michaelewicz among others love problems. The whole point is figuring out how to solve, prove, disprove, or mix and match how their brains work to come up with a solution, a proof, or a negative example. Letting a machine solve a problem is probably not what would inspire confidence in the outputs. The mathy pros like to scribble on whiteboards. Dr. Julian Steyn would often mumble something and Terdwilliger would say, “It’s obvious that…” This is the human part of mathy types. A probabilistic collection of algorithms is only of interest when an equation is a problem. The outputs are definitely not going to get hugs and kisses from the whiteboard types.
Here’s another statement presented in the Futurism article warranting a look:
“Current automated techniques can produce plausible but unreliable (or even incorrect) arguments which are difficult to distinguish from correct mathematical proofs,” said signee and University of Oxford head of computer science Leslie Ann Goldberg in a statement. “This is a serious problem: research in mathematics (and in mathematical disciplines like theoretical Computer Science) almost always builds on previous research, so it is essential for researchers to know that the results in the literature are correct.”
The “statement” is a document signed by a set of mathy types. It is worth reading.
The conclusion to the Futurism article is, and I quote:
In short, it’s a ringing denunciation of the persistent hype surrounding AI, and a call for reining in its use that reverberates far beyond the world of mathematics. The broader scientific community has been reeling from a flood of papers that make heavy use of AI, risking contaminating the peer-review process with hallucinations. It’s also a pertinent reminder that AI models are being trained on cutting-edge research, often without sign-off from the original authors. “Mathematicians who never intended to contribute to AI development are having their work used for this purpose without their consent,” Leiden University anthropologist of AI Rodrigo Ochigame, who helped draft the declaration, told Scientific American. “I think that’s a deeply concerning situation.”
Terdwilliger had a great sense of humor. He liked whiteboards. However, he preferred old fashioned chalk and some weird, thick, crumbly chalk. He said, “I can’t do anything without chalk or a dry erase marker.”
Net net: I think the mathy types have output a truth the BAIT (big AI tech) tribe have yet to recognize.
Stephen E Arnold, June 11, 2026
Telegram Note: MTONGA and Buy a Gram to Support Telegram
June 10, 2026
Another dinobaby post. No AI unless it is an image. This dinobaby is not Grandma Moses, just Grandpa Arnold.
Pavel Durov has been taking leadership-type actions. He pulled crypto responsibility from the TON Foundation. The TONcoin has been rebranded at GRAMcoin. This is the original name of the firm’s push to crypto in 2019. The self-styled GOAT of Russian entrepreneurship has plans to make TON great again. Yep, MTONGA. The name reminded me of a song my mother loved. The name also inspired me and my team to write “MTONGA: Buy a Gram and Support Telegram.” I assume there will a baseball cap with MTONGA proudly displayed, T-shirts (form fitting, of course), and probably a yoga mat. Mr. Durov is an aficionado of yoga and other physical activities.
A now-removed social media post on a Russian service suggested that the name “gram” was a nod to the company Telegram Mr. Durov set up in 2013. A wag noted that it was a common term among some in Moscow for a controlled substance. The problem with use of Russian language information sources on Russian services is that content can disappear. True or false, I found the name GRAM catchier than TONcoin.
If you want a rundown of what changes Mr. Durov has planned, this article in our Telegram Notes blog will hit some highpoints. We will address the AI features after we poke around making agentic functions work. In September 2026, I have been asked to illustrate how the new AI agent performs tasks previously done by mostly human hands. We also will address in a separate post the new push by Telegram into video. Video is on the platform, but now it is a priority and not just for those with an interest in sensitive subjects in a Telegram Private Channel.
The new post also contains a line from the tune “Bongo, Bongo, Bongo” my mother found enjoyable. One word in that snippet is “bungle.”
We also include four questions that are ones we are currently researching. The article is dated June 3, 2026, but that is a function of the content management system’s penchant for requiring manual entry of dates multiple times. The story went live on Tuesday, June 9, 2026. When we have a date for the French trial, we will provide that information once the wheels of French justice have rolled around to a date. Going slow has definitely destabilized Telegram. Now Apple, another AI laggard, has pulled ahead of the tardy Telegram engineers.
Bongo, bongo, bongo, bungle for us too.
Stephen E Arnold, June 10, 2026
Pay to Do Anything Online Is Coming
June 10, 2026
Social media as we know it may change forever to a pay to use model. It’s being touted as “pay-to-engage” by Techradar: “Meta’s Subscription Plans Are The Tip Of A Terrible Pay-To-Engage Iceberg And May Be The Beginning Of The End For Social Media As We Know It”. What’s happening is that Meta is rolling out social media platforms with the word “plus” added at the end. When that happens it means Facebook Plus, Instagram Plus, WhatsApp Plus, and more will lock features behind a paywall unless users pay a premium price. Naomi Gleit is the Head of Product at Meta and she had this to say about the new “plus” platforms:
“The Plus-sized services are, Gleit says on Facebook, rolling out today and should offer ‘premium features that unlock more from our apps and our AI glasses.’”
Boo.
What that really means is that
“The only tangible change, though, may be Meta AI falling in step with many of its generative AI competitors, and adding more capacity, the ability to handle more complex requests, and “more room to create.” Sure, this is fuzzy, at best, lacking details like how many daily/monthly processing tokens or even how many prompts.”
Social media will follow the same path as streaming services. Amazon wants you to pay so you can pay to view better digital goodies. YouTube wants to be the new cable TV and Hollywood. If you thought popcorn at the dying movie theaters is expensive, wait for the Google’s next price increase. These services include special messages too. Paywalls and subscriptions are the in thing.
There isn’t an upside for adults, but there is an advantage when it comes to the kiddos. If social media is locked behind a paywall like Roblox and Fortnite then kids won’t be able to access services without mommy’s and daddy’s credit cards. Paywalls work better than the Australia-type of fake-aroo age limits.
The good, old Internet is gone.
Whitney Grace, June 10, 2026
Google: Flips on the Yellow Alert Siren as Insecurity Spills across the Information Superhighway
June 8, 2026
Another dinobaby post. No AI unless it is an image. This dinobaby is not Grandma Moses, just Grandpa Arnold.
I spotted a news story on CNBC. The headline: “Alphabet Plans to Raise $80 Billion from Stock Sales to Fund AI Build-Out.” The report says:
In April [2026], Alphabet updated its full-year capital expenditure range to as much as $190 billion.
That’s a big number and typical of a Silicon Valley outfit struggling with the fear of being left behind or not invited to join a super elite coffee klatch at Stanford University.
Part of the problem is revealed unwittingly in a write up authored by the Google I/O team titled “All the News from the Google I/O 2026 Developer Keynote.” [I love those categorical affirmatives. Really “all”? Okay, why not just put the full text of the keynote in the developer blog? I noted several “in the white spaces” signals.]
A blast from an MBA class in the 1980s. The buggy whip case. Thanks, MidJourney, but the anxiety is just not hitting me.
Let me review what I noticed.
First, Google’s spate of announcements appears to say, “Hey, we are building a new type of operating system. Don’t worry. It will be great. But where is the killer announcement? This is a pile of “upgrades.” I was not fooled, and I know because Google is not suggesting it will spend almost $200 billion in the next six months. Yeah, that’s not a muscle twitch. This is a convulsion caused by anxiety sparked by insecurity.
Second, the change is search has benefited DuckDuckGo and some other Web search systems. Ecosia loved the Google announcements. Swisscows are mooing happily as well. Why not? Google effectively split those looking for information into those who want relevance ranked lists of links and those who want Google to tell them what’s the answer to their probably malformed prompt. Nice work, Google. You accomplished what none of these firms could achieve on their own: A spike in users. Kudos. Are you looking at the same Information Highway I watch?
Third, advertisers remain in a state of uncertainty. Their anxiety is equivalent to what the Google leadership lives with 24×7. Advertisers are losing control of how much they spend, where the ads appear, and useful information about what caused an order to arrive. One issue is transparency. Who knows if the AI goodies allow Google to steer revenue and clicks to Google’s benefit, not the advertisers’ benefit?
Adding to the concerns of management is the shingles some of Google wizards manifest. The Irish News via Bing published an interesting story; to wit: “Google Agrees to Talks with UK DeepMind Staff over Calls to Unionize.” My understanding has been that Google does what it wants, eschews traditional personnel methods, and does not want its wizards to unionize. The write up asserted:
Google has agreed to negotiate with staff at its artificial intelligence (AI) research lab over calls for a workplace trade union amid concerns about their work being used in the development of weapons.
Formal discussions will begin after Google rejected a request for union recognition for UK-based Google DeepMind workers. Members of its management team will now enter into negotiations with workers’ representatives via mediation body the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service (Acas). It is expected that discussions will lead to a formal ballot later this year for employees to vote over whether to unionize. If it went ahead it would mark a first for Google, which does not currently have a recognized trade union within the UK business or at DeepMind.
I think this is another signal that Google is nervous about how some of its AI experts view the firm’s policies. Plus, outfits like Anthropic, Grok, OpenAI, and who knows how many Chinese-linked firms are eager to hire those disaffected with the online advertising sales company.
Google spins money. However, one may now legitimately ask this question, “What if Google’s 25 years of unfettered revenue generation and power expansion is facing its buggy whip moment?” Can the firm make seat covers for the new fangled vehicles zipping down that Information Highway?
Stephen E Arnold, June 8, 2026
Google and Personnel Management: New Taco Truck Operators Available
June 5, 2026
Another dinobaby post. No AI unless it is an image. This dinobaby is not Grandma Moses, just Grandpa Arnold.
I located another great example of the failure of modern hiring practices. The source of this information is the Alphabet Workers Union. I admit that it is a biased source. Those who work at Google are, by definition, the world’s smartest and most capable humans on planet earth. These humans create the must-have services that beg for personally identifiable information and do their level best to extract essential signals from clicks on their assorted online properties.
I read “We Are a Fighting Union.” I am not sure if the information in the Web page that displays is a call to action, a bunch of misfits complaining about work, or a disinformation operation powered by a Gemini agentic bot chain. Frankly I don’t care. What interests me is that the existence of “We Are a Fighting Union” provides a glimpse of the consequence of what might be called “flawed human resource intake, vetting, and training programs.” In a nutshell, the Web page illustrates the real or attributed behaviors of Google leadership. (Of course, I know the company is Alphabet, but, hey, I coined the word Googzilla for my monograph published by the now-defunct Infonortics Ltd. in the UK. Therefore, I stick with “Google” as an umbrella term and use “Googzilla” to signal brilliant actions taken by the company’s leadership.
I assume Google personnel has larger images of these individuals. I assume Google’s Lens technology or a variant can identify each individual as well. This snap from the AWU Web site suggests some Googlers are not happy campers:
What is the “problem” the union wishes to address. It is not working conditions. The offices, if one actually shows up, are comfy and provide some essentials like bean bag chairs, approved beverages, and some okayed snacks. Based on my scanning of the “We Are a Fighting Union,” the problem seems to be Google’s management failings. If Google were doing a good job, there would be no need to create a union. The AWU says:
Our union strives to protect Alphabet workers, our users, and our world.
The union in my opinion is unlikely to prevail. The typical Silicon Valley type of company is a caste system or a Great Chain of Being. The idea is that “leadership” is at the top of the hierarchy. Next in line are the smartest and most endorsed technical employees. Below the second tier are serf; that is, people who do work. The set up is efficient when viewed in terms of revenue, performance metrics, or other outputs deemed important to leadership. Thus, it is possible for some serfs to move up in the hierarchy. Certain “groups” of serfs have more difficulty moving up than others. Lawyers not skilled in technology face headwinds and may work from a trailer in a parking lot about a mile from Carpetland on Shoreline Drive. Others like a 17 year old whiz can go aloft carried by a hot air balloon of a technical breakthrough that produced a “big win” in the eyes of leadership.
The unionizers face a reality: Google wants compliant serfs. Dr. Timnit Gebru is the poster child for how Google responds to nails that stick up. The “no tech for apartheid” crowd found themselves free to operate a taco lunch wagon in Redwood City. And there are other examples.
The “We Are a Fighting Union” information says it wants:
- Job protection
- Fair pay for serfs
- Flexible work conditions
- Privacy protection
- Racial and economic justice.
Okay, this is a great list for a discussion group in a high school sociology class. The five items are simply not part of the modern Silicon Valley-type company operating modality. Here’s what’s expected of serfs and what the Boards of Directors want to happen:
- Screw up or are deemed not essential, a person will be terminated. The Meta email firings provide a good example of the modern management methods for personnel procedures
- Pay is based on the tier and an “employee’s big wins.” No wins? You are out.
- Work must be done within the “time” defined by leadership. This means a standard work day plus whatever additional hours are required and continuously over a seven day work week. Work, not the serf’s needs, comes first. Fail and the serf is pushed out.
- Privacy does not exist. The idea is 24×7 surveillance with analytics identifying the non compliant.
- Justice. Give me a break. Leadership defines the rules. Keep up and follow them or you will be in a taco truck in San Carlos.
Is this a good way to run a company? It depends on one’s point of view. From the leadership level, the answer is, “Absolutely.” From the mid-level, on the way up perspective, it’s not great, but it’s going to make me rich and I get nifty opportunities. From the serf level, it sucks. But throughout history, serfs have not been happy. Suck it up or quit strike me as the options.
Trust me. The creation of a union in a Silicon Valley type company is unlikely to result in the outcome the organizers and members expect.
Remember. Money and power in Silicon Valley type companies foster the emergence of Dark Age management methods.
Stephen E Arnold, June 5, 2026
Microsoft May View AI As a Super App
June 4, 2026
Another dinobaby post. No AI unless it is an image. This dinobaby is not Grandma Moses, just Grandpa Arnold.
One of the simplest tricks in debate has a bunch of names. Game players like to say “pop up a level” or just “level up, dude.” Those with exposure to the rigors of traditional indexing say, “Just put it in a different cluster.” Silicon Valley types infused with the zeitgeist of incomprehensibility offer, “Do the meta play.” A rose by any other name still smells like an old age home on Sunday morning.
A great thinker wonders if a rose is actually a cat. Perhaps he can sell this concept and make lots of money? Thanks, MidJourney. Good enough.
The concept is that one has a thing and one wants to make that thing appear more profound, new, zippier, or imbued with qualities a person unfamiliar with “level upping” does not understand, see, or comprehend.
I want to point to an example described in “Exclusive: Microsoft Is Building a Super App That Combines Coding, Chat, and Other Copilot AI Tools.” (I like the exclusive part because by my count there are about a dozen outfits building super apps; however, as a dinobaby, I am generous. I think the “exclusive” is that no other big time real business news outfit has ever reported on Microsoft doing the clustering play or the “pop up a level, dude” tactic.)
Be that as it may, the “exclusive” write up reports:
The software giant is working on a one-stop shop that would connect its GitHub Copilot coding assistant, Copilot chat function, Copilot Cowork tool, and a new agentic workflow capability internally named Autopilot into a single app, according to two sources familiar with the project, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a platform that hasn’t yet been released.
Yep, a meta-app that will deliver a “cohesive product.” Isn’t this an admission that after three years of AI innovation, users of Microsoft software, hardware, and services are generally confused about what Copilot does what and how. The effort to data has caused a number of Microsoft users to want a way to turn off AI everything in Microsoft “experiences.” Some third parties have been paid big bucks to make the Copilot thing more obedient. But for most users, AI has begun to morph from “gee, this is cool” to “gee, this is a bit of a problem.”
The write up continues:
There may also be a toggle function for a user to go back and forth between their personal and enterprise 365 Copilots. A user will still be able to access their Copilots outside of the super app.
If this statement is indeed true, doesn’t this suggest that Microsoft is just foolin’? There will be many Copilots, not a single super app like the ones available from a Chinese outfit or from the alleged criminal Pavel Durov of Telegram and VKontakte fame. I won’t mention the others because then I will be revealing some of my upcoming lecture for the cyber fraud folks in Virginia in a few weeks. Some of my information, in my dinobabyish opinion, is indeed “exclusive.”
How lost in AI weirdness is Microsoft? May I suggest that this statement from the Fortune article helps answer the question? Here you go:
Microsoft in the past year has undergone one of the largest corporate reshuffles in its history that has included a string of high-profile departures and reorgs throughout its businesses. In April, it announced its first-ever employee buyout offer, aimed at its most long-tenured employees. At next week’s Build conference, Microsoft AI Chief Executive Mustafa Suleyman is expected to unveil new proprietary AI models. Suleyman, who once led consumer Copilot, has focused on models since the restructuring in March.
This is not recalibration in my view. This is scrambling and then trying to figure out how to put the eggs back in their shells.
Can Microsoft level up? Will the company survive the other super app developers? Will there be a reframing of the Microsoft AI strategy that includes security, defense against open source options, and the predatory instincts of Googzilla-type organizations in the US and from — yes, it is really true — other countries?
Confident in your answer? Hit those prediction markets.
Stephen E Arnold, June 4, 2026
Google AI: Speed Means Googlers Do Not Know What Is Happening to Users
June 3, 2026
Another dinobaby post. No AI unless it is an image. This dinobaby is not Grandma Moses, just Grandpa Arnold.
I just read “Gemini User Hits 5-hour Usage Cap after a Single Prompt, Google Responds.” The article explains that the many changes to Google’s smart services are not understood by users or Googlers. Remarkably the article explains that no one knew AI usage limits would cause prompts to fail. Plus the write up includes a stunning quote from a Googler; to wit:
“Yikes, let us take a look!”
Okay, but it is clear from the story, that Googlers just released changes. No one took a “look.” Isn’t this interesting? Let me share some thoughts about why unintended consequences are rarely considered and why those involved in online products and services don’t bother to do what I would call “real work.”
Thanks, Midjourney. Good enough.
Don’t get me wrong. I understand the management problem. When I was in high school, I took classes at the University of Illinois. The lead professor (Dr. Shattuck, if I recall correctly) told us, “You are exceptional.” Who cared? We were living in a dorm, not a parent within miles. Then when I was talking with a smooth operator at the blue chip consulting firm, Ron Something said, “You are one in 10,000.” Both of these people were in the cow herd waste output business. I think the Google does the same thing. I had the thrill of being in a meeting at the Big Dog of Search when one senior manager said, “Here’s our GLAT.” I looked at the weird green document and replied, “It looks like the SAT. What is it?” The Googler laughed and said, “Some people who want to work here have to take the test because we’re Google.”
Yeah, right. In each of these cases, the people desperately want to convince themselves that they are gifted, the blessed ones, or psychologically off the norm. What happens in each of these “organizational constructs” that blend self-delusion with a task and those involved in the task is the following:
People do their think. These individuals know they are special. Therefore, just do it. One person with whom I worked at an outfit in Columbus, Ohio, loved the word “decider.” These people are deciders. What’s the result of an organization of deciders? Here are some characteristics:
- Most people in the organization have no idea what the other person in the adjacent cube or chair is doing.
- The rarely attentive middle managers whether in person or in some hippy dippy digital form like a Slack or a Zoom don’t know what questions to ask. Consequently, only a big win or a catastrophic screw up captures their attention. Most of the time, modern managers are clueless and “don’t have time” to be enriched by clues.
- The leadership of the organization floats weirdly in a bubble which blocks most negative or unpleasant inputs. Thus, most “leadership” slips into or actively embraces the “I’m special” thought process. Rules and social norms are not that important.
The Google craziness is not localized in Google. It exists, to greater and lesser degrees, at the BAIT outfits (BAIT is my lingo for big AI tech). These firms want to make the rules for everyone else. Most of them operate as if they were sovereign powers. This explains the disdain Elon Musk seems to display to the French judiciary’s criminal charge against X.com/Grok and why Meta’s cooperation with UK authorities is not exactly a priority when one’s firm is struggling in the AI World Cup.
The result, if my analysis is accurate even if based on my personal experiences, are situations like the one described in the article. The same approach has manifested itself in Microsoft’s crawfishing on some of its AI initiatives. The key point I want to make is that these type of management methods are now the norm. Whether it is the hapless owner of a Dodge RAM truck or a person who buys no name ear buds from an Amazon-type vendor, the new management methods virtually guarantee problems for a client, customer, or user.
Whom can one blame? Sorry. There is no one. The failure to do the basics of a “good job” have been displaced by the idea that superior individuals exist, can make decisions in a vacuum or a small circle of contacts, or just don’t care due to incentives. I am not blaming anyone, not even the surprised Google AI wizard. Welcome to the datasphere circa 2026. I am glad I am old.
Stephen E Arnold, June 3, 2026
AI: The Political Tool on Steroids
June 3, 2026
Dictators and other authoritarian bad actors use whatever tools they can for propaganda. Propaganda is an extremely powerful way to shape people’s minds. It’s only gotten more powerful with the advent of social media and now AI algorithms. Vox reports that there are new and exciting ways the manipulate people with AI: “The Hidden Way Dictatorships are Shaping What AI Tells You.”
Here’s an alarming fact: more than a billion people turn to chatbots for advice and information, erotica, robot-plagiarism, and other stuff. ChatGPT has 900 million weekly users.
As more people use AI chatbots, they will be able to shape how people perceive information and society. They’re already changing how people perceive things. The biggest fear is how bad actors could use AI chatbots for propaganda:
“This has generated fears about chatbots’ potential to spread state propaganda. Such anxieties generally center on the prospect of major AI labs consciously designing their LLMs to favor pro-regime perspectives while suppressing dissident ones. And there is some basis for this worry: The Chinese AI company Deepseek programmed its model to evade discussion of the Tiananmen Square massacre and other topics inconvenient to the Chinese Communist Party.”
How are governments responding to AI? I shudder to think.
Whitney Grace, June 3, 2026
Traditional Consulting: Becoming Just Less Average
June 2, 2026
Another dinobaby post. No AI unless it is an image. This dinobaby is not Grandma Moses, just Grandpa Arnold.
I have an AI bias. My personal experience with different smart software systems is what I would call “mostly average.” Somewhere along the line, I learned about research that demonstrated the obvious. Run the same query set against a group of AI models. Run the queries every couple of weeks. At the end of six months. Look at the outputs. The person who explained this research to me wanted me to tell him what the test showed. I said, “Good enough similar outputs.” He looked at me and asked, “How did you know? Did you read the study?” I said, “The methods produce a good enough because that’s how the math works.”
An AI-centric management consulting firm learns a painful lesson. The work was just good enough but not good enough to prevent immediate termination. Thanks, MidJourney. You are indeed good enough.
I encountered this “good enough” when we worked on some projects for a then-famous enterprise search system based on Bayesian statistics. Train up the system, ask queries, and watch the precision and recall diminish over time. Re-train the system and one can observe the same degradation. Why? The answer is that Bayesian and Bayesian-related methods “drift.” Users have novel problems, but the model is not aware of the user’s context and how the words or other symbols operate in the unknown context. Therefore, the outputs have to converge. This is the engine of drift.
I thought about this “drift” and the convergence to the mean when I read “How AI Threatens the Giants of Consulting.” (Heads up: The story sits behind the weird orange newspaper’s paywall. Don’t complain to me. Just subscribe.) The article is interesting, but it did not touch upon this “good enough” angle, nor did it explain where the “value” comes from when hiring a blue-chip consulting firm. That’s okay. To an outside observer, one sees AI replacing a certain type of employee at a blue chip consulting firm. The obvious impact is staffing, billing, and how the work is completed.
The write up makes some good points; for example:
- Blue chip firms developed a system to scale to handle big projects. The write up does not explain what scale means in a large, global study on a volatile topic. Let me add some color: Low tier and mid tier consulting firms struggle, even with AI, to handle certain types of projects. AI would not be particularly helpful in the study of world economic change I worked on years ago. Consultants had to interview individuals in specific institutions and use that information to inform other components of the research project spanning a dozen countries. AI can do some things, but it cannot do this type of knowledge work. Maybe some day? But today to pull this original research off, one has to work for a blue chip outfit.
- AI makes it seem that anyone can set up, market, operate, and avoid litigation by become a next-generation consultant. Okay, maybe. Let me put in my two cents: Setting up an AI centric consulting firm or boutique and staying in business are two different things.
- Today’s consulting firm clients demand fee linked to outcomes, not just hours on time sheets. My observation: That’s true for certain engagements and certain types of firms. However, blue chip firms once enjoyed client repeat business in the 80 to 85 percent range. This means that the blue chip firms capture a client and can bill equivalent fees and present the invoice any way the client requires. A job for a Fortune 50 CEO may be a single line item: “Consulting services for April 2026, $2.4 million.” A government job uses pay grades, hours, engineering change orders or scope changes to generate an invoice in line with he funds appropriated for a project. For a very large client of a blue chip firm, a project can be buried in another on-going project for that firm and described as “research.” Billing has been flexible for as long as the industry has existed.
- AI enabled firms can be fleeter of foot and more like a Cirque du Soleil act. My view: If an engagement requires speed and agility, find a firm that has specific strengths. Blue chip consulting firms, even when AI enabled, have specific, proprietary systems and methods. Sure, a blue chip consultant can jump to another firm, but that transplant has to learn the specific systems and methods at the different consulting firms. Most of the consulting firm’s recipes contain quite specific ingredients in appropriate proportions. Most of this stuff is not taught in MBA school. Feel, style, and selection of ingredients are unique to each firm. That’s why clients of blue chip firms lock in on one or two blue chip firms for the majority of their high end consulting work. The firm delivers the dish the client likes without surprises.
What the article suggests is that the world of blue chip consulting will be roiled yet again. I don’t agree. Blue chip consulting firms did not become blue chip by being “good enough.” Delivering a report anyone can do with a prompt says more about the client’s expectations and the firm doing the work than relevant information about a blue chip firm.
The blue chip consultants have been affected by the corrosive effect of online information and modern technology. Modern business produces winners and losers. That means that firms disappear, get acquired, or decide to merge. The same forces apply to Web search and to the US auto industry.
There are what I call azure chip consulting firms or mid tier outfits. LinkedIn runs ads when one of the better known mid tier firms says it wants to hire an expert in technology X or business sector Y. These firms take work that is too small to be of interest to the blue chip firms. In Manhattan one can hire a research firm to do a study. The firm does okay work, and its clients usually don’t know the difference between what a blue chip firm would have delivered and what the mid tier outfit delivered. Mid tier consultancies have always been cheaper.
There are outfits like Gerson Lehrman-type outfits who “rent” former blue chip consultants to companies working on a budget. These organizations have been around for years and have not killed the blue chip consulting firms. My hunch is that these rental agencies will be able to deliver more value because the individual experts they rent will avail themselves of AI to make a one hour Zoom meeting more useful.
The idea that AI will light the fire of lower cost, AI consulting firms is accurate. However, most of these will not survive. That’s because start ups, regardless of business sector, fail at a rate that would make moms, friends, and clueless family offices sick to their stomachs.
I think the article is interesting. I am not sure that the angle of attack is matched to how the management consulting business operates and has operated for more than a century. I think Booz, Allen fired up in 1917 or so with a project for Sears (may it rest in peace).
AI is a tool. Management consultants are knowledge value professionals who use tools. A tool provides something of use to a skilled user. By itself, the tool does not do much of anything. It’s the know how that produces a hierarchy with the best performers at the top and the wanna-bes at the bottom. AI is good enough right now for some things. I am not convinced it is good enough for context sensitive, fast changing, dynamic things.
Stephen E Arnold, June 2, 2026
Google Showers Cash on Consultants: The “Useless” Professionals Are Important Now
June 2, 2026
While Google is cutting costs by firing employees, it is also spending $750 million to fund a Cloud Next 2026 endeavor. This is meant to advance its partners’ development of agentic AI applications, making this the largest single partner investment in history. According to The Next Web’s story: “Google Puts $750 Million Behind The Consultants It Needs To Close The Cloud Gap.” the firing of the money canon signals the start of another AI race.
The AI death match will shift from selling cloud infrastructure to financing systems integrators and consultancies that deploy Google AI. Agentic AI will create a $1 trillion global market and Google wants to own a large portion of it by making its partners the main delivery channels.
Here are more details about the fund:
“The fund is not a venture capital vehicle. It is a mix of credits, co-investment capital, training subsidies, and go-to-market funding designed to get the world’s largest consulting firms building agents on Google’s platform rather than on Microsoft Azure or AWS. The economics explain the urgency: for every dollar a customer spends on Google Cloud, partners capture up to $7.05 in services revenue, meaning the consultancies are not just a distribution channel but a multiplier of Google’s own cloud consumption. Google now counts more than 2,900 services partners, with a 400% increase in new partner entries over the past year and a 250% increase in partner-influenced revenue. The fund is a bet that accelerating the partner ecosystem is the fastest route to closing the market share gap with AWS and Azure.”
Google’s individual partners have added their own money to the fund. Accenture is expanding its Gemini practice and has already built more than 450 agents on Google Cloud. Deloitte has more than one hundred agents on and said the company made the largest investment in Google. KPMG said they’ll allot $100 million to the project, while PwC has $400 earmarked for Google Cloud. NTT Data and Cognizant have 5000 engineers working on agents specifically for healthcare, financial services, and manufacturing.
Google is investing this money with their partners in order to beat Microsoft in the enterprise. Microsoft has a structural advantage with Office 365 and it also happens to be distributed to Fortune 500 companies that Google wants to make their own. Sure, AWS is also a rival to Google, but Microsoft is the outfit the Googlers want to supplant.
Google knows it can run the world. Will the world go along with this McKinsey-inspired big idea? Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google, tried to talk about AI in a recent graduation address. He probably said Googley things amidst the boos. Is that a harbinger of Google’s AI vision?
Whitney Grace, June 2, 2026
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