The consulting business (in communication) will undoubtedly undergo a majorrevolution by increasing capacity to produce more and better thanks AI and by makingant of la relationship humane, more than ever, the heart irreplaceable of our business.
Artificial intelligence is threatening the so-called "white-collar" professions, including consulting. Seizing a technology is, of course, the best way to avoid being subjected to it.
It's true that this "revolution" is vertiginous in the scale of its impact, but above all in its extreme speed of deployment. While previous major breakthroughs took one, two or even three generations to spread, the AI revolution will undoubtedly take just a few years, judging by its almost daily progress. Hence the need to tame it as quickly as possible, so as to seize every opportunity for innovation. The consulting professions, and ours in particular, will not escape this phenomenon, and they will be transformed.
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In the communications consulting business, the results of artificial intelligence in terms of research, monitoring and editorial production, while still imperfect, are already impressive. They provide a useful basis for accelerating the production of deliverables that our customers often demand - given their professional needs - within increasingly tight deadlines. Artificial intelligence will undoubtedly enable us to reduce the time spent on low-value-added initial tasks. This will enable us to produce more high value-added elements for our customers.
However, the production of these deliverables will probably never be totally autonomous. In short, artificial intelligence is above all an opportunity for consultants to focus on what makes their profession so rich: the ability to provide unique strategic advice, and to make their experience and interpersonal skills available. Three pillars of the profession that are - is it a coincidence? - the least likely to be replaced one day by an AI.
In today's digital age, the human - and therefore empathetic - dimension of communication has sometimes been neglected, but it is more vital than ever. Years of practical experience, the variety of assignments carried out and the consultant's experience, the ability to listen and understand what is not said are all invaluable assets that can never be imitated and replaced by artificial intelligence, however sophisticated it may be.
Our profession, which is at least as empirical as it is theoretical - even if it does, of course, require a solid and indispensable knowledge base - cannot be replaced by simple data processing by a supercomputer. Intimate, not to say carnal, knowledge of a sector, of political, media and institutional circles, a daily dialogue nurtured without double-talk, situational intelligence, human parameters: this is what the advisor brings to his customer that is most precious. And this goes far beyond the written products dedicated to each assignment.
Pure advice and relationship-building must once again become our compass, going beyond the proliferation of written and analytical products. The ability to adapt, inspire trust, elicit confidence, dare contradiction, create originality and arouse desire are even more essential in the relationship between advisor and advisor. A challenge already identified by Georges Bernanos in his 1946 essay, "La France contre les robots", in which he prophesied, "The danger is not in the multiplication of machines, but in the ever-increasing number of men accustomed to desiring only what machines can give".
