(Bloomberg) — The consulting industry has faced headwinds in key markets from the United Kingdom and China to Saudi Arabia and Australia in recent years. But his latest challenge may come from within.
Nearly 150 former employees from companies including McKinsey & Co., Bain & Co. and Boston Consulting Group were recently hired by a third party to train artificial intelligence models on how to perform entry-level industry tasks, according to documents seen by Bloomberg News.
The project is codenamed Argentum, the documents show. It is being led by the same data labeling startup that helped hire more than 100 former investment bankers to train OpenAI systems on how to build financial models, said people familiar with the matter, who declined to be identified because it is private information.
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The initiative comes at an inflection point for the global consulting industry, where global economic uncertainty has caused a drop in demand for its services. As a result, many companies are turning to AI to help reduce headcount and deliver projects faster.
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At McKinsey, for example, employees are increasingly drafting proposals and creating PowerPoint slides through a proprietary generative AI platform called Lilli, Bloomberg previously reported.
While Project Argentum aims to offer consulting firms the opportunity to outsource some of the legwork typically performed by entry-level employees to AI, it may also allow some users to bypass management consultants altogether, especially for those tasks typically done by junior workers.
In a sign of how AI is already starting to reshape some industries, Amazon.com Inc. recently announced plans to eliminate about 14,000 corporate jobs. And earlier this week, veteran Wall Street dealmaker Paul Taubman warned that the billions of dollars flowing into the AI sector will bring changes that threaten to shake up the global economic system.
Hiring for Project Argentum is being led by Mercor, an artificial intelligence-powered recruiting startup, documents show. The project’s work involves using AI models, including Google’s Gemini, the documents show. A Google representative declined to comment.
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After submitting their resumes, Argentum Project applicants undergo a 15-minute AI interview and those selected receive daily payments for their contributions. They can earn at least $110 an hour, capped at 19 hours a week, said a person familiar with the matter.
Mercor declined to comment, but a job posting on the San Francisco-based company’s website confirms it is hiring experienced consultants “to collaborate with a leading AI research laboratory on a long-term project focused on benchmarking and improving the capabilities of cutting-edge AI models.”
Ideal qualifications include more than two years of experience at McKinsey, Bain, BCG, “or an equally competitive consulting firm,” according to the job posting seen by Bloomberg.
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Former consultants working at Argentum must complete a “consulting writer checklist” before submitting assignments for review, the document shows. He warns of contract breaks if identical data sets are reused, for example, and warns against writing prompts that resemble a consulting case study.
“Remember: These tasks will be delivered to Mercor customers at the end of the project,” warns the document. “With this in mind, always write as if your assignment could go straight to one of the big AI labs with your name attached to it. Small typos and confusing structuring can cause review delays and lead to questionable credibility.”
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