Uber cofounder says AI means some consultants are in 'big trouble'

• Travis Kalanick says AI will replace consultants who are just executing tasks.
• The Uber cofounder and former CEO joked about a future where you "push a button, get a consultant."
• Deloitte, EY, and others already use AI agents to automate core consulting work.

Uber cofounder Travis Kalanick thinks AI is about to shake up consulting — and for "traditional" professionals, not in a good way.

The former Uber CEO said consultants who mostly follow instructions or do repetitive tasks are at risk of being replaced by AI.

"If you're a traditional consultant and you're just doing the thing, you're executing the thing, you're probably in some big trouble," he said on an episode of the Moonshots with Peter Diamandis podcast that aired last week.

He joked about what that future of consultancy might look like: "Push a button. Get a consultant."

However, Kalanick said the professionals who would come out ahead would be the ones who build tools rather than just use them.

"If you are the consultant that puts the things together that replaces the consultant, maybe you got some stuff," he told the podcast, which was recorded last month.

"You're going to profitable companies with competitive moats, making that moat bigger," he explained. "Making their profit bigger is probably pretty interesting from a financial point of view."

Kalanick stepped down as Uber's chief executive in 2017 and now runs City Storage Systems, a company that aims to disrupt how food is made and delivered, similar to how he disrupted taxis with Uber.

His comments come as the world's biggest consulting firms compete to build the best AI systems that can handle the work humans used to do.

Consulting embraces AI

Firms like Deloitte and EY are already deploying agentic AI — software agents that can complete tasks with little human input.

Deloitte's new Zora AI platform provides clients with a selection of "intelligent digital workers" or agents that can perceive, reason, and act to complete tasks autonomously, Deloitte said in a March press release.

The platform has been built to act as a "digital workforce to change the way work gets done," Deloitte said.

EY is rolling out 150 AI tax agents to help with tax compliance, document review, and data collection — all tasks traditionally handled by human consultants. The agentic AI platform is expected to initially be used by 80,000 workers from the firm's tax division.

The rollouts seem to be changing what some firms expect from their employees.

"It is no longer acceptable at Deloitte to not take an engineering-first mindset," said Jillian Wanner, a principal at the firm, during a panel last month.

As the industry shifts, Deloitte employees need to act as "technologists and engineers first" and "consultants second," added Wanner, who helps lead AI staff development at Deloitte.

And KPMG's global head of AI, David Rowlands, told Business Insider in a December interview that while "AI will have a deep transformational impact on the professional services industry," the focus isn't about replacing jobs

Rowlands added firms need to move beyond one-off AI tools. "What you have to think about is having AI embedded in your operating model," he said.