In this solo commentary, Hamel Husain argues that hiring an AI consultant solely to implement AI solutions is generally a bad idea because the underlying talent, organizational, and skill challenges that prompted the hire remain after the consultant departs, leaving the organization unable to maintain the system and potentially locked into ongoing consulting fees. He emphasizes that AI’s core advantage is its accessibility via natural‑language interaction, allowing domain experts to embed their knowledge directly into AI tools without a middleman. Husain outlines two scenarios where a consultant can add value: (1) when the consultant’s role is to educate and upskill the internal team so they become self‑sufficient, effectively making the consultant obsolete; and (2) when the consultant is compensated only on performance‑based terms (skin‑in‑the‑game), aligning their incentives with the organization’s revenue or cost‑saving goals. He stresses that organizations should instead learn to use AI themselves, adopt a growth mindset, and view AI as a tool that does not require extensive coding skills. The talk concludes with a cautionary recommendation: use consultants for education and performance‑aligned projects, not for one‑off implementations.
Chapters
I want to talk about something that nobody else is talking about, and it's AI consultants. So AI consulting is one of the fastest growing jobs in the economy right now, but there's something that you need to know about it, and that's usually it's a really bad idea to hire a consultant to implement AI in your business. And the reason is the same issues that were there before you hired the consultant, whether that's talent issues, organizational problems, or skill issues, are going to still be there when the consultant leaves. But more importantly, AI is different. The whole point of AI is that you You don't need a middleman. You can express what you want in natural language to a computer. It can help you build what you want. And the whole point of it is, is that you can build something that a third party will never understand because you can inject your domain knowledge directly into the tool or product you're trying to build. You can customize something to a greater extent than you'll ever be able to do with some kind of cookie-cutter approach. And so Hiring an AI consultant is a bad idea if you just want them to implement AI and walk away, such as make some kind of internal tool or some kind of customer-facing tool or website or chat application, you name it, because you're not going to be able to maintain that when the consultant leaves. And in the worst case, you're going to have to continue paying that consultant as time goes on. And the last thing you want to have to do is instead of prompting an AI, you don't want to be prompting a consultant. That's a lot more expensive and it just doesn't work. I've been involved in AI consulting for over a decade. I can tell you that in any situation where some third party has come in and tried to implement AI, it doesn't work. It's just a really bad idea. Where it does work is one of two situations. One, if the consultant comes in and educates you and uplevels your entire team. So the whole consultant's purpose is to make themselves obsolete so that you don't need them anymore. You have all the skills that you need to use AI after they're gone. The second use of a consultant that makes sense is if they have skin in the game. So if you can hire a consultant in such a way where they don't get paid unless they're able to affect your bottom line, so either they're able to increase your revenue or help you decrease costs, and they're able to demonstrate that while still maintaining some kind of quality bar, then that's a situation where a consultant works really well because they are aligned with you and they have skin in the game. But the situation where you hired them to just implement AI and walk away is just a really bad idea and it defeats the entire purpose of AI. You should be learning AI, you should be using it in your own workflows because it is the most accessible technology ever created. You just have to learn how to talk to AI. You don't need coding skills for lots of things. Some coding skills are good, you should try to learn with AI. There's right and wrong ways to use AI, but with a growth mindset, it's totally tractable to use AI effectively with practice. So be really careful if you're going to hire an AI consultant. Don't just have them implement AI for you and leave. It's a really bad idea. It doesn't work. If you're going to use a consultant, use it for education. Thank you.
