The rapid spread of A.I. is starting to reshape the consulting industry, and not without pain. The technology can now handle many of the tasks once assigned to junior, entry-level consultants—often faster, cheaper and more accurately. As a result, A.I. has been linked to thousands of planned job cuts at consulting giant McKinsey & Company, as well as frozen starting wages at several major firms.

However, fears of widespread automation may be overstated. Alex Adamopolous, CEO of London-based software company Emergn, argues in Consultancy.uk that A.I. is more likely to disrupt consulting than eliminate it. As A.I. makes formerly high-end work like market research and strategy planning available in minutes, he says, consulting firms will be forced to abandon their traditional model of diagnosing problems, recommending fixes, and then walking away. In its place, a new approach is taking shape—one where partners focus on transferring capability to clients and embedding a “repeatable method of working.”

The death of the consulting pyramid

Journalist Joe Nocera argues that this shift could actually be good news for consulting’s battered reputation. He points to the industry’s long-standing business model, in which firms charged clients for “manpower and time spent on the project.” That structure rewarded long, labor-heavy engagements, even when results weren’t guaranteed. Over time, that led many clients to view profit-focused consultants as “a scam.”

In the A.I. era, that model is losing its grip. Clients can now use A.I. tools to run analyses and research that once cost millions in consulting fees. As Nocera notes, this has pushed companies to demand outcome-based contracts—paying for results rather than hours worked. That pressure is already showing up in the numbers. According to Business Insider, 25 percent of McKinsey’s fees now come from outcome-based pricing.

This shift is also forcing consulting firms to rethink how they’re structured internally. Traditionally, firms operated as a pyramid: a wide base of junior consultants doing research and analysis, topped by a small group of senior leaders focused on strategy and client relationships. That structure is starting to crumble.

“The current pyramid model will gradually shift with a shrinking at the bottom half of the pyramid,” as A.I. takes over tasks once handled by junior consultants, Arda Ecevit, co-founder of A.I. strategy platform NexStrat AI, told Observer. Instead, he said, firms should move toward a “more senior-expert-heavy” model.

That thinning of the pyramid is already underway. The “Big Four” accounting firms—KPMG, Deloitte, EY and PwC—are all cutting back on entry-level roles largely because of A.I. adoption.

The changing role humans will play in consulting

According to Ecevit, it’s not just junior roles that are under threat. Specialized A.I. platforms can now “perform many key roles associated with the role of project managers or even partners,” he said. That includes building project plans, shaping strategy, advising on key decisions and even flagging potential risks.

Still, some parts of consulting remain firmly human. Ecevit emphasized that people will continue to play a critical role in leadership, motivating organizations through change, implementing strategy, aligning stakeholders and navigating “tricky” internal dynamics.

In a Harvard Business Review article, three consulting experts divided consulting roles that can’t be automated into three groups: A.I. facilitators, engagement architects and client leaders.

In that framework, A.I. facilitators would be junior consultants fluent in the latest tools, responsible for designing and improving A.I.-driven workflows that help “teams generate insights at speed.” Engagement architects would be more experienced consultants who define problems, apply human judgment to A.I.-generated findings, and turn those insights into strategy. Client leaders, meanwhile, would focus on executive relationships—helping organizations manage change and anticipate disruption.

If this model takes hold, A.I. fluency will become essential to both consulting firms and how clients judge their value. As Ecevit puts it, the message for “existing consultancies” in the A.I. age is simple: “adapt or die.”

Life Biosciences, a Boston-based biotechnology company founded in 2017 by Harvard Medical School professor David Sinclair, is poised to become the first to conduct human clinical trials for a therapy that targets aging by rejuvenating cells without altering their core function. The company is developing a cellular reprogramming treatment that, if successful, could address a wide range of age-related diseases, including Alzheimer’s, Type 2 diabetes and Parkinson’s. This potential breakthrough for longevity science also raises a host of ethical concerns, from overpopulation to “hyper-beautification.”

The longevity industry is in the midst of a boom. Valued at $19.29 billion in 2023, the global market is projected to grow to $63 billion by 2025, according to Market Research Future. Altos Labs, a company backed by Jeff Bezos, is pursuing cellular rejuvenation programming—similar to Life Biosciences—to combat aging. Hong Kong–based Insilico Medicine is developing A.I. technologies to accelerate drug discovery for age-related diseases. Meanwhile, Retro Biosciences, funded by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, aims to extend human lifespan by 10 years and plans to begin human trials of its Alzheimer’s pill by the end of 2025.

The field has grown large enough that consumer brands like L’Oréal and Nestlé now apply longevity research to develop anti-aging skincare and nutrition products targeting age-related health issues.

As humans age, our DNA accumulates epigenetic markers—chemical tags that alter gene expression and contribute to disease. However, during the very first days of life, about a week after fertilization, a developing embryo’s epigenetic markers reset. This explains why a baby born to parents with Alzheimer’s doesn’t show symptoms from birth, though they may carry a genetic predisposition to the disease later in life, said Life Biosciences chief operating officer Michael Ringel. Ringel, who has a background in biology, joined Life Biosciences in early 2025 after serving as a strategic advisor since 2018.

In 2020, Sinclair, who currently serves as Life Biosciences’ chairman, discovered a method of epigenetic reprogramming that partially replicated the body’s natural rejuvenation process—restoring damaged tissue to a “younger,” functional state without turning it into pluripotent, embryo-like stem cells. In essence, the therapy reprograms the cell’s epigenetic markers to restore youth at a cellular level. Sinclair’s method successfully restored vision in aged, visually impaired mice.

Three years later, Life Biosciences announced preclinical results showing that its gene therapy restored sight in previously blind non-human primates. The company plans to begin its first human trials in early 2026, focusing on glaucoma and NAION, two leading causes of blindness. From there, Ringel said, the company aims to expand to more age-related diseases “and perhaps ultimately rejuvenate whole [human bodies] simultaneously.”

If successful, the implications for human mortality could be enormous. Type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and Alzheimer’s rank among the top causes of death in the U.S. “More than 90 percent of what afflicts us are actually age-related diseases in terms of mortality in the developed world,” Ringel noted. He emphasized that Life Biosciences’ goal isn’t immortality, but to “significantly lower mortality.”

The social costs of living longer

Critics warn that such therapies could create new risks, including overpopulation, the diversion of medical resources and heightened age-related stigma.

Carolyn Ringel, Michael’s wife and a course instructor at Harvard Medical School’s Center for Bioethics, believes the benefits outweigh the risks. Anti-aging therapies, she told Observer, could extend “the timespan that people are most engaged in their community, in their family, in their jobs,” increasing the socioeconomic contributions of older populations.

Still, concerns persist about the social ripple effects of anti-aging medicine. A paper in the Harvard Medical Student Review argues that classifying aging as a disease could “reinforce ageist stereotypes and marginalize older adults” by “medicalizing” a natural process that “deserves respect.”

That worry extends to cosmetic misuse. Some fear that longevity breakthroughs could be repurposed to promote aesthetic enhancement rather than health—echoing the recent trend of Ozempic, a diabetes drug increasingly used for short-term weight loss.

Carolyn Ringel cautioned against such commercialization. “This treatment isn’t about making people look beautiful or having a society of [exclusively] pretty people,” she said. “It’s about helping the formerly active 75 or 80-year-old who wants to do all the things they did when they were young.”

Another concern is access. The Nuffield Foundation, a U.K.-based charitable trust, warned that “access to ageing interventions is likely to be unequal,” potentially leaving marginalized groups behind.

Carolyn Ringel acknowledged that inequality is “always a worry in any health care setting,” but said that shouldn’t deter research. The preventative nature of longevity therapies, she argued, could actually make them easier to distribute globally. “Instead of trying to get expensive medication to [poorer] countries, it’s actually easier and more democratic and cheaper [to deploy the interventions] before that disease gets to the point where it’s requiring an expensive medication that those people can’t currently access,” she said.