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Your Company Will Embrace AI — But Not for the Reasons You Think

A small but striking news item in the Financial Times recently revealed something most executives will soon understand intuitively: AI is already reshaping not just how work gets done — but how it gets priced.

In a story titled “KPMG pressed its auditor to pass on AI cost savings,” the FT reported that KPMG International pushed its own auditor, Grant Thornton UK, for a fee reduction by arguing that AI should make audit work cheaper — and that those efficiencies should show up in the price.

This isn’t just accounting industry gossip. It’s a real-world demonstration that the economics of intellectual work are shifting — in ways that will force every company that sells expertise, judgment, or analysis to rethink how it competes.

The Signal Hidden in Plain Sight

KPMG’s argument was simple and brutal: if technology reduces the effort required to do the work, prices should go down.

The auditor’s response (and KPMG’s public framing) is equally familiar: yes, AI can create efficiencies, but it also introduces new costs, and its most powerful impact may be improved quality rather than cheaper prices.

Both can be true. And still, the market pressure remains: once clients believe a portion of the work has become easier, they will expect their share of the savings.

The Cognitive Load Is Shifting

For decades, companies paid a premium for cognitive labor — not because people typed quickly, but because they could interpret ambiguity, reason through complexity, and apply judgment. That scarcity justified high hourly rates, retainers, and large teams across consulting, legal services, accounting, marketing, and strategy.

AI doesn’t eliminate judgment. But it absorbs a large part of the cognitive “grunt work” that made expertise expensive in the first place: drafting, summarizing, comparing, checking, synthesizing, exploring alternatives, and producing first versions at scale.

When the cost of producing competent first-pass thinking collapses, the pricing of intellectual work doesn’t stay untouched for long.

Software Development Is Already Living This Future

If there’s one domain where AI has visibly reduced cognitive effort, it’s software development.

Work that once demanded weeks of specialized attention can now be accelerated dramatically: scaffolding new projects, generating boilerplate, refactoring, writing tests, explaining unfamiliar code, and reviewing changes. This doesn’t make developers irrelevant — it makes output per developer explode.

And when output explodes, unit pricing comes under pressure.

This is why software is the clearest “KPMG moment” waiting to happen. Not because AI writes code — but because it changes what code is worth.

It’s Not About Replacing Humans

The most common misunderstanding about AI is that it’s mainly about replacing people. For many industries, the bigger shift is that AI reduces the scarcity of certain kinds of cognitive labor.

Scarcity drives pricing. Reduce scarcity and prices fall — even if quality improves.

In software, what becomes cheaper is the translation of ideas into working code, and the production of acceptable drafts at speed. What remains scarce — and therefore valuable — is the ability to define the right problem, make architectural trade-offs, manage risk, and own outcomes in production.

Efficiency Gains Don’t Belong to Vendors Forever

Whenever new technology drives productivity, vendors initially capture the benefits as margin. They often frame the change as “quality improvement,” not cost reduction. But markets adapt quickly:

Early adopters use new tools to improve margins.

Clients notice the work is getting easier or faster.

Procurement starts asking why invoices haven’t changed.

Pricing benchmarks reset around outcomes, not effort.

The FT story is a visible example of that negotiation dynamic. Once a major client says “pass on the AI savings,” the sentence enters the business vocabulary — and it spreads.

The Myth of “We’ll Just Keep the Savings”

Many knowledge businesses are telling themselves a comforting story:

“Yes, we’re faster with AI — but quality is higher, systems are more robust, and the risk is still on us. Prices don’t need to change.”

This argument will work for a while. It won’t work forever.

If a deliverable that used to require a team can now be produced by fewer people in less time, clients will eventually ask the only question that matters:

If AI makes this cheaper to deliver, why am I paying the same price?

The Uncomfortable Truth for Knowledge Work Businesses

If your company sells intellectual labor — hours, expertise, analysis, judgment — AI forces a hard reckoning. You have three strategic choices:

Defend legacy pricing by emphasizing quality and judgment.

Redesign pricing around outcomes, guarantees, and accountability.

Embrace lower prices and use AI to win on speed, volume, and scale.

What won’t work is pretending nothing has changed. Clients are already doing the math. Competitors are already adjusting. And the firms that move first will set new expectations for everyone else.

The Real Reason You Need AI

Your company doesn’t need AI primarily to be innovative or to look modern. You need AI because your customers, competitors, and employees are moving into a world where cognitive work is cheaper per unit — and that will reshape prices, margins, and business models.

KPMG didn’t make a moral argument. It made a market argument.

Audit is an early signal. Software is a clearer one. And across every sector built on expertise, the same pressure is building.

AI won’t just change how work is done. It will change what clients are willing to pay for.

Not smarter machines — cheaper thinking.