PwC’s $1B Investment Will Give Every Worker AI Training—And Staffers Access To Chatbot Assistants

A general view of the exterior of the PWC London offices on March 31, 2021 in London, England. (Photo by Leon Neal/Getty Images)

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It was during Davos, back in January, when the texts about AI really started flying. Joe Atkinson, PwC U.S.’s chief products and technology officer, recalls getting messages from his U.S. chair, Tim Ryan, saying they’d have to talk about generative artificial intelligence when he returned from the Switzerland confab.

“There’s probably not a technology development I’ve seen in 30 years that has a greater fear of missing out in the C-suite than this one,” Atkinson recalls, saying while PwC had been researching and working with AI for years, ChatGPT helped “capture the imaginations” of executives outside of tech.

Within four months, the U.S. arm of the accounting and consulting giant had announced a $1 billion investment over three years into the new technology, expanding its AI solutions for clients, establishing a partnership with Microsoft and OpenAI and investing in AI training for its 75,000 people. The initiative has been led by Atkinson and Mohamed Kande, the U.S. firm’s Consulting Solutions Co-Leader, who is expected to be named PwC’s next global chair. Yolanda Seals-Coffield, the firm’s chief people officer, is helping lead the upskilling efforts and other talent changes.

“I think they’re ahead of the curve,” says Winston Weinberg, the president and cofounder of Harvey, a startup that’s working with PwC to offer custom large language models for tax, legal and HR work. (Harvey, like PwC’s Atkinson, Kande and Seals-Coffield, appear on the 2023 Forbes Future of Work 50.)

PwC is not alone in such efforts, which come at a time when professional services firms are facing an industry slowdown and AI could disrupt firms’ revenue models. Deloitte announced a $1.4 billion investment last December in employee training on technologies that include AI, and EY and KPMG have also announced major investments in technology that include AI.

Yet amid near-daily announcements from big tech firms or fledgling tech startups about new AI tools and features, PwC’s investment is an early reminder of how much AI is already starting to transform and disrupt work across industries. Perhaps nowhere is this true more than with professional services, where most of the industry is based on “knowledge work”—whether it’s legal and audit services, due diligence for mergers & acquisitions, or consulting on digital operations.

“Generative AI is the first technology in my 30-plus years that has any hope of actually accelerating and improving knowledge management in knowledge firms,” says Atkinson.

At PwC, the shift came quickly. Atkinson says that after Davos, the executive team had to make a decision: See what develops and hope the firm was well-positioned, or “go long” on generative AI. It chose the latter. “I would much rather control the disruption, manage the disruption, and get in front of the disruption,” he says. By March, it had an internal team in place and had begun talks with Microsoft.

By August, PwC began training its workers on AI, with courses on topics such as the ethics of AI, responsible use and how to prompt AI tools for the best results. So far, 60% of workers have begun the training, which all 75,000 U.S. PwC employees will eventually take. “Our commitment is not to leave anyone behind … we’re going to give you the opportunity to futureproof your skills as the market continues to emerge,” says Seals-Coffield.

She says part of the way PwC moved quickly on AI is through having some 1500 employees it calls “activators” embedded across the firm whose job includes helping with change management efforts—sharing benefits of the new technologies or encouraging its use. Those individuals were put in place as part of a new talent strategy it calls “My+” which includes more customized benefits, more coaching and leadership development and an AI-driven internal marketplace the firm is piloting that lets employees match skills to project assignments.

Meanwhile, PwC is putting AI to work both with clients and within its doors. An internal “ChatPwC” tool makes OpenAI’s technology available to employees in a secure environment, letting PwC workers become what Atkinson calls “client zero,” testing out use cases for AI on themselves. Tax associates are using it to assist with asset valuations. Business analysts might upload a 50-page report to quickly summarize information for a presentation. Other teams are generating first drafts for RFP responses, cutting out weeks of work. About 1,000 employees got access in July, and a full rollout is planned by the end of the year.

In parts of PwC’s U.K. unit, workers in tax, legal and H.R. are getting access to custom foundation models from the startup Harvey that can help them with things like reviewing contracts, researching due diligence for M&A deals or creating legal insights that PwC’s staffers review and share with clients. A global rollout of 50 territories is planned starting next year.

With the industry facing a slowdown, AI’s impact remains to be seen. Seals-Coffield says that other than for performance management issues, its U.S. unit has not had layoffs this year, and does not expect AI to eliminate jobs at PwC. “We’ve said to our people we do not see generative AI as something that replaces jobs,” she says. “We see it as something that is an enabler to support the human work. There is always going to be the requirement of independent thought and skepticism and judgment in our ability to deliver our work.”