By David Leiter, KPMG Atlanta Managing Partner
If AI does the grunt work, how will future leaders gain experience? That might be one of the most important workforce questions business leaders face today.
Basic, entry-level tasks – the grunt work – once marked the beginning of careers in professional services and other knowledge-based fields. Many business leaders can probably remember spending hours researching an issue, building spreadsheets, preparing presentation decks, or sitting in conference rooms taking notes. While those tasks were often routine, they also helped develop the judgment and business acumen that later became critical leadership skills.
Today, many of those tasks can be completed in a fraction of the time with the help of AI, which raises a fundamental question: If AI can perform much of the work that historically helped people develop expertise, how do companies continue to develop talent? What skills will matter most? And what should leaders be doing now to prepare their workforce for the future?
Recent research by KPMG and the University of Texas at Austin helps answer these questions. The study followed 523 early-career professionals working alongside AI on realistic business assignments. Researchers established an AI-only baseline and then compared that performance against results achieved when people partnered with the same technology.
The biggest differences in performance were not explained by traditional measures of capability. After all, people with similar educational backgrounds, technical proficiency, and foundational skills often produced very different outcomes when working with AI.
The real distinction came from how they worked with the technology. The highest performers didn’t simply accept what AI gave them. They challenged its assumptions, refined the outputs, and applied business context throughout the process. Rather than treating AI as simply an answer machine, they treated it as a collaborator that required direction.
That finding carries an important lesson for business leaders. Having employees who know how to use AI is only part of the equation. The greater opportunity, and ultimately the greater source of value, is helping people develop the judgment and working habits required to use those tools effectively. Organizations generate returns from AI not simply by adopting the technology, but by enabling employees to apply it in ways that improve decision-making and business outcomes.
The study identified three groups of AI users: Apprentices, Delegators, and Amplifiers. Most surprising, however, was the similarity between the Apprentices and Amplifiers, who represented opposite ends of the performance spectrum. Participants in those two groups demonstrated comparable levels of foundational capability and subject matter expertise. The difference was how they worked with AI. Top performers combined domain expertise with critical thinking, judgment, and the ability to guide AI toward better outcomes.
It used to be that many early-career roles served as an on-ramp for building expertise through repetition and exposure to real-world business challenges. The work wasn’t always glamorous, but it gave new professionals opportunities to develop judgment, learn from experienced colleagues and gain confidence over time.
If analysts, associates and coordinators now spend less time performing those tasks because AI can complete them in seconds, where will that judgment come from?
Training programs, mentoring models, and performance expectations need to evolve to emphasize critical thinking. Employees will need opportunities to learn while using AI, not just through traditional training programs. Managers will need to teach employees not only how to perform tasks, but also how to evaluate AI-generated outputs, identify potential risks, and apply business context where technology alone falls short.
The encouraging news is that these capabilities can be developed. In the study, many participants who did not outperform AI already possessed the foundational skills needed to become stronger performers with the right support.
AI may change how work gets done, but it doesn’t change the need for judgment. The challenge for Atlanta business leaders is ensuring the next generation has the opportunity to develop it.
David Leiter joined KPMG’s Atlanta office in 2002 and currently serves as the dedicated leader for the Atlanta Major Market while also acting as the National Leader for the firm’s managing partners. In this dual capacity, he oversees the strategic direction and growth of the Atlanta market—one of the firm’s largest—while also supporting and developing Managing Partners nationwide to drive growth across the firm.
Today, he’s most excited about helping clients harness AI to solve complex business challenges, accelerate innovation and create lasting value. As organizations move from experimentation to enterprise-scale adoption, David works with clients to navigate transformation responsibly, leveraging KPMG’s deep industry experience, trusted AI capabilities and strategic alliances with leading technology companies, including Microsoft, Anthropic, OpenAI and Google Cloud, to help organizations modernize operations and drive business outcomes.
Leiter serves on the governing board of the Woodruff Arts Center and chairs the finance committee of the Howard School, a K through 12 independent school dedicated to the education of children with learning differences.
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