If an AI can augment the auditors to find more suspicious transactions such as to companies with no employees, or conflicts of interest - I could probably find more fraud.
Honestly, this seems like a lose-lose for decision makers: - automation reduces billable hours, a net loss to the auditor - automation finds more fraud, a net loss to the person who hired the good auditor
Of course, shareholders would appreciate less fraud, but have no seat at this particular table.
But why does cost not matter on the contract? A few reasons, one being is these are hourly contracts and the consultants know the customer has to finish the project. there will be more money. Second the customers are picking one of these companies on rep. If they fire the consultants they just rotate through the rest of the big five. There's no real incentive for the big five to change their model with customers who are making decisions based on who sponsors the golfer they like. Just like how every VC used svb, go with who you know.
This is why I left consulting. Every good shop gets wooed by the siren song of butts in seats economics. After consulting I've moved to where I sonetimes have to damage control projects from the big 5 and other high end large tech consultants on code. They're all doing the same thing if they get that big.
We had 2 recently with nationally renowned consultants where the provided heads couldn't use basic shell scripts or basic cloud cli, all at a senior DevOps bill rate. I ended up interviewing several of them and the only one of them id trust was their senior principal architect (5% time) who I'd put as a Jr/sr sysde/sde at our co. We fired the consultants. Luckily we only wasted money, our pm, and a few hours of my time.
Beware any company that competes with beer and insurance companies for commercial slots.