Another Cookie for Another Mouse

Some readers may recall that, at the beginning of this year, I used Laura Joffe Numeroff’s children’s picture book If You Give a Mouse a Cookie as a metaphor for conditions in Venezuela and President Donald Trump providing refuge for Nicolás Maduro when he had to flee that country. Apparently, the metaphor has now extended beyond Venezuela. An article for The Guardian by Aisha Down suggests that the consultancy business also has to contend with tempting cookies and hungry mice.

The KPMG Australia building (photograph by Diego Fedele, Australia Associated Press)

Here are the first three paragraphs:

A partner at the consultancy KPMG has been fined for using artificial intelligence to cheat during an internal training course on AI.

The unnamed partner was fined A$10,000 (£5,200) for using the technology to cheat, one of a number of staff reportedly using the tactic.

More than two dozen KPMG Australia staff have been caught using AI tools to cheat on internal exams since July, the company said, increasing concerns over AI-fuelled cheating in accountancy firms.

As a “veteran” from the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), my immediate reaction to this report was: “Well, what did you expect?” AI is just another cookie, and any “hungry mouse” will probably figure out how to use it with little effort.

When I began my freshman year, I quickly learned that there was a rich “hacking” culture at MIT. For the most part, this involved relatively innocuous pranks enabled by basic technology tools and techniques. Every and then, the pranks would go “over the top;” and, very early in my freshman year, I encountered four students that had been suspended for a year due to one of those pranks. As I recall, all four of them were relatively resilient and completed their degrees after returning, perhaps with a broader perspective than that of most undergraduates.

Personally, I am not surprised that someone at KPMG that had ascended to partnership may have acquired a portfolio of “hacking” skills during his student days. After all, “hacking” usually arises from “thinking outside the box;” and consultancy is little more that providing clients with “outside the box” perspectives they have overlooked. It all comes down to the “Cui bono?” question: Who benefits from those perspectives? An innocuous prank is one thing; but, if a “corporate ox” is being gored, the issue is far more serious!