Steve Chase: How AI Is Disrupting Our Industry, and What We Can Do About It

Artificial Intelligence is no longer the future; it is the present. It’s reshaping landscapes, altering industries, and transforming the way we live and work. With its rapid advancement, AI is causing disruption — for better or worse — in every field imaginable. While it promises efficiency and growth, it also brings challenges and uncertainties that professionals and businesses must navigate. What can one do to pivot if AI is disrupting their industry? As part of this series, we had the pleasure of interviewing Steve Chase KPMG Vice Chair of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Innovation.

As the KPMG U.S. Vice Chair of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Innovation, Steve is responsible for driving a firmwide innovation agenda that elevates the firm’s client service and creates exciting career opportunities for our people.

Most recently, he led the KPMG U.S. Consulting practice where he also served as a member of the firm’s national Advisory Leadership Team. He was one of the founding leaders of Consulting when it was formed in 2009. Through a legacy of excellence, innovation, and client-centricity, Steve helped established the consulting practice as a leader in the industry and helped countless organizations transform across the front, middle, and back office.

As a client delivery partner, he primarily served technology and telecommunications clients. His work focused on large-scale technology and business transformation projects in various functional areas including billing and customer care, network, information technology, finance, supply chain and distribution, and human resources.

Steve began his career at KPMG in the Dallas office in 1994, primarily focused on large-scale technology and business transformation projects in the telecommunications industry. He was promoted to Partner in 1999. Steve served in a variety of practice leadership roles since re-joining KPMG in 2004. He was the U.S. leader of the Management Consulting Technology Service Line and a member of the Global Management Consulting Leadership Team. Before re-joining KPMG, Steve was a Vice President and Practice Leader overseeing the Wireless and Cable business at BearingPoint.

Steve currently sits on the Advisory Council for the University of Texas at Austin McCombs School of Business on behalf of KPMG, and he is a former Board Chair and Life Council member at the North Texas Food Bank.

He has a master of business administration degree and a master’s degree in professional accounting from The University of Texas at Austin, and bachelor of arts degrees in economics and philosophy from the College of William & Mary.

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series. Before we dive into our discussion our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you share with us the backstory about what brought you to your specific career path?

I was fortunate to grow up in a family with a mom and dad who worked together in two family businesses. My dad ran a small regional accounting firm, and my mom ran his office while also managing an accounting software consulting firm. At their peak, they had over 20 people working in the office. I also had the privilege of working with them in the summers and on weekends. These made for some great conversations at the dinner table, and I had the opportunity to see firsthand what client service meant. My parents’ experiences gave me a unique perspective on the business, and I have always seen consulting from an owner’s perspective. It was a perfect training ground for the career I have led!

What do you think makes your company stand out? Can you share a story?

Our people and culture of togetherness and collaboration differentiate us from other companies. We exemplify this commitment in many ways — including through KPMG Lakehouse, our firm’s Cultural Home and through our annual Community Impact Day, wherein KPMG employees across the nation participate in activities to give back to the communities where we live and work.

Collaboration is at the core of our approach, and this commitment to togetherness also resonates with our clients. They see that we’re a team, and that they have our full might behind them to solve their most complex business challenges.

You are a successful business leader. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?

Honesty, hard work, and curiosity have been instrumental throughout my career. I observe these traits being exemplified by my colleagues daily, and I think that’s been a core component of why I’ve stayed with KPMG.

Let’s now move to the main point of our discussion about AI. Can you explain how AI is disrupting your industry? Is this disruption hurting or helping your bottom line?

AI is a disruptive force that will fundamentally change business models, including our own.

AI will help us improve productivity and scale how work gets done across every function of the firm. KPMG is a growth business, and by integrating AI throughout our firm, we will be able to scale faster, enhance the quality of services we provide to our clients, and accelerate the value we deliver for them.

It is also a chance to allow our people to reimagine how they spend their days, focusing on more meaningful and strategic work and charting new definitions of success in their careers.

Which specific AI technology has had the most significant impact on your industry?

We are focused on a firmwide, industrialized, and long-term approach to integrating AI throughout KPMG. That means we’re harnessing AI technology in a way that will provide productivity and efficiency gains and fuel innovative AI-enabled revenue streams.

Some of the most impactful AI models that we’ve been utilizing at KPMG include:

• Large language models (LLMs) are getting more capable, multi-modal, and accessible, albeit on open domain data.
• Vector embeddings that allow LLMs to be grounded on one’s own corpus. These also allow an organization’s knowledge to be captured and combined with the power of LLMs.
• AI agents, are software programs that operate autonomously to achieve specific goals.

Can you share a pivotal moment when you recognized the profound impact AI would have on your sector?

We have been working with machine learning and AI for many years, but when I ran my first test with ChatGPT last year, I knew AI had moved from an important technology to a business game changer. I gave it a few tests to see how well it could answer some pretty challenging questions. I could see immediately how valuable it would be to knowledge workers — across nearly everything they do. And more importantly, it was a consumer-oriented approach — meaning it made AI something everyone could experience, not just data scientists.

How are you preparing your workforce for the integration of AI, and what skills do you believe will be most valuable in an AI-enhanced future?

At KPMG, we’ve established a firm-wide AI transformation program that is focused on maximizing effective adoption and integration of AI across our firm — how we work, how we go to market, and the services we sell. This includes a focus on the new skills, capabilities and ways of working that will be required of our workforce and the learning and development programs we need to develop to help train and upskill our people. The ability of our people to effectively adopt the technology will perhaps be the single most important factor that makes our AI-forward vision a success.

We have rolled out Generative AI 101 training and made generative AI tools available to all of our US employees, and we are hosting sessions across the firm to share lessons and best practices for using the tech. There are also dozens of more tailored and sophisticated trainings available to our people based on their role and function.

What are the biggest challenges in upskilling your workforce for an AI-centric future?

Assessing workforce skills, data assets, and overall readiness to pinpoint AI’s most promising applications. KPMG is gearing up for an AI-centric future by investing in AI-enabled approaches for key elements of our tax, audit, and advisory businesses. Our 40,000+ US employees bring different levels of experience, technical capabilities, and comfort with emerging technology to the table, and we need to meet each of them where they are to enable effective adoption. This requires a robust data and performance measurement strategy within our transformation program.

What ethical considerations does AI introduce into your industry, and how are you tackling these concerns?

Trust is crucial in the use of AI, and we define Trusted AI as a strategic framework to design, build, deploy, and use AI systems in a safe, responsible, sustainable, ethical, and inclusive manner.

Even though approximately half of businesses feel very prepared to deal with generative AI regulatory requirements, our own survey results tell us that 77% of businesses are concerned that the uncertain and evolving regulatory landscape will significantly impact their generative AI investment decisions.

At KPMG, we understand that trust is paramount in our AI strategy, and our approach to Trusted AI includes foundational principles that guide our aspirations in this space, demonstrating our commitment to using it responsibly and ethically:

Values-led: We implement AI guided by our values. They are our differentiator at KPMG and shape a culture that is open, inclusive and ethical. Our values inform our day-to-day behaviors and help us navigate emerging opportunities and challenges.

Human-centric: We prioritize human impact as we deploy AI and recognize the needs of our clients and our people. We are embracing this technology to empower and augment human capabilities — to unleash creativity and improve productivity in a way that allows people to reimagine how they spend their days.

Trustworthy: We will adhere to our principles and the ethical pillars that guide how and why we use AI across its lifecycle. We will strive to ensure our data acquisition, governance, and usage practices uphold ethical standards and comply with applicable privacy and data protection regulations as well as any confidentiality arrangements.

We recognize the field of AI is rapidly evolving — and so is KPMG’s approach. As the technology advances and legal, ethical, risk and regulatory standards mature, we will continue to review and evolve our guidelines as necessary. Read KPMG’s full Trusted AI statement here.

What are your “Five Things You Need To Do, If AI Is Disrupting Your Industry”?

Short-term changes resulting from AI adoption will feel more incremental, such as productivity increases of 10–15%. However, AI’s longer-term impacts will be transformative, leading to whole industries changing, especially for those with large concentrations of knowledge workers.

Five things companies need to do because AI is almost certainly poised to disrupt their industry:

1. Adopt an AI-focused mindset: Understand where major technology innovations, like AI, are going and learn how to systematically adopt them to transform businesses.
2. Create an enterprise data strategy and foundation: Prepare data and set clear strategies around operationalizing AI — moving the organization from experimentation to implementation.
3. Leverage the partner ecosystem: The most successful organizations will harness innovation and collaborate with a partner ecosystem.
4. Lead with trust: KPMG’s global Trusted AI commitment guides our firm’s aspirations and investments in AI, and its ethical pillars align closely with emerging requirements. However, KPMG’s Trusted AI approach is not limited to addressing regulatory compliance. It was purpose-built to accelerate the value of AI for our clients and our firm while serving the public interest and honoring the public trust.
5. Prioritize adoption and enablement: Assess workforce skills, data assets, and overall readiness to pinpoint AI’s most promising applications.

What are the most common misconceptions about AI within your industry, and how do you address them?

There is a misconception that AI will lead to a wave of layoffs across industries, including professional services, but we anticipate the opposite when mapping out our AI future. We believe in a human-centric approach and view AI as a complement to the workforce of the future. In the long run, it’s likely to be more of a job maker, eliciting new roles and new skills to meet market demand.

That’s not to say the shape and skills of the workforce will not look different. With AI, knowledge workers can be faster and more comprehensive in their service offerings. Humans will need to know how to work with AI as a colleague.

Both executive leaders and the broader business community must be prepared so that those who embrace and adopt new technology will outperform and outcompete those who do not. It’s an opportunity for our clients and for KPMG to reimagine the workforce of the future.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Do you have a story about how that was relevant in your life?

A great piece of advice that I’ve tried to carry through my career is to focus on building connections and cultivating relationships. Relationship building is such an important component of establishing trust with both your clients and colleagues, and I’ve found that having that trust helps to create a better team culture and, furthermore, a better business outcome.

Off-topic, but I’m curious. As someone steering the ship, what thoughts or concerns often keep you awake at night? How do those thoughts influence your daily decision-making process?

Maintaining a focus on trust and transparency throughout our AI roadmap and setting ourselves apart as a leader in AI. We want to move quickly to accelerate adoption and set the standard for safe, ethical, and responsible AI use. This is why we launched Cranium, a spinout of KPMG’s startup incubator, KPMG Studios, to help organizations secure their AI technologies — an increasingly in-demand service as businesses work to harness the power of generative AI.

With advancements in AI and cyber-attacks increasing, novel security techniques will be needed to mitigate these risks. Organizations like Cranium bring visibility, trust, and a new level of security to cybersecurity and data science teams when it comes to the entire AI ecosystem of any organization.

You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)

Food insecurity has been a lifelong passion of mine. This is a global problem that persists across generations, and solving the issue of food insecurity would open a world of possibility.

Addressing food insecurity can serve as a catalyst for further socioeconomic gains in every category, expanding the art of the possible when it comes to healthcare, financial inequality, and overall quality of life for a lot of people around the world.

How can our readers further follow you online?

https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephen-chase-8192901/

Thank you for the time you spent sharing these fantastic insights. We wish you only continued success in your great work!

About the Interviewer: Cynthia Corsetti is an esteemed executive coach with over two decades in corporate leadership and 11 years in executive coaching. Author of the upcoming book, “Dark Drivers,” she guides high-performing professionals and Fortune 500 firms to recognize and manage underlying influences affecting their leadership. Beyond individual coaching, Cynthia offers a 6-month executive transition program and partners with organizations to nurture the next wave of leadership excellence.