A Canadian province has asked Deloitte to review a $1.6 million report it created for the Department of Health and Community Services earlier this year, which contains a handful of inaccurate citations, local publication The Independent reported. The incident follows a similar mishap last month, where Deloitte submitted a report with AI-generated errors to an Australian government agency. The consultancy is reviewing errors suspected to be caused by AI in the Canadian report, but “they stand by the conclusions,” the health department’s communications director told CBC News.
While the errors did not alter the report’s fundamental findings in either case, the slipups point to risks when corporations rely on still-hallucinatory AI, especially in jobs like consulting that are threatened by the technology. Deloitte partially refunded the Australian government for its errors, setting it up to owe any customer that finds AI-generated errors in its work. If the frequency of such findings increases, Deloitte and similar firms risk convincing clients the work can be done without them.