Why Accenture Is Investing $3 Billion In AI

Global technology consulting team Accenture has definitely been bitten really hard by the generative AI bug. In coming several years, it options to double its headcount of info and AI professionals from 40,000 to 80,000 as it invests $3 billion into its capabilities.

All of this is in purchase to enhance its ability to leverage AI in 3 approaches: To do much better work for shoppers, to boost its individual operations, and to completely transform the way it operates for clients.

Just lately, I caught up at the time all over again with Accenture’s Paul Daugherty. 5 many years just after the publication of his e-book Human + Equipment: Reimagining Function in the Age of AI, I took the possibility to check with him about the developments we have seen given that its publication. We also talked about how the arrival of generative instruments like ChatGPT will have an impact on the ongoing AI-driven transformation of enterprises.

Generative AI – the match changer

“Over the program of my job,” says Daugherty, “I’ve been really amazed by technologies four situations.”

The 1st was the Lisa – the early Apple pc that popularized the concept of a own computer system with a graphical user interface. The next was browsing the online for the initial time. The third was the arrival of the smartphone.

“The fourth was about 18 months back when I started off to see the progress in …specifically huge language products (LLMs).

“The rate of advancement was getting breathtaking, and some of the abilities … to realize language and the generative capabilities to create articles. Not just diagnose and consider or predict …really is game-transforming in terms of the influence on organization.”

Astounding although it without doubt can be, Paul nevertheless sees firms battling to work out how and wherever to implement it. Usually it is not that they have complications pinpointing use cases – there are a great deal of them. Relatively, stumbling blocks are about knowledge which ones are very likely to help them accomplish enterprise ambitions and wherever investment decision need to be prioritized.

This is backed up by modern stats collated by Accenture that demonstrates that 98 per cent of executives consider generative AI will be important to their tactic likely ahead.

“So that exhibits you the amount of fascination and the effect that executives see this obtaining on their organization,” says Daugherty.

How Accenture is Using AI

Probable applications suit into 1 of the 3 groups stated at the start off of the report. Even more to that, they are broken down into five styles of purposes: creating, automating, advising, preserving and coding.

Accenture’s digital media small business, Music, is a flagship for its use of creative, generative AI. Tune is involved with innovating in material development by comprehension the myriad of new instruments that are obtainable. Client use situations it is included with selection from advertising and outreach to drafting regulatory documents for lifetime sciences companies.

It has also assisted banking customers with automating again-business office processes using GPT-3.5 and executed its advisory abilities in consumer companies operations.

The “protect” implementations are showcased by a employee safety answer made for power corporations. This will involve pulling together actual-time details on what is happening in a facility in purchase to make improvements to protection outcomes.

And coding refers to applying the tremendous-human capability of LLMs to make computer system code, which enables program developers to become much more successful and successful.

Completely, Daugherty tells me, Accenture is included with aiding around 100 of its customers implement generative AI jobs.

Investing in Capabilities

Not all of the $3 billion in investment that Accenture has just announced it will make in its AI and info abilities will go on generative AI.

“Generative AI is plainly sport-altering for all the good reasons I have talked about – but facts and AI broadly have huge possibilities for firms,” says Daugherty.

“It’s not even just about AI – it is about facts and how you pull with each other the data foundations, the contemporary info platforms and the cloud-primarily based system to push the possibility.”

As perfectly as doubling the measurement of the info and AI workforce, Accenture has made a tool identified as AI Navigator, made to enable its clientele uncover their way by the baffling and at any time-expanding variety of business AI possibilities open up to them.

What versions does a business enterprise have to have to do the job with, and how can they be applied? Is it finest to just use an current API? Does info will need high-quality-tuning or customizing? How can prompt engineering be made use of? “That is what the AI navigator for Business will aid our shoppers with,” states Daugherty.

Responsible AI

We recognize that algorithmic bias can make societal inequalities and conclusion-creating accomplished by opaque black box machinery, incomprehensible to most humans, has the likely to bring about harm.

Then there’s the prospective for a breach of privateness associated to computer system eyesight purposes these as facial recognition.

These difficulties (and many a lot more) have made us mindful of the importance of pursuing “dependable AI.”

Daugherty tells me that – as much as he is aware, at minimum – Accenture was the to start with group to create a official compliance plan around liable AI.

“It’s even much more significant with generative AI … we’re doing the job with a whole lot of stakeholders, regulators and governments, as properly as our shoppers, to establish … accountable AI capabilities.”

This “responsible AI framework” ensures that issues can be questioned and answered all around matters of bias, fairness, privacy and safety relating to any AI tasks.

On top of that is a “diagnostic tool” used to consider the threat amount of any AI-linked do the job.

Daugherty states, “There are specified kinds of AI categorized as large chance, as opposed to … diverse degrees of chance … and do you know, in your business, where by are you utilizing what may well be thought of high-possibility AI?

“I would post most corporations seriously wouldn’t have an thought correct now.”

Component of the respond to lies in possessing a reliable and reliable stock of each software within just an firm that includes AI. This signifies that each one particular can be independently danger assessed and monitored for outcomes as stakeholders build their individual understanding of what has to be done to guarantee AI is used responsibly.

The Foreseeable future?

Wherever do Daugherty and Accenture see this all foremost? And what other systems will they be placing to function alongside AI to speed up this wave of digital transformation?

Accenture’s 2023 know-how eyesight doc – titled When Atoms Fulfill Bits – highlights electronic identity, trust and transparency, subsequent-era AI and what it refers to as “science technology” as the major developments to view.

And although some think the concept has absent off the boil, Daugherty is content to report that he believes “The metaverse is alive and very well.”

“The concept of generating the two-dimensional electronic entire world 3-dimensional is real. You can find a ton of exercise taking place all-around the metaverse witness Apple’s new headset start.”

As effectively as generative AI, following-technology AI addresses a selection of frameworks and ideas, like “frequent sense AI” and explainable AI.

Then there are upcoming-generation computing architectures, like quantum computing and biocomputing. The first of which is by now becoming applied in Accenture shopper deliveries.

And immediately after that? Only the final frontier: “There are plenty of intriguing developments taking place in place engineering, both equally what transpires in space … satellite communications … experiments in place. And also how you can use information from room [like] lower-Earth orbit satellites for transformative apps back again on Earth.”

You can click right here to look at my total job interview with Paul Daugherty, Group Main Govt, Know-how and CTO for Accenture.