How Accenture is investing for the decade of AI

I regularly meet with many of our clients to share our approach to AI - here is an excerpt.

The pace of AI change in 2023 has been so fast and relentless, it's sometimes hard for business leaders to anticipate what's coming in the next month let alone in the next decade.

But that's exactly what our CEO Julie Sweet urged companies to do in a recent interview on CNN, as she described a new era we're entering—the decade of AI. Her premise is that we’re in an extended period of technological, geopolitical and economic uncertainty that requires a new way of looking at the world and a new way of setting business strategy. Technology is now essential to business resilience and growth and business strategy must evolve and be informed by it. Yet, according to Accenture’s recent research, only 21% of companies are integrating technology into their strategy in a meaningful way. And no technology will play a bigger role in reshaping business strategy than AI. If Gen AI 1.0 evinced ‘interest’ from clients, Gen AI 2.0 is fast moving into ‘action and value’

 It’s what prompted Accenture to supercharge our own AI agenda earlier this year with a $3 billion investment in data & AI. Our goal is to help clients become AI-first organizations, meaning that AI is baked into everything they do. Our aim is to enable optimization and reinvention, both new frontiers of efficiency and new frontiers of growth at the same time, in a responsible way.

 Simply put, organizations are seeking answers to three questions: 1) Is my AI data ready? 2) Are my people AI ready? 3) Is my enterprise AI ready, responsibly?

 Is my AI data ready? Doubling down on data

Data readiness remains one of the biggest limiting factors in a company’s ability to harness advances in AI. Organizations who have spent multiple years on establishing a strong data foundation, have had a head start to multiply gains of Gen AI; combining organizational data, knowledge with third party data. At the same time, Gen AI promises to challenge this dynamic for organizations across all levels of data maturity. At Accenture, we have a major focus this year as we launch ‘Circular data pathways’, a framework that can help organizations leapfrog, and disrupt traditional data supply chains. We will continue to expand our library of industry pre-built assets and enablers to help companies build a modern data foundation on cloud, to power their AI ambitions, that seamlessly integrates “multi-modal” data from within and outside the organization, into high quality usable data while ensuring privacy and security. . Getting data right, as part of a strong digital core, is the most critical step for any company who wants to operate as an AI-first organization.

 Are my AI people ready? Expanding and accessing data & AI talent

There are a multitude of factors to people readiness– planning for gen-AI workforce impacts, building new AI skills and educating every generation within organizations. Most organizations have four generations of workforce and there lies the challenge continuous education on AI. Every company faces a shortage of AI talent and hence need to ask themselves the question on do we have a future fit AI talent architecture?

 At Accenture, we’re tackling this challenge on all fronts – through hiring, acquisition and training—to reach our ambitious goal of expanding AI talent from 40,000 to 80,000. First our roles framework, where we are working meticulously and comprehensively on the twelve key roles (R12) that define Data & AI excellence (more on that very soon!). Second, our training investments span multiple categories, starting with our technology quotient (TQ) training that is required for all Accenture employees. Next, our flagship AI Academy offers specialized learning in areas like data foundations, modeling techniques, prompt engineering or AI ethics. Third, we take learning further through partnerships with top academia institutions, like Stanford University, MIT, UC Berkeley, Carnegie Mellon University and the Alan Turing Institute. Examples are the Foundation Model Scholar Program with Stanford, AI-led Business Reinvention for the C-suite with MIT, and Responsible AI for the Board and Business users, with Alan Turing. I’m particularly proud of and passionate about the investments we’re making in our people, knowing the career opportunities it will open up for them and the value it will bring our clients.

Is my AI enterprise ready to use AI responsibly? Know what the machines are learning...

A responsible approach to AI is essential to its success, yet many organizations are diving into AI without a responsible AI framework in place. Last year, an Accenture report found that only 6% of global companies surveyed have already implemented responsible AI practices, though 42% of them plan to do so by the end of 2024. The desire to capitalize on AI innovation should never come at the expense of algorithmic transparency, privacy and data security. This is another area of investment focus for us: not only helping companies define responsible AI frameworks that minimize bias, protect data and increase trust but to make responsible AI practices as easy to implement as possible—at scale, so they become systemic and pervasive in an enterprise. In the age of Gen AI, our proprietary method on how compute drives cost and carbon (the 3Cs as we call it), is deeply integrated to our own Responsible AI framework.

We are executing this vision through investments in talent and assets, such as the AI Navigator for Enterprise, which codifies decades of industry, function, technical experiences, and learnings working in the trenches...

I’m deeply honored to lead Accenture Data & AI. I’m awed by the talent, technology and partnerships we’re bringing together within this group and what we’re already achieving—from protecting coral reefs to lowering emissions in manufacturing to helping governments better serve citizens. Together with our clients, we are shaping a world where AI not only fuels efficiency and growth but also addresses global challenges and transforms lives for the better.