- Accenture will invest $3 billion over three years in its data and AI practice to help clients grow to be more efficient and resilient in their use of AI, the corporate announced Tuesday.
- In addition to the investment, Accenture plans to double its AI talent to reach 80,000 AI-skilled employees through hiring, acquisitions and training. The company didn’t respond to a request for comment or provide a timeline for acquiring the brand new talent.
- The move comes just months after the skilled services company announced layoffs impacting 19,000 people, or around 2.5% of its workforce. At the time, Accenture said the cuts would occur over the following 18 months. The company planned to spend $1.5 billion in personnel and office consolidation costs related to cuts in its 2023 and 2024 fiscal years.
Accenture’s investment in AI is an element of a trend: large organizations are putting their money where their mouth is.
PwC laid out a three-year AI roadmap specializing in generative AI in April, with an accompanying $1 billion investment to bolster the corporate’s offerings. Building on its existing partnership with Microsoft, the corporate plans to use OpenAI’s technology and Microsoft’s Azure OpenAI Service.
Tech giant Meta Platforms said it plans to ramp up hiring to support its AI and infrastructure areas in its earnings call in April. That was after Meta announced a series of layoffs impacting greater than 20,000 employees amid a hiring freeze.
Salesforce, AWS, Google, Zoom and Microsoft have all invested internally and externally through funds or accelerators to advance the moral use of AI and bolster the AI start-up ecosystem.
Without this industrywide push to speed up generative AI, many businesses might need steered away from adoption due to the risks the tech brings and the demands to support data-heavy workloads.
IT leaders feel the pressure to keep pace. Nearly one-third of senior IT executives say maintaining with advances in technology, reminiscent of AI, is a significant challenge, according to a Work Innovation Lab report published Monday.
Even as pressure mounts, organizations have to stick to best practices regarding data hygiene, data privacy and follow existing regulatory standards. Generative AI has the potential to bring value across departments, but without proper guardrails, even a seemingly small use case can go awry.
Read the total article here
