Accenture Technology Vision 2023 Launch Event

thank you four three two hello everyone I'm Paul Doherty and I'm very excited to welcome you to technology Vision 2023 you know we've been doing this uh this forecast uh every year for about 20 years and it's proven to be a remarkably accurate forecast for the trends that are facing businesses and organizations that we all need to prepare for to prepare our businesses our organizations and our people appropriately about 10 years ago we said every business will become a digital business and just last year I said meet me in the metaverse and what will the theme be this year well some of you may have sneaked to peek already but you'll have to stay tuned as I as I introduce it to you give you a little bit of background and I'd also like to introduce you to my friend that you see on the screen there and uh the reason that you see this this image there is that we've developed a lot of our presentation here and a lot of what I'm going to tell you using generative AI which is one of the trends that I'm going to talk about and in this case I asked for a chameleon in a coffee cup and you can see uh what I got there so anyway you'll see a lot more of this kind of Technology as I go through the the presentation and as I say every time I talk about technology you can't look at technology in isolation it's not technology for Technology's sake it's about what's happening in the context of the world around us in the world that we live in and uh that's where I'd like to start today with a little bit of context of what's happening and as we all know we're navigating a rapidly changing world uh Global uncertainties around geopolitics approaching a multi-polar new new world structure war in Ukraine we have crises that we're dealing with energy uh energy crises climate crisis and most recently a banking crisis that burst uh unexpectedly onto the scene and along with all of that this morphing technology landscape a lot of questions being asked about technology in addition to the Innovation that's coming and this is creating tremendous uncertainty and volatility for all of us as leaders and we track this through our uh through our disruption index which has had an unprecedented increase in the last several years as a result of these changes and I'm going to make a number of predictions for you today but one prediction that I'm very confident in is that the world will not get any simpler and this has implications for what we all do now what are businesses doing in response to you know to these that's the world and these kind of challenges that we Face different than in the past where people might have gotten Frozen or organizations might have waited people are taking a different approach businesses are Reinventing and this idea of reinvention is really dominating the landscape and the discussions that I have with companies and leaders around the world and the reinvention is powered by technology every strategy generally leads to technology in terms of how you implement it technology is part of every part of how we operate our businesses and organizations and Enterprise so technology is fundamental to providing the resilience that companies are looking to as they reinvent for more Dynamic agile approach to navigating the future and that's where we talk about this idea of total Enterprise reinvention and one thing we measure is how many are really reinventors and resetting that agenda and about eight percent it turns out our reinventors but 86 percent are transforming trying to get to that future State a new performance Frontier that's driven by a more you know agile flexible approach to navigating continual uncertainty rather than a one-time transformation approach and as you think about this you know I talked to a lot of uh leaders and we've done some surveys that show that nine out of 10 leaders believe technology is essential to how they compete and whether they succeed going forward nine out of ten and that you can see the importance of this in the reinvention agenda but one question we're asking in our technology Vision this year is what you see here our businesses and our leaders ready for exponential technology change we as people we as human beings don't deal well with exponential as you know but exponential in understanding the exponential is critical to navigating this uncertainty is critical to reinvention so let's let me just give you some reminders you all know these things let me give you some reminders of what exponential means and why it's important you can see some some charts here Moore's Law the exponential increase in price performance sadly Gordon Moore passed away earlier this week but Moore's law has had a tremendous impact on Innovation over the last several decades cloud from the hyperscalers to Edge driving tremendous Innovation and latest Innovation we're talking about generative AI is not just a new innovation it's an exponentially increasing Innovation the number of parameters that are powering these uh these large language models and Foundation models has increased 5 000 fold in the in just the last four years that's you know a high level that's beyond exponential growth rate and change that we have to think about and plan for and I think if you think about the backdrop the way I look at this is Moore's law in the cloud drove this world where we talked about software was eating the world you remember that phrase with the exponential advance of AI we'll talk about this more as we go through we need to think about it a little differently and AI is now eating software which has implications for all of us but there's more if that's that's a lot right there but there's more because there's exponential Innovation happening in other areas last year I said meet me in the metaverse we talked about why I I believe we believe the metaverse is one of the trends that will transform everything we do in the next decade I stand by that and I believe that's true now we've moved from a peak of over-inflated expectations or over inflated hype I should say around the metaverse to the chasm of realistic expectations that's setting in but we're progressing as expected with the metaverse and it will continue to have impacts and you can see on the chart here the projected industrial metaverse spending increase as we go forward and as you think about the metaverse I'll leave you with one quote you know Aristotle two thousand years over 2000 years ago Aristotle said you know approved that the world is is three-dimensional the physical world is three-dimensional so why should we be confined to two dimensions and flat screens in the digital space I'll leave you to ponder that I'll move on and talk about the other things here Quantum is it continues to improve and continues to drive breakthrough Innovation it is something that should be on everyone's radar so we'll talk about that more as we go here too and finally the science this innovation in science that's driven by digital technology is profound it is important for all of us to understand how it impacts what we do this is the digital science feedback loop technology makes signs faster accelerates Innovation and that circles around and accelerates progress and solutions to Major you know massive unsolved challenges that we face and we're going to talk about this more you can see an example there with what Deep Mind and meta have talked about with dramatic increases in AI powering new solutions to protein folding problems which accelerate you know drug drug Discovery and health and other in other areas so a lot Happening Here atoms bits and different things you see here so that gets to the theme of our vision to uh to tease it out a little bit when atoms meet bits this is the theme of our vision when atoms meet bits the foundations of our new reality when the digital and physical worlds come together and think about it today the digital world and the physical world are you know operate largely separately we operate one or the other as we work live and play we might go into a store to shop which is very different than the online shopping experience will interact with our phones and our computers which is uh you know very different than you know meeting with people and you know conducting meetings with other people we meet with and the you know navigating across these different experiences can be jarring it's inefficient and it's not the you know the the uh the best way for us to do the things we need to do and that's what we're talking about with this new shared reality think about some of the possibilities which is some of which is already happening today a large retailer we're working with to power New shopping experiences enabled by artificial Intel millions of product choices visualized in 3D and virtual reality so the consumer can get the equivalent of an in-person immersive experience choose and customize the right product for themselves better than in store better than physic better than digital the two combined together or think about it in the industrial area manufacturing area digital twins powering new ways of working new levels of efficiency augmented workers working differently bringing the Two Worlds closer together in the financial sector think about digital currencies bringing paper and digital currencies the way we interact the way we spend and other things together in new and Innovative and different ways that's what this blending this atoms meeting bits and blended new shared reality looks like and I'll leave it with this thought that the next stage of digital we've all been investing a lot and doing a lot around digital the next stage of digital is digital plus physical and are you ready for that we'll dive into this a little bit more and along with the vision overall we've got four trends that we're talking about in The Vision you see them on the screen here generalizing AI which will get a lot into artificial intelligence digital identity which is essential new new ways of authentication and identity that are essential for products and for people in this new world your your data my data our data talking about the importance of data in the role it plays in creating this future and finally our forever Frontier talking about the science Revolution moving from just information technology to operational technology in many of your organizations so now science technology and integrating the three to drive dramatic New Opportunities and new solutions to big problems okay are you with me so far that's just an overview of where we're at hopefully you're tracking with me and hopefully you're excited about where we're headed let me take a quick uh take a quick pause here while you think about that okay take a drink and now let's uh let's move on I'm going to dive in now to some of these Trends and bring this to life so let's get let's go first to generalizing AI the first of the four Trends this is talking about AI overall but specifically now generative AI which is burst on the scenes you know General AI itself has been around for 70 years as you know there's been a few major breakthroughs in AI including the kind of uh you know technology we're dealing with right now generative AI I'll say you know I'll say that there's four times maybe four times in my life that I've been really Amazed by technology the first was 1983. I was a student and I saw one of the first Apple Lisa's graphical user interface blew my mind and it changed you know changed the course of my life I decided to major in Computer Engineering and uh it's the curse it's the career that I'm that I'm still pursuing 1992 when I saw one of the first web browsers connecting information across the early World Wide Web you know game changing 2008 uh roughly with the iPhone a new device that would connect billions of people and create you know Commerce and uh new ways to engage in different ways and last year when I started diving in on Foundation models and Transformers large language models at a foundation generative AI a similar moment you know just amazed by the possibilities that lay in front of us in the advances that we've seen and uh people generally agree that's why uh chat GPT you know one of the four you know popular forms of generative AI many of you have probably used chat GPT the fastest ever consumer application to 100 million users faster than Facebook or Instagram or anything else fastest ever growing consumer application and we see the interest as you as you can read on the slide here executives are exploring you know generative Ai and what it means their business uh people are planning to invest in chat GPT in their business and more we just announced uh our our generative AI Center of Excellence 1500 people focus just on this in response to the demand we're seeing from our clients and this is on top of work we've been doing in this this area for uh for a long time that I'll share with you as we go through a little bit more so that's that's where this all has come from and you might ask so how smart is it here's one here's one gauge that you see on the slide that you're seeing now the top line is 100 percentile in performance on the standardized tests that you see on the x-axis and you can see that gpt4 in this case scored it in the 100th percentile on many standardized tests pretty impressive uh one of them is the LSAT the law school admissions test my daughter just took the LSAT and I'm happy to say she did outperform GPT which I'm pleased to see but uh but but not by much a GPT's performance is pretty impressive and uh this is important because it shows a level of intelligence but this isn't what it's all about I wouldn't get too focused on this because this is you know partially only partially relevant for what this means to business let's unpack that a little bit more the way that you know that the generative AI will impact our businesses it comes in two ways you need to think about this as you decide how to apply AI to your business will you be a consumer of it will you use chat GPT Dali stable diffusion you know a stability AI all the other models or will you customize AI will you fine-tune models will you develop some of your own models how will your own data be integrated in and your own processes and applications be integrated in I would submit to you that and we believe from the work we've done that the customized models is where the vast majority of the value is going to be for organizations which has implications for how you prepare for it and how you set your architecture how you build your talent and how you how you move forward so this idea of consume versus customize is very important but where will the value be driven from this is where you have to look at how work gets done in your organization the chart you're seeing here in front of you is from research that we've done on generative Ai and the impact that it'll have on the way we work and on processes the headline number here 40 40 of working hours will be impacted by generative AI by large language models that's big that's important and you can see on the chart here there's a range from automating to augmenting what people do to not having any impact and there's a range of impact that varies a bit by industry the important thing though to realize is this is not and I'll say it again this is not implying that 40 of jobs go away far from you know far from that uh being true this is going to create new opportunities and new ways of working because AI gender of AI automates tasks that people do gives people superpowers in a way to do more and do more effectively work more effectively and that's what we have to focus on in business is how that Dynamic works and understand this equation and the idea of equipping people with superpowers with co-pilots AI powered co-pilots that help them with tasks is really the path to creating value in the future and I'd say I talked about Moore's Law earlier we've talked about Moore's Law as such a key driver of innovation in the industry in the industry and in business I would submit to you that there's a new law that's going to kick in here and the new law is about the expansion of human capability human capability and intelligence powered by you know AI gender of AI and co-pilots think about it think how hard it is for a human to learn a new language conversing a new language to learn a new profession that's what gender of AI is enabling and I would submit to you that's going to enable a 10x a 10-fold expansion in human skills and capability that people can acquire to do their to their work and live and play you know more effectively Now where's um where's this going when you look at how these co-pilots might work here's some examples uh that I'll talk through advising co-pilots for advising things like a sales advisor to help you sell more effectively things we're already doing with some of the the companies we work with creating new creative content and this will create a really explosion of creative capability from humans using the technology such as you see in the presentation that I'm going through today automating automating processes such as a large Financial Services organization where we're using large language models to automate a lot of the back office processing tied into more efficient work that their employees are doing protecting is about compliance regulatory processes which is often overlooked but a key application that these models can understand really well and drive improvements for in business and finally something personal to me coding is something that this that will change as we look at how software and systems are developed going forward you know I learned to program in my first program experiences were on Punch Cards paper-based Punch Cards now to submit to you the the next programming language may actually be not a certainly not going back to a punch card but maybe a napkin and if you look at this you may you may or may not have seen this this is an example from open AI of a website design drawn on a napkin and GPT translated it quickly into a working website I think this is illustrative of a very interesting point that this isn't about just you know new writing a new line of code this is about changing the way we think changing the way we think about software in this case and how we might develop it and a an illustration of how we really need to think about this human plus machine equation and transforming the way we work now that's a lot of generative AI just one final point I'd make on this slide before I move on is gender of AI itself is changing rapidly this is the early stage of it and it's innovating very rapidly and AI itself is also innovating rapidly and I'll tell you generative AI is not the last breakthrough you'll see in AI it's probably not the biggest breakthrough that we'll see as AI continues to innovate going forward an adoption in business is growing rapidly so we'll be innovating and accelerating how we all apply this to businesses and policy and responsible AI are really important in this future which is why uh you know work we've been doing in our company around responsible AI is so important so you have a foundation of how to apply this with the right accuracy with right transparency with right fairness and looking out for bias and things like that in the results and how we look at how we apply it to the work that people do and how people use technology really important and you might have seen a headline from Elon Musk and the future of Life Institute talking about a call for a halt on future expansion of you know more powerful AI well I don't think that's necessarily the right approach going forward it does bring awareness to the issue we need to work a lot more on these issues and have a lot of transparency in how we apply the technology for the right impact okay so that was generative AI that was only one Trend and I went into that one more in more detail just to paint it out for you but there's a lot more here and we're going to dive into it after I give you this short overview with some sessions with some others that are going to join me second trend is around data your data my data our data and how we share data very profound and important Trend enabling many other things that we need to do identity I already hinted at a little bit we're going to do a deep dive with a leading company that's using identity to drive business advantage in a new way so stay tuned we're going to get into this one a lot more and it's a really important foundational technology and then finally the uh the fiber Frontier our forever Frontier the fourth uh Trend which may be the most important and we're going to dive into this one in some detail as well because this will change what we can the problems we can solve going forward new ways of science new ways of accessing space-based Innovation new forms of computing like Quantum and we go into a lot of detail on this in our vision as well okay those are the four trends that we've talked about here and um and uh you see them summarized on the screen here and uh you know some of these things can seem you know a little bit scary maybe AI atoms Quantum Computing and more and I'd always like to include a quote when I do the vision launch and here's a quote from one of my heroes Neil Stevenson a science fiction author that I really love just take read this I'll read it for you but read along with me see the world is full of things more powerful than us more powerful than us but if you know how to catch a ride you can go places that's what we're hoping to show you with technology Vision 2023 how can you catch a ride and leverage this technology to take us to places we might never have imagined and with that there's five questions I'd ask you to think about as we go through the rest of the session and this is all about are you ready are you ready for this feature that's coming about the first is your strategy is your strategy digital and physical and contemplating these changes ahead the second is around your architecture how will intelligence be built into your architecture because I believe it fundamentally will be it'll be a core part of how we build our business architectures and our technology architectures going forward the third is around work uh are you ready for this human for human plus machine processes and the Investments we need to make both in people and in the technology as we reinvent new ways of working the fourth is people in the idea of trust how do we build trust in the right way across these Technologies which is foundational to achieving the value and impact of the technology and finally Innovation what does the convergence of it operational technology and science mean for you and your company and how you can do more going forward so thanks for uh staying with me on this flyby it was a quick flyby I said a lot I hope that's giving you an overview we're going to do a lot of unpacking of this and I've got some special guests that are going to join me they're going to have fascinating stories to tell so please stay tuned as we get to the next step foreign just talked about a future of atoms and bits and there's so many exciting stories of our how companies are making it real and one of the companies I think is really interesting is Dow and what they're doing and to hear more about that I'm really excited to introduce Melanie Kalmar who's the Chief Information officer and chief digital officer at dial said Melanie welcome hey Paul thanks for including me in such an interesting discussion I know my team and I are always excited about you know the review of your annual Tech vision and it's really great to be included in your rollout this year that was a 125 year old 50 billion dollar Material Science company with about 104 manufacturing sites across 31 countries and we make over 14 000 products serving markets including food packaging infrastructure consumer applications transportation and many more and as the CIO and chief digital officer my role is to identify and partner across the company driving digital Innovation that accelerates our business growth and advances our strategic priorities and I will say we've evolved our thinking here at Dow around digital and it's not just a tech strategy anymore it is a company and a business strategy well that's really exciting to hear and uh Your Role is fascinating in terms of how you bring that together and Dow really plays an important role in terms of when you think about atoms and bits and what happens and maybe you can talk a little bit more about physical and the digital and maybe as you said you know digital being you know the company and more about the overall strategy and how that becomes really you know tangible and concrete in the products that thou you know makes for your customers as well or I want to take one step back our Dow digital strategy really revolves around you know serving our customers better making work more intuitive for our employees and we have a focus on the speed at which we work so you know the biggest successes that we see come when we hit the sweet spot at the intersection of two or more of of the pillars that I just mentioned and this strategy really guides us as we make smart Investments and keep on keeping our people and our Fleet of assets productive and safe by digitalizing our manufacturing footprint and really what I would say blurring the lines between traditional I.T processes and our OT or our operational processes but in addition we are engaged in combining as you say the atoms which now knows very well due to our focus on chemistry with the bits of the digital world helping us partner with our customers to bring better more sustained able products to the market really speeding up innovation while delivering growth and value to all of our shareholders so this itst or Science Tech space is where we're focused on solving the sustainability challenges not only for Dow but for the world while really driving new innovation for our customers that's really exciting it OT you know signs S2 Science Tech to bring more sustainable products you know better for the world more Innovation can you maybe go into some specifics on kind of the way you're driving Innovation and kind of what that looks like as you go into digital physical and atoms and bits sure Paul I'd be really happy too you know our investments in emerging Technologies not only create like I said more streamlined and efficient work processes which we've all been focused on for years but also Empower our manufacturing ecosystem of workers and provide more possibilities to meet the needs of our customers through this through product Innovation and in the IT OT space we've we've eliminated production roadblocks by integrating Ai and machine learning into portions of our manufacturing processes we're not across all of them and we're not across all of our sites yet because we've got a lot given our history our history but you know doing that's really helping us reduce downtime uh reduce maintenance costs and overtime because now we can schedule maintenance and not have to react all the time there's also a big boost to sustainability because the more reliable our plants are the less carbon that we're emitting we don't have to go through big star up processes if we have issues so reducing those issues is a boost to sustainability we're also you know a topic we've talked about in the past we're starting to Leverage The metaverse to train our employees on procedures and repetitive maintenance tasks and you know as you know Paul Dow you know we have a long history of partnering with customers to bring the next generation of products to the market and now as we're bringing IT together with ST in The Innovation process we can do even more we've historically infused Technologies like high throughput research but now with the IT platforms and the compute power we can reduce our commercialization time frames up to two to three times and we've got a predictive intelligence models that we're using to recommend formulations based on desired proper properties of product that that are directly input by customers so for example we Applied Predictive Analytics to accelerate the r d process for polyurethane formulations by 200 000 times it went from two to three months just to well to just you know 30 seconds so that was a huge Improvement another example in the same space is where we've leveraged Market listening to capture and customer reviews on mattresses and when we couple those reviews with AI it enabled us to quickly identify Trends and those reviews and develop new materials for the brand owners that we work with where you know maybe their mattress thickness or longevity or weight as examples required improvements you know we've also developed Partnerships with companies around the world to build manufacturing facilities that will recycle all kinds of plastics even the hard to recycle ones and of course digital technology bringing together you know our science and technology is critical in making that work so I'd say we have lots of great examples of Science and Technology and forming each other leading to new business growth opportunities and our objective is really how change how people work really on the atoms by leveraging the bits that technology brings to the table well that with that last statement really punctuated at all and and I I learned a lot and you got me excited about a lot of things there the you know better more sustainable products uh you know better you know better ways to live and work you know for consumers better work processes for your uh for your employees and uh that the mind-blowing uh statues had about of accelerating innovation in one case by 200 000 times I'll tell you that's that's impressive but I think you know bringing the future to life so thanks so much I think this has been a great illustration and really bringing color and bringing the vision to life as well so thanks for joining us Melody you bet thanks Paul oh well I could talk to Melanie all day about that that was really fascinating and what a great illustration of when Atoms meet bits which is really fantastic and now I'd like to get into another topic uh which is really hot today obviously around generative Ai and I'm so pleased to be joined by Alexandr Wang uh the founder and CEO of scale.ai Who's Alex if you don't know his background is one of the most successful AI technology and AI entrepreneurs out there at the age of 25 innovating and pioneering in the in the field of AI so we've gone from 125 year old company to a 25 year old founder really driving Innovation the pace of what's happening with uh with AI so uh Alex uh thanks for joining us thanks so much for having me Paul and super excited to be here um yeah I wanted a good place to start uh no sorry Alex I talked to everybody I was going to say a good place to start might be like how you got started where you came into the the industry and what was the idea that got you going yeah so I was uh I was originally at MIT and I was I was studying Ai and machine learning you know this was uh in the early days of deep learning which obviously is now um you know come so far since then and and uh I was I was studying um artificial intelligence and really how to actually apply the technology you know back when I was at MIT was very much so very much a research field and trying to figure out how to apply the technology to all the world's biggest problems was was really what sort of consumed me and um what I realized pretty quickly was that the biggest bottlenecks to the actual deployment of the technology wasn't in the algorithms really it was all in data and infrastructure and um being able to actually take these incredible algorithms that were being produced but but Taylor Taylor them and customize them to an organization specific data and problems was was the biggest bottleneck to actually have game-changing ai technology and that's continued to be true since when you know I dropped out at the age of 19 to start scale and it's it's really continue to be true all the way up until now where you know we'll talk about this but uh with generative AI the biggest challenges that I see for most organizations and that that you know uh you and I both have talked at Great length about is how do you take this incredible technology and actually customize it to Enterprises specific problems and make it deliver real value for them yeah that's that's great that's a great great background and I think a good decision on when you uh kind of left school to to do this given to all the fun you're having with that with scale you maybe talk a little bit more about generative AI as as you said he got started a different spot generative AI kind of came on this scene what's your perspective on the exploding interest and how we should be thinking about it yeah well well undeniably the technology is incredibly incredibly impressive and I think the the piece of it that that's been just absolutely staggering even within the industry is just the the pace of innovation and the pace which these models have gotten better you know so much of what's happening today originated from the 2017 uh attention is all you need Transformer paper and literally in the past you know five years the the Technologies come so far where obviously the most recent models are are extremely extremely powerful um in ways that were entirely difficult to predict so you know as we look at it in general AI is is certainly going to usher in a totally new era of of business Insight or significant increases to operational efficiency for Enterprises for Enterprises everywhere um and and we sort of look at it from a few different layers right if you look at the pure technology layer that's not slowing down the models continue to get better and better and better such that you know we'll sit we'll sit down a year from now and the models will continue to to drive breakthroughs to be even better even more impressive and and and even more powerful um and so you know what we see I I think the The increased interest is is important and necessary because you know the technology is moving at such a pace where where it's really important for um for businesses and Executives to to implement the technology so you can ride along with the the pace of progress with the technology um I also think that you know uh business Executives also face a bit of a mandate and pressure to catch up to uh competitors that may have begun experimenting and leveraging general AI Technologies um and and so I think there's there's a component where you know if we sort of uh Zoom forward let's say a decade and we think what are the what are going to be the dominant businesses in a decade those are going to be the ones who uh jumped fastest on the generative AI uh technology Trend and we're able to use it to revolutionize their entire business and you know we we've talked a lot about um how the how this technology can be used Within These Enterprises but there's just there's so many very real use cases you know you know we've we've talked about our work with with e-commerce and Retail companies you know uh and and the process by which uh individuals find products uh on on these e-commerce and and uh e-commerce websites is going to fundamentally change its generative AI um these companies are often also limited by product photography so they're very limited number of of sort of uh images for their products that they can use to sell their products generate AI totally uh blows up that bottleneck and makes it so they can generate just infinite amounts of imagery um and and the real the entire process by which we we sell these products is going to fundamentally change and I think a lot of our customers or our mutual customers are starting to realize that in in areas like content you know and social media content is King and there's just you know an astronomical amount of content that is being produced by users today but that's going blowing through the roof because of generative AI all of a sudden now you can use gender AI to Just Produce massive massive amounts of content and so you know the solutions that that we've built is is really built around providing insights into what content is really about what's the the sort of providence of that content and and use that to drive better recommendations and and and uh Drive sort of Greater engagement on these platforms and so you know the the opportunity is just is massive as we sort of look at it um but there's a lot of very real challenges that that I think many Enterprises are very rightfully uh thinking very deeply about you know first um what are what are the sort of uh what are all the Enterprise concerns what are the security implications of this technology what is what do you do about the risk associated with the technology what do you do about um uh what do you do about the the sort of very real questions around safety and and bias um so I think there's a lot of a lot of very real architectural questions that need to be addressed to to deploy this technology um well but again kind of uh kind of zooming out it's really really critical and so I maybe to to to finish up you know as AI continues to transform the business world uh Partnerships uh like ours between Accenture and scale are going to be really critical for um you know us people to work together to leverage to enable our customers to leverage their technology well and really transform their businesses um even though that the technology has its shortcomings and and those are that's our job to sort of work to uh work to resolve those with our customers foreign I think you have such a great perspective on this I'd love your point on you know those that will be leaders 10 years from now are the ones that will dive in today uh very much you know kind of what we're emphasizing as well you get it's a participation sport you got to get in and play and I think you also take such a balanced view not just talking about the opportunity but some of the hard work and some of the issues you know that we need to address as well and I think that does a great service to you know to kind of rounding out that view in the way you do and the technology you're providing is really important as we look at how you know businesses you know take the journey going forward so uh thanks thanks Alex so much for spending some time with us uh good luck and I look forward to continuing to work together as uh we build this future together yeah thanks so much Paul really excited to be here all right oh great all right so before we move on to our next segment uh that was a great discussion so hopefully you got another perspective on generative AI there's a lot of questions coming in and we're trying to track some of the questions and fit them in uh as we go and one relevant to the discussion we just had is um which Industries do you think will be first to really Implement generative AI there's a few different variations on that but it's getting out where do you think this will be uh this will uh be implemented and um the answer I'd give to that and you saw some hints in it earlier is it's remarkably broad interest in adoption because this isn't about an industry pattern per se it's about how categories of the way work is done get impacted and that's the way you know I'd encourage you to think about it so we're seeing uh applications already and work work we're doing now in retail and consumer goods in banking you know Insurance and financial services in uh in kind of manufacturing settings and more so I I don't think you should look at you know which industry move I think you need to look at what processes you have in your organization what types of work uh that you're doing and how will those areas be be impacted we hit on that a little bit earlier so uh so that's different than other Technologies in that it's a remarkably broad-based industry adoption pattern and also when we look at the global adoption pace okay we'll get to more questions later hopefully but let's transition again we're going to change gears in a very different direction and go into the next uh another segment digging in further on this digital and physical conversions and with that with that let's welcome our next speaker I'm very pleased to be joined today by Alex Buresch of BMW to talk a little bit more about tech Vision so welcome Alex hi Paul uh for me it's a really a great pleasure and to be with you and I'm really happy and thankful for inviting me it's really great to be with you here yeah I know and it's what's exciting is you you and I have talked about some of these themes and I know that you share the view that uh when atoms meets bits it opens up new opportunities and I don't I'm not sure if there's any company where that's more exciting than with what you're doing at BMW so can you tell us a little bit about how this will impact your business at BMW yeah actually uh we're thinking about that for about a couple of years and and uh and bits and atoms they come together we call it just featured and this which little experience is really driving our thinking and and we called our strategies there for reimagine I.T

because we think that we really need to resync on how we do i t and how that goes together with our businesses and if you think about how it's impacting well basically it's impacting our whole value chain and if I if I think about our whole process landscape from starting from r d uh going via vehicle production sales and after sales we really do see that the fictional processes which means digitization of our Hardware of the assets all through the whole value chain until the customer experience on the point of sale as well as in the product and how we do that basically is we think about it in creating a digital twin of our products right at the beginning of the process and we are creating this data by defining very clearly data assets which we then follow throughout the whole life cycle in our company and towards our customers we support that very much by use using AI in several ways generative AI but also the normal machine learning algorithms that we use and we integrate that into our day-to-day working business and with this consistent set of data which is basically the basis for all of this we really enhance the way we do our business and the Vision D the car which was presented by our CEO at the CES early this year we already Blended the virtual worlds together with the future physical worlds in the car in the product and this is really really exciting because then you feel how this integration of digital worlds and physical worlds come together and they really impact directly the experiences of our customers you know phygital is really a great way to describe your vision I love that and in fact we thought about that word a little bit with our Tech Vision uh before we uh went to atoms beat bits but Phygital is really a great way to capture it and that was really powerful what you talked about from R&D all the way through the customer and all the operations in between being connected you know atoms and bits being connected driving you know new uh new innovation it'd be great to hear maybe a little bit more you know about how you and your role as CIO you know bring together all of these Technologies and you know what what's what's how do you embrace the Breakthrough Innovation and drive the technology to deliver these types of benefits at BMW actually that that's a couple of points that are really uh driving the topic and and for us as it as a group I.T it's basically on how we support and enable the company to make use of this Technical Innovations and I think that's the way we do that is basically that we provide standard Technologies we work on consistent platforms uh within the company so that we can consolidate data and Technology to provide standardized services to our several user groups and this is not only limited to our company's boundaries but we want to extend this to uh throughout our whole value chain also to our peers and partners down and Upstream the supply chain and with that we believe that uh working on this uh let's say it's a tech Frontier a bit because it doesn't exist we are not used to work um over our company borders with our suppliers but with container X we open up a whole new space of data to be integrated into our processes well I think that's really amazing you just I think you hit on every one of the trends in our vision this year you talked about the atoms meet bits with the vegetable we talked about uh kind of the future r d talked about data we talked about generative Ai and a little bit about you know even identity and how it comes in there so really a great View and maybe just a final question uh in advice to other Executives given all that you just described that you've done on the data Foundation the organization everything to deliver on this any advice to other leaders as they look at focusing on bringing these worlds of atoms and bits together um actually what what the advice I would give is that besides the standardization of data and technology and the integration of Innovations it's very important to take the staff the colleagues with you and for us it's a huge transformation project so the digital transformation basically you need the whole team and how do you get this team we call it a digital boost we set up a general education program that really invites all of our Associates to take part in the digital transformation we have set up a very comprehensive education program that trains the people starting from data and analytics then takes them on the road to get to learn on how to work with artificial intelligence how to make use of certain models on how to automate processes and we have set up this to really help the businesses to make use of the Technologies to integrate that in their businesses and also to get to know on which potential they have by using the technology that's uh really really a great advice and uh I think we've covered it all we talked about cloud data artificial intelligence you know metaverse digital twin and how these things are come together powered by where you just ended it which was great on you know culture talent and the skills and bringing people along with the change so a really great discussion uh thanks for joining us Alex and I look forward to seeing you soon thank you very much for inviting me now let's transition to our next topic we've talked a lot about generative AI we've talked a lot about data now let's move on to another Trend around digital identity I'd like to turn it over to David Treat who leads our metaverse Continuum business group at Accenture it has been a leader in digital identity for over a decade so David over to you thanks Paul I would love to now introduce Marie Austenaa who's the head of digital identity for Visa Europe um I've had the pleasure of getting them know Marie over the past number of months as we launched the Linux open Wallet Foundation together and super excited to say that Maureen was just elected as the board chair uh so welcome Marie thank you so much for joining me thank you Dave it's a real pleasure to be here so as we just heard in Paul's Tech Vision presentation Accenture identified digital identity is one of the most significant Trends in technology today um you know as Paul said digital identities no longer a technical issue it really is a strategic business imperative especially as we think about how we invite everyone to meet us in the metaverse can you talk about the digital identity work that you're doing at visa and why is it you're so excited to launch the Linux open Wallet Foundation yeah sure good question so in my perspective digital density is really the Cornerstone of secure and convenient Digital Services it's really the tool you have to prove who you are you are really digitally and what you want so from a payments perspective in markets with widely adopted EIDs we see very low levels of Road High rate of transaction success and very high levels of innovation so if you look at the the Innovations in the financial services from if you take Sweden as an example you look at switch a payment wallet of course you've got open banking you've got client a bit by now by later all these are enabled because everyone has a way of proving who they are and what they want and ERD so so here at Visa we have provided trust and resilience to the way people and businesses have been paid for you know I think it's more than six years we've been around um and we are now embedding digital identity services within our payments business and this is really just the latest step on how we are constantly involving the approach to make sure that there is convenient and safety and resilient in in payments so coming back to the topics of wallets right um readers with widely adopted ERDs have also some of the most successful payment wallets if you take Swish and VIPs this is the Swedish southern region one respectively they are verbs they are used by everybody all the time every day and they have really transformed the payment experience and allowed a number of new use cases such as peer-to-peer payments based on mobile numbers they're really removing cash payments I don't carry cash anymore I don't need it nobody accepts cash right so they so and and they've also really experienced a rapid adoption among the merchants because of this convenience so I think these are some examples of why wallets are they're here to stay to because of the increased security it's really convenient and Merchants having a really good success as well so knowing how important these wallets are we decided to get involved in the open Wallet Foundation it is really essential that it's easy to deploy wallets that are previously preserving secure convenient and also gives the consumers a choice yeah I couldn't agree more and you're doing just some amazing work uh congratulations it um it makes me think really we're going into a period where where the winning digital business is going to be the one where like you you're putting the trust at the heart of this and and being able to to you to have earn direct access to actual data um because you've earned that trust uh to you to be able to access an end user's wallet um that's going to be the difference between you know success and success and otherwise uh in the next period as we as our Digital World evolves and so um you know we're at this really interesting moment right where leaders like you are developing incredible uh incredible Solutions and we're out there partnering to drive this whole notion of universal wallet infrastructure to life um and and push this forward I suppose we're at a bit of a Crossroads where we either end up doubling down on current models or or collectively the whole ecosystem really Embraces where this is headed um as as you think about the the you know those listening to this call and um you know and those that we want to attract into join with us in the Linux open Wallet foundation and on this Innovation Frontier uh what would you what are your thoughts what recommendations would you have to other Business Leaders about how to think about how this technology is going to change their relationship with customers and and partners yeah that's a good questions so the so I look again as I said at this identity as an a key enabler it's a Cornerstone of trusted Digital Services it's also a driver of innovation um and I see that these wallets can become a key interface between the merchant the relying party it doesn't have to be a merchant and the consumer's choice of both of how to pay of course and also what to share about themselves the consumers are very much in control so these wallets you know as we're working through now in Europe with the European digital identity wallets the expectations is that these wallets can hold your card your identity information your driving license your travel credential to allow you to cross borders your loyalty card and all of this information comes from the from an authentic source and they can be trusted so imagine that how a combination of these pieces of information transform the way that we interact online so this role is sudden the key to present both who you are and what you want and they make new Services possible so think about paying for your car rental with loyalty points and proving your identity and knowledgeable eligibility to drive in a single transaction and again you are in charge so I really think that business needs to think about how they're going to interact with their customers what data they really need to hold and also the new business opportunities arising from being able to interact with the customer in in search of trusted and meaningful way yeah Marie you make a great point this the identity is not just about usernames and passwords it really is about the com all the facets of our identity and uh and it and if I extend it from there it's also about the identity of of objects and digital actors too so you know what's your advice to Business Leaders as they think about how to how to embrace these technology waves so with with objects digital actors like you mentioned we need to know who the owner really is and who can authorize the sharing of the data or performing an action who is at the end of the day accountable so I think that our identities are the core of this and I hope that the future development of identity moments will give us more control about what is being shared who the information is being shared with and not less so it's really about balancing security and convenience being mindful about designing the technology responsibly I couldn't agree more the responsible Innovation piece is just is just critical and and keeping end users at the heart of the design as we think about that responsibility uh as we think about as I think about Business Leaders too I you know I I the the notion you have to have a view you have to lean in and understand the technology understand how it's being applied you can then choose to wait and watch as others develop it but but having a view on its impact to your business is key so um Marie thanks for a great discussion really appreciated you joining me and um and lots of fun um thank you so much thank you great back to you Paul thanks David and Marie that was a really fascinating discussion on digital identity one of our four Trends and I think you could really see why this is so foundational and important for all of us to understand as we look at this world of uh what atoms meet bits and now for the final segment here that we're going to go into on the forever Frontier the fourth trend of the of Technology Vision 2023 I can think of no better person to join me than Marc Carrell billiard Marc leads all of our Technology Innovation at Accenture he's always got at least one foot if not both in the future looking at what's happening and in this area in particular he's a real thought leader driving a lot of our work so Marc thanks for joining us thanks Paul I'm so happy to be with you today yeah and um one of the things that we can maybe start with uh is I talked earlier about this technology you know digital and science feedback loop maybe talk about what's happening there and what that really means with some examples okay I love the question and when we talk about this feedback loop what we're talking about is the progress that you've been talking about like generative AI everything that we're doing related to digital twin I mean thinking about like digital machines that we discussed with BMW but I was like you see behind me I mean there's like a wet lab a lab in Dublin is building like a little twin of this wet lab you know and it's going to be power not only by real data from patient but it could be powered by synthetic data so let me give you an example of things that we're doing and I'm really proud of where our labs in Dublin is doing here what we did is that we worked with the Alzheimer's disease Research Center from the MRE University and I love you of course that means like we're not doctors and so we put in expertise from from doctors from technology and business I mean to start working and a very important topic obviously is the Alzheimer's disease you know and the idea was really to detect um earlier and better and this disease and predict the cognitive decline of patients and you know Paul you need to know that Alzheimer's is one of the 10 leading cause of deaths in the U.S and and it's been on the rise I mean since the early 2000s so it's a big topic and a big problem to to look at you know and to solve and so what we did is that we we can't predict this rate of decline thanks to generative AI as I mentioned digital tween that we created and also using this kind of feedback loop and the progress we've made and and so we've done is that we we had to work on many many data like we had like data from five million patients we've been leveraging our generative AI but not only that I mean also Knowledge Graph the way you represent the data and then what we did is that we came up with a nice model that can really predict the decline of patients and and we've been working with deep expertise of of MRE researcher and clinicians I mean to double check our results and our results are extremely promising so we get really excited about that so what we're doing is now we're going one step further and we're improving those predictions and so what we're doing is that we're identifying new bio Pathways and the idea is here is to understand what proteins the disease is operating on and this will give us a new direction for Alzheimer's drug Discovery so next step is really working on identifying therapies used on other illnesses like for example cancer and minimize their impact on cognitive decline for Alzheimer patients this way the treatment for when disease doesn't and other disease worse you know that's a great story and it's a personal story for me because Alzheimer's has had a deep impact on my family I'm sure the family of many many watching as well and it's great to see how the tec

2023-04-02 09:12

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