Global IT services and consulting major Accenture on Thursday said artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to increase India's annual growth rate of gross value added (GVA) by 1.3 percentage points, lifting the country's income by 15% in 2035. A study titled'Rewire for Growth' also estimates that AI could add $957 billion to the Indian economy by changing the nature of work to create better outcome for businesses and the society. "AI's transformative power can be compared to the advent of computing itself, and there's strong early evidence that AI can play a key role in unlocking socio-economic value in India. With the right investments AI can create a flywheel effect'liberating' people to create long-term economic and societal value," said Rekha Menon, senior managing director and chairman of Accenture India. The research was done by Accenture Research in collaboration with Frontier Economics. The report also explores the strength of the country's AI innovation ecosystem relative to other G20 economies across five key pillars -- universities, start-ups, large businesses, policy makers and multi-stakeholder partnerships.

Artificial intelligence could add $957 billion to the Indian economy and will lift the country's income by 15% in 2035, a new research report from Accenture showed. AI has the potential to increase India's annual growth rate of gross value added (GVA) by 1.3 percentage points, the report, called'Rewire for Growth', estimated. "The economic boost will be driven by innovative AI technologies that enable people to make more efficient use of their time and do what humans do best – create, imagine and innovate new things. What's needed is a clear, long-term vision, and a multi-stakeholder action plan that balances growth with the ethical questions posed by AI," Rekha M Menon, senior managing director and chairman, Accenture India, said. AI startups have witnessed higher than average growth in India since 2011, the report said.

Artificial intelligence (AI) can add $957 billion into the Indian economy by changing the nature of work and improving the outcomes for Indian businesses and the society in general, global technology consulting firm Accenture has said. Highlighting the fact that India is third in the number of startups active in this space, it said the number of such entities has grown 86% over the last five years. But in terms of funding, India is lagging behind the US and China, which reflects the limited success such startups have had. "Machine learning, recommendation engines and computer vision are the most popular segments, accounting for almost 80% of total funding. Internet, including business-to-consumer (B2C) offerings, is the best-performing sector both in terms of total number of startups and funding received, followed by mobile and telecom," it said.

Relentless change; stubborn continuity… The predictions on tech trends for the New Year 2018 seem to be more drastic than any of its previous editions. Deloitte has just launched its annual Deloitte TMT Predictions for 2018, and it has some serious thought-provoking recommendations for marketing and advertising agencies -- focus on machine learning deployments, augmented reality tools, and live-streaming content. Fascinating as always, Deloitte TMT Predictions 2018 emphasize that the technology, media and entertainment, and telecommunications ecosystem are the top enterprise adopters of cutting-edge artificial intelligence capabilities, powered by new chips and better software tools. What should CMOs be expecting in 2018? Well, according to Deloitte's predictions, augmented reality will become more mainstream even as machine learning deployments begin to make a marked impact on marketing budgets.

Interview with Tom Hebner, Worldwide Leader of the Cognitive Innovation Group at Nuance Communications, a 14,000-employee, global company whose speech solutions support up to 80 different languages. Tom has held numerous positions at Nuance, including Senior Director Proactive Engagement Professional Services, Senior Director Cloud Strategy and Solutions, and Director of Professional Services VUI Design Lead. His current focus is on applying the latest advancements in machine learnings and artificial intelligence to augment, automate and improve customer service.

Hey Robot, is AI a good thing? Accenture employees can now anonymously ask a new internal chatbot questions on the ethical guidelines for deploying a client's artificial intelligence programs. Called COBE, Accenture's chatbot can also address the proper use of social media or employee interactions in the workplace, the global consulting firm announced Dec. 20. Users can interact with COBE--an acronym for Code of Business Ethics, from which it was transformed--via instant message. Accenture designed COBE as more employees and clients encounter a host of ethical questions amid their increasing work on artificial intelligence, autonomous vehicles, and other new technologies.

By 2020, almost all major software companies will be using artificial intelligence in some of their products, predicts global consulting firm Deloitte. This means that most, if not all, of the leading finance, communication and manufacturing systems will contain elements that think for themselves. Not only will these machines take over some of the jobs we do today--they'll do them faster and more accurately. That's not to say there won't be the occasional glaring failure, but overall, computers beat humans when it comes to speed and efficiency. What does artificial intelligence mean for your business?

We crafted a scalable, cost-effective approach for a new era of learning that puts the spotlight on --learning anytime, anywhere-- through digital technologies.-- With the Accenture Future Talent Platform, the client can now launch new services on its ecommerce site 75--percent faster than previously possible. The program will identify new roles and skills and build a training plan for a pilot, followed by a 40,000-person rollout. Accenture will also develop a curated, interactive curriculum for bank employees. Combining unmatched experience and specialized skills across more than 40 industries and all business functions -- underpinned by the world--s largest delivery network -- Accenture works at the intersection of business and technology to help clients improve their performance and create sustainable value for their stakeholders.

CFOs have an opportunity to cut costs, build for the future, and increase data-driven decision making. I've always been surprised at how finance functions treat their own technology spend. Maybe finance executives are more conservative with their own wallets, or maybe they hold themselves to too high a standard. Either way, they tend to invest less in technology than their counterparts in other functions invest--on average, just 13 percent of tech budgets go toward enterprise functions like finance, risk, and compliance, while IT garners 28 percent and sales and marketing gets 24 percent, according to PwC's 2017 Global Digital IQ Survey. Some CFOs, however, are rethinking the digital investment in their own function--especially the investment in emerging tech, such as robotic process automation (RPA), artificial intelligence (AI), and blockchain.

Among the findings pertaining to the enterprise, this year's report indicates that business organizations will likely double their use of machine learning technology by the end of 2018. TMT Predictions highlights five key areas that Deloitte believes will unlock more intensive use of machine learning in the enterprise by making it easier, cheaper and faster. The most important key area is the growth in new semiconductor chips that will increase the use of machine learning, enabling applications to use less power, and at the same time become more responsive, flexible and capable."