Accenture Nigeria said its investments in Artificial Intelligence (AI), Virtual Reality (VR), robotics and blockchain technology capabilities will help businesses across various sectors boost their productivity and efficiency through innovations. The management consulting and professional services giant said technology will continue to evolve. Speaking with reporters after a demo at its Lagos office at the weekend, its Managing Director Mr. Niyi Tayo, said earlier in the year, the firm had predicted that many consumers and enterprise clients will depend on AI to select products. He said: "Early this year, we predicted that in five years, more than half of consumers and enterprise clients will select products and services based on a company's AI, instead of the company's traditional brand. And in seven years, most interfaces will not have a screen and will be integrated into daily tasks. These two predictions alone strongly suggest that companies must act now on developing their AI Journey. "We want businesses in Nigeria – from banking to manufacturing, health, construction, education, retail, security, and other sectors to take advantage of the innovations we have created to improve their businesses.

Artificial intelligence (AI), once a topic only explored in science fiction movies, TV shows, and books, is something that has quickly become a part of the world of today. In 1969, management consulting firm McKinsey & Company released an article claiming that computers were not smart enough to make any decisions, but rather the human's intelligence behind the devices was powering them. With modern computers replacing skilled human labor in such fields as medicine, agriculture, and education, it is fascinating to see how incorrect this claim turned out to be. Some may even argue that artificial intelligence is the way of the future. With buzzwords like "artificial intelligence," "machine learning," and "bots" being tossed around, sometimes incorrectly interchangeably, it can be confusing to keep up with what is going on in this booming industry.

PALO ALTO, Calif., December 11, 2017 -- Cloudera, Inc., (NYSE: CLDR), the modern platform for machine learning and analytics optimized for the cloud, announced its ranking as one of the fastest growing companies in North America on Deloitte's Technology Fast 500 . "We continue to demonstrate sustained growth and penetration in machine learning and analytics, as we add more solutions for the cloud by developing innovative technology that gives our enterprise customers the solutions they need in the age of digital transformation," said Tom Reilly, chief executive officer at Cloudera. "An example of this focus on innovation is our acquisition earlier this year of a recognized leader in machine learning applied research, development, and solutions, Fast Forward Labs." In addition to the Deloitte Technology Fast 500 recognition, Cloudera has won multiple awards this year including Datanami Editors' Choice Award, IoT & Innovation Award, Big Data 50 award, and 2017 Stratus Award, to name a few. Awardees of the Deloitte Technology Fast 500 are selected for this honor based on percentage fiscal year revenue growth from 2013 to 2016.

Tenured professors are being offered 3X their salaries to leave academia and join leading AI companies including Google. Demand for Ph.D-level expertise in AI continues to fuel academic recruiting efforts globally. It's becoming increasingly common for any of the leading AI companies to sponsor global conferences where the primary goal is to meet leading academicians, patent-producing researchers, and AI experts with Ph.D backgrounds. A recent New York Times article, Tech Giants Are Paying Huge Salaries for Scarce A.I. Talent provides insights into how competitive it is to find AI expertise today including a glimpse into the salary bidding wars that go on for academicians with proven expertise in the field. CEOs of AI companies most skilled keeping innovation moving at quick, high-intensity pace that keeps top talent challenged while keeping the core business growing are getting the highest approval ratings.

Learn about the artificial intelligence advances that will have the most impact. Artificial intelligence is front and center, with business and government leaders pondering the right moves. But what's happening in the lab, where discoveries by academic and corporate researchers will set AI's course for the coming year and beyond? Our own team of researchers from PwC's AI Accelerator has homed in on the leading developments both technologists and business leaders should watch closely. Here's what they are and why they matter.

LAS VEGAS & LONDON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Accenture (NYSE:ACN) has completed a pilot program that uses artificial intelligence (AI) and the ease of voice to help older people manage the daunting challenges of navigating their care delivery and well-being. The Accenture Liquid Studio in London developed an AI-powered platform (the Accenture Platform) that can learn user behaviors and preferences and suggest activities to support the overall physical and mental health of individuals ages 70 and older. The Accenture platform, which runs on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud, includes a'Family and Carer' portal that lets family and caregivers check on the individual's daily activities, such as whether they have taken their medication or made new requests for caregivers. The Accenture platform can also spot abnormalities in behavior and alert family or friends, based on user defined permissions. Other services provided by the Accenture platform helped participants find local events as well as potential new friends, encouraging them to become more active and social.

For many of us, our experience with artificial intelligence (A.I.) may be, for a lack of a better way to put it, "helpfully cool." That can mean asking Amazon's Alexa to play a particular song or querying Google's Home to see if butter is a suitable replacement for vegetable shortening. That sort of change is coming faster than you might expect. And organizations that anticipate the most effective ways to leverage A.I. will profit handsomely. I first identified artificial intelligence way back in 1983 as one of 20 core technologies that would become powerful drivers of exponential economic value creation. Looked at in the context of my overall Anticipatory Organization Model, A.I. is an ideal example of a Hard Trend – a future certainty – which in this case means our overall increasing use of this technology in a broad array of applications.

NEW YORK; Nov. 14, 2017 – Accenture (NYSE: ACN) has launched the Accenture Future Talent Platform, an interactive learning platform that includes talent transformation services to help clients develop their IT workforces in critical areas such as digital, cloud, security and artificial intelligence. Accenture has already used the platform internally to train more than 180,000 of its people globally in the latest digital technologies – or New IT – in just over 20 months. Now, through its technology consulting and talent and organization practices, Accenture is bringing these learning capabilities to clients to help them run agile, intelligent businesses. "With technology accelerating at a breathtaking pace, companies need to upskill their people at greater speed and scale to avoid being disrupted by competitors," said Bhaskar Ghosh, group chief executive of Accenture Technology Services. "Accomplishing this requires creating a culture of continuous learning that empowers people to build new skills. The Accenture Future Talent Platform helps companies do exactly that through a unique, interactive experience and rich curriculum."

Tax preparation, auditing and strategy consulting are services that have historically relied on an intensive use of human capital. Artificial intelligence (AI) now threatens these business models. Technologies such as natural language processing (NLP) and robotic process automation (RPA) complete in mere hours what human auditors took weeks to do. Deloitte, Ernst & Young (EY), and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) are three of the famed Big Four tax and accounting companies. I recently sat down with innovation leaders at these companies to learn how AI is transforming the tax and auditing business.

Attended by CTOs, CIOs, IT Directors, Heads of Innovation, General Counsel, Managing Partners and Technology Leaders, join us to find out everything you need to know right now about AI in the professional services market. The event content is written by our Advisory Board and Alternative Events, the UK's leading event company focused on professional services technology.