Accenture said the acquisition will further equip its clients with capabilities to meet the growing demand for enterprise-scale AI, analytics and automation solutions. On Friday (13 December), professional services company Accenture announced that it has entered into an agreement to acquire Clarity Insights. Clarity Insights, a Chicago-based data consultancy with deep data science, AI and machine learning expertise, will bring its 350 employees to Accenture's Applied Intelligence business in North America. Founded in 2008, Clarity Insights focuses on serving clients' needs from end to end, aiming to transform business processes to embed and scale AI with deeper insights from data. Accenture, which is headquartered in Dublin, did not disclose the terms of the deal.

A global women's network says the biggest danger to women regarding the development of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the years ahead is the fact that women represent only about 22 percent of all AI professionals worldwide. The Women's Forum for the Economy and Society has launched the Women & AI Daring Circle to develop "concrete steps" to increase the participation and visibility of women in the creation of artificial intelligence systems and promulgation of research and standards that are accurate, reliable and nondiscriminatory. The group is led by Microsoft in collaboration with L'Oreal, Publicis Groupe, and AXA. UNESCO is an institutional partner and FTI Consulting, one of the largest financial consulting firms in the world, is the Circle's "knowledge partner." The Circle calls AI one of the "most disruptive" technological developments of our age.

In the past two or three years artificial intelligence has felt like rocket science. Companies such as DeepMind have captivated our attention. We have been wowed by developments in areas such as computer vision, machine translation and speech recognition. In 2020, AI will begin to live up to the hype by starting to generate real economic value through its application across industries. According to consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers, the widespread adoption of AI will add about $15.7 trillion (£12.8

The manufacturing industry is turning to robotics and artificial intelligence as well as a range of other strategies to navigate an increasingly challenging economic landscape, according to a report by Deloitte. The management consultancy says that, as the risk of a global economic downturn grows, the industrial manufacturing industry faces a challenging landscape in 2020 replete with trade tensions, muted job growth, supply chain volatility and an ongoing skilled talent shortage. Yet, despite these headwinds, industry leaders are rapidly developing coping strategies – not only to weather the brewing storm, but to thrive in spite of it. Paul Wellener, US industrial products and construction practice leader, shares his insights into these and other topics in his 2020 Manufacturing Industry Outlook. One of the key findings of the report is the way the current business climate is driving manufacturing, with companies entering partnerships with companies that offer complementary technologies in order to build "digital muscle".

RPA technology, sometimes called a software robot or bot, mimics a human worker, logging into applications, entering or consuming data, calculating and completing tasks, then logging out. Use case example: As a virtual account analyst, a software robot takes a bank application form, logs into a credit check site, a background check site, a known terrorist database, and a criminal database, collecting results and snippets and automatically building a background profile on the applicant for final review. IPA is the application of artificial intelligence and machine learning to process technology to create an enhanced solution. The technologies included in an overall solution might be RPA, BPM/Workflow and the use of image recognition and machine learning. UI Path defines 6 distinct categories of Intelligent Automation skills that can be leveraged in RPA shown in the graphic below.

In a hyper-connected world, game-changing digital age technologies are powering enterprises for superior business outcomes and unmatched customer experiences. Intelligent automation, power plants, digital twins and digital ecosystems are enabling cost savings, improved performance and greater RoI across industries. Enterprises are raising the bar with intelligent, agile supply chains and design-centric approaches. Personalized, conversational banking with AI has become a reality, blurring man-machine boundaries and enabling superior customer engagement. Social platforms too have enabled quicker response times and faster issue resolution, ensuring'customer delight'.

It has been more than six decades since the concept of Artificial Intelligence has transformed from imagination to an academic discipline. Influencers, especially those active on social media help give direction to the policymakers and academicians. They keep common men updated on the trends and'what is what' in AI, Machine Learning and associated concepts like Big Data and BlockChain. AiThority introduces you to the 50 most popular AI-influencers of North America. A PhD in industrial-organizational psychology, his interests lies in Data Science, CX, Statistics and Machine Learning.

Over the last two years, the ethical deployment of AI has been a growing concern for enterprises and technologists alike. But 2020 could be the year we really see it reach the forefront of AI development. According to Deloitte's second State of AI in the Enterprise survey, 32 percent of businesses rank ethical issues as one of the top three risks of AI, and most are yet to develop a specific approach to this problem. Meanwhile, 45 percent have appointed senior executives as AI champions – showing that AI is a growing strategic concern for enterprise leaders. What isn't clear is how this is going to affect the wider business landscape in 2020.