AI is the fastest-growing industry that Accenture’s CTIO Paul Daugherty has ever experienced. He joins Azeem Azhar to discuss how AI can help businesses across a broad range of industries enhance the value they offer customers. Paul’s 2018 bestselling book Human + Machine: Reimagining Work in the Age of AI laid the foundations for companies that want to harness AI to help innovate and grow quickly.

Paul and Azeem also discuss:

• AI as a general-purpose technology and how to set priorities for its application.
• How critical it is to have data at the heart of your business. Can you use AI effectively if you don’t utilize the “data network effect?”
• The difference in an AI system that can interact with and modify human behavior from a company that puts out services or products that are highly addictive.
• How the rush to individualization moves us into “The Trust Age.” What are the practical steps companies can take to (re)build consumer trust?
• Self-regulation vs. external regulation, and the challenges of appropriately balancing regulation and innovation.

Further reading:

• “The Future of AI Will Be About Less Data, Not More” (HBR, Jan. 14, 2019)
• “Accenture Interactive Launches Groundbreaking Artificial Intelligence Solution to Tackle Elderly Loneliness” (Accenture, April 30, 2019)
• “Using AI to Make Knowledge Workers More Effective” (HBR, April 19, 2019)
• “Hey Google, sorry you lost your ethics council, so we made one for you” (MIT Technology Review, April 6, 2019)
• “From Principles to Action: How do we Implement Tech Ethics?” (Industry Ethicists, April 17, 2019)

Paul Daugherty @pauldaugh