Hello, welcome to visit Shanghai Forum
Distinguished guests:
Goodmorning!
It's apleasure to attend the 2019 Shanghai Forum on behalf of Accenture, and it's anhonor to be invited by Fudan University. This morning, it has been mentionedrepeatedly that our world is going through an unpredictable change, which wewould all agree as a major reason why we are here today. The change isreflected in various factors, including globalization, protectionism, China'semergence, populism, population transfer and so on, among which the grand leapof digital technology, as well as its transformative impact on business,economic and social community, stands at the center of attention for me and mycolleagues, because it is closely connected to Accenture's business and allChinese enterprises.
Asimple briefing about Accenture. We are the only large management consultingand technology service company among Global Fortune 500. Instead ofmanufacturing or marketing hardware and software, we offer end-to-end servicefrom corporate strategy to operation, including strategy planning and businessrestructuring, management and operation transformation, digital and IT services,BPO and outsourcing. For over three decades in China, we have provided a rangeof services to Chinese enterprises and supported their development. We areconstantly working on how to truly understand the transformation brought bydigital technology and how to seize opportunities in face of challenges.Tomorrow morning, Accenture and Fudan University will host a parallel forum“Reinvention of Industry”, and we welcome you to join us in exploring thejourney on industry digital transformation. Today we'll share with you theleadership challenge posed by the transformation to policy makers,non-governmental organizations and corporate directors, with a focus onartificial intelligence.
Tobegin with, the chart above shows China's recent economic development. Franklyspeaking, China's economy has taken off into a rosy domain through 40 years ofreform and opening-up, but we also realize that the growth drivers in the pastare losing momentum. Capital and labor alone cannot drive sufficient growth inChina. The growth rate of fixed asset investment has dropped from high periodsof around 30 percentage points to barely one percentage point last year. Withan increasingly aging population, China is losing strength on its labor force.It is estimated that China's population of working age will shrink in the next15 years. However, we also see hope in technological breakthroughs whichcontinuously reshape the normal, creating new productivity and indefinitepossibilities. The technology waves starting from 1950s have made hugedifference on business, economy, and society, and we can see that the seventhwave is triggered by artificial intelligence. According to Accenture'sresearch, AI has the potential to increase China's annual GDP growth rate by1.6 percentage points until 2035, which is 7 trillion US dollars in total, andenhance China's labor efficiency by 27%. All these figures prove that AI isbooming in China and will play a leading role in many industries, as China'sinvestment and financing in AI and the number of AI patents already top theworld. Since AI development requires abundant data, China has generated obviousstrength in data accumulation. In all walks of life, China's big data volume is5 to 300 times more than that of the US. Besides, AI has greatly facilitatedcorporate operation. For example, it helps subsidiaries of Ping An Group tofilter out risky loans, and reduce 1000-hour human work on reviewing legaldocuments to a day. It also helps transnational firms including J&J andAccenture to choose the best candidate for the job.
However,we also found that people have different assumptions and fear towards thefuture of AI. The pessimistic view that AI is very likely to replace human beingsis misleading and harmful in the short term. Gartner predicts that until 2020,AI enhancement technology will bring a commercial value of 9 trillion USdollars and cut 6200 million working hours, creating 2,300,000 jobs while onlyswallowing 1,800,000. Accenture has worked hard to find out the reason, and itturns out that AI will not substitute human beings, but rather complement usthrough collaborative intelligence, which we learn from enterprises benefitedfrom the use of AI. According to our research, human and machine have differentstrengths, yet the lack of collaboration forms a “missing middle” here inbetween. Once we discover the missing piece and achieve the interaction betweenhuman and machine, this middle area will create many new jobs and releasehumans from works that are complex, dangerous or dull, offering them moreopportunities and energy to do more interesting jobs. For example, coal minegiant Rio Tinto uses AI to operate mechanical equipment such as drilling rig,excavator and bulldozer, which prevents human operators from working indangerous mining conditions. The company can collect sensor data from remotedevices, which allows it to monitor the equipment more efficiently and safely.Also, at Accenture worldwide, nearly 17,000 jobs were replaced by automatictechnologies. But at the same time, we have trained 180,000 staff in a year anda half through a new technology platform, enabling them with new skills andexpertise.
In thepast 20 years, technological breakthroughs have struck many enterprises.According to S&P, in the past 50 years, the average life of enterprises haslowered to around 16 to 17 years, and half of the existing enterprises atpresent will drop out from the S&P 500 in the next 10 years. Enterprisesneed to analyze from all dimensions to shift their strategy and find newstrengths to work with AI. Today, we also have with us Doctor Athina, Accenture'sApplied Intelligence lead who has drawn a 10-year development path forenterprises to fully tap the potential of AI. You will see that throughdifferent prongs and methods, enterprises will be able to constantly enhancetheir productivity and operate at their full potential in the next 10 years.
So howdo enterprises transform new technology into strength? How do they performbetter with the help of AI? Based on our research on leading AI appliedcompanies, we have concluded 5 key principles in applying new technology. Thefirst is that we need to change our mindset and design AI with empathy insteadof using it solely for automatic convenience. Secondly, more experiments needto be done in order to accumulate data and experience, building a venturesomeand experiment-based culture. For instance, Amazon encourages staff to doground-breaking experiments and innovate with new methods and thinking ratherthan rest on its laurels. The third is the integration of isolated data.Although many enterprises claim that they have a large data, their datamanagers usually fail to utilize these data and their data analyzers do not haveenough data. So how to help data circulate around all departments to form aneffective supply chain is key to success. The fourth is that we need to putpeople at the core of our business and cultivate staff's collaboration skillwith AI. Some of our client companies in Europe have launched a “3050 plan”which requires all staff to be assessed at the age of 30 and 50 respectively.The former assessment sets a plan that guides them to grow with the company,and the latter reviews their previous work because the companies believe thatthose who have made progress on collaboration with AI are more valuable, and theywish that they will continue to work for the company for another 20 years,until they are 70. Therefore, higher human-AI collaboration skills are alsocrucial to successful corporate application of AI. The last and the mostimportant principle is leadership. Enterprises must lead responsible AI, withtop-down consideration of its ethic, moral and legal implications to ensurethat AI's judgment and actions are explicable and free from bias.
Technologyitself is neither good nor evil, for the two ends are only used to judge howpeople or organizations use technology, so it's all about top-down leadership.Currently there has been increasing debate on AI around the topic of privacy,tolerance, equality, prejudice, surveillance and monopoly. For example, theInternet and social medias analyze users'personal data with algorithms topersonalize dynamic push based on their interest and preference, which furtherspeople's misunderstanding that AI infringes their privacy. In addition, it istrue that AI is very helpful in resume screening, but will it exclude qualifiedcandidates for their gender or race? Will face recognition be used forsurveillance? Last week, San Francisco has just banned official use of facerecognition through legislation. Therefore, we need to keep three points inmind to apply responsible AI. The first is human at the center. The key idea ofresponsible AI is that AI should be human-centered. The second is AI's ethicaldesign. We must ensure that technical personnel are trained, and we must giveenough thought to AI's ethical standards in designing automatic and intelligentsystems, so that we can eliminate prejudice, discrimination or other unjustmoral standards in AI practice. Thirdly, we should strengthen the cooperationamong the AI industry, the government and the public to reach a consensus on AIcslegal, social and moral standards, which helps to build a positive policyframework. Thus, responsible AI is also a leadership challenge forpolicy-makers especially in China, because although China has strength in itsdata volume and accessibility, loose data governance brings hidden problems.The business opportunities of data platforms and AI are so great thatenterprises with skyrocketing valuations swarm into the market, growing fromzero to 50 billion US dollars in only 3 years. The large number of stakeholdersmakes the supervision and regulation of AI a highly complicated and challengingjob. Meanwhile, the technology and business community are constantly evolving,which poses serious challenge to a sound and flexible governance. But we arevery happy to see that Shanghai Forum includes a parallel forum which allows usto talk about AI and humanity issues, and we look forward to inspirational andfruitful discussions.
Ladiesand gentlemen, we are now facing an era of change. Technological breakthroughshave brought huge uncertainties to the world, but whether they brought challengesor opportunities depends on our capacity to truly harness our technology. If wecan join hands to explore the best way of human-technology collaboration, webelieve that we will go through the change that has certainly come withuncertainties and embrace a better world. Thank you!
（Thisarticle is edited based on the recording and has not been reviewed by thespeaker.）
