Accenture Technology Vision 2023: Generative AI ushers in new future for business

• Almost all business leaders agree AI will play an important role
• Globally, as much as 40% of working hours will be supported by language-based AI

New research from Accenture found that generative AI and other rapidly evolving technologies are ushering in a new future for business where the physical and digital worlds are linked.

The Accenture Technology Vision 2023, “When Atoms Meet Bits: The Foundations of Our New Reality,” explores the technology trends underpinning the convergence of the physical and digital, as businesses look to accelerate enterprise reinvention in the here and now.

“The next decade will be defined by three mega technology trends: cloud, metaverse and AI,” said Paul Daugherty (pic), group chief executive of Accenture Technology.

Peter Yuan, Technology lead, Southeast Asia at Accenture said: “For years, the guiding pillar of enterprise innovation has been taking processes, even whole parts of the organisation, and digitising them. And while we’ve built a rich and meaningful digital world, we haven’t really reconciled it with the physical one. The next wave of business transformation will erase the demarcation between those worlds to fuse them into a new reality. The goal is not incremental improvement, but a step change towards total reinvention. With almost all ASEAN executives (99%) agreeing that investments in emerging technologies will help their organizations remain resilient, the trends laid out in our report will help enterprises chart the path in accelerating their reinvention, reimagining products and services, and exploring further opportunities for growth”.

The meteoric rise of ChatGPT has captivated the world’s attention to the power of generative AI to augment human capability. Accenture estimates that globally, as much as 40% of all working hours will be supported or augmented by language-based AI. Among business leaders, 99% of Singapore and ASEAN executives (compared to 98% of global execs) agree AI foundation models will play an important role in their organisation’s strategies over the next three to five years.

• Generative AI: Advancing human capability as a co-pilot, creative partner or advisor.

  

  • Nearly all, 98% of Singapore executives (ASEAN: 99%; Global: 98%) agree that generative AI will spark significant creativity and innovation, and usher in a new era of enterprise intelligence.

  • Top implementation risks of AI for Singapore executives include stakeholder pushbacks, dependency of creators of AI foundation models and misaligned application of the technology. For ASEAN executives, top implementation risks include misaligned application of the technology, high or increased costs, and stakeholder pushbacks.

• Digital Identity: Ability to authenticate digital users and assets and the foundation for traversing digital and physical worlds.

  • Digital identity is now seen by 83% of Singapore executives (ASEAN: 93%; Global: 85%) as a strategic business imperative, not just a technical issue.

• Your Data, My Data, Our Data: AI cannot reach its full potential until companies figure out data. That means breaking down data silos and modernising their data foundations.

  • 98% of Singapore executives (ASEAN: 96%; Global: 90%) believe data is becoming a key competitive differentiator within organisations and across industries.

• Our Forever Frontier: Feedback loop between science and technology is getting faster, with each accelerating the advancement of the other.

• So much so that 99% of Singapore executives (ASEAN: 96%; Global: 94%) describe the speed of innovation that their industry is experiencing due to advancements in science tech as either accelerated or unprecedented.

The Accenture study is based on a survey of 4,777 C-level executives and directors across 34 countries, including 320 ASEAN respondents across 15 industries.