Accenture Yu Yi: Cloud Computing, Metaverse and Artificial Intelligence: Three Key Technology Trends Will Define the Next Decade

Source: Economic Observer

Author: Chen Baitao Siyu

Original title: "Accenture Yu Yi: We need a new "Moore's Law" in the AI era"

Image source: Generated by Unbounded AI tool

When I met Yu Yi, global vice president of Accenture, president of the Greater China Enterprise Technology Innovation Division, and president of Accenture's Ali Division, he had just returned from the 14th Annual Meeting of the New Champions of the World Economic Forum ("Summer Davos Forum 2023") Come out of the main venue.

"We think this meeting at this moment is at the right time." Yu Yi said that artificial intelligence technology is bringing us new perspectives and possibilities, and this technology will also be the key point for improving productivity in the future. "Efficiency improvement must be a systematic process. Point-to-point innovation is no longer enough, it must be full-stack innovation. And these need an open base as support."

Accenture is incorporated in Ireland. As a world-renowned professional services company, Accenture has always insisted on systematically observing the global business landscape, exploring and summarizing emerging technology trends with the most disruptive potential for enterprises and industries.

In the "Technology Outlook 2023" recently released by Accenture, it is mentioned that past strategies and technologies are no longer able to solve the major challenges that enterprises are facing today. Building the fusion reality of atoms and bits is a necessary way to solve new problems in new ways, and only joint Only by working together can we meet the severe and imminent challenges.

Not long ago, Accenture also announced that it will invest US$3 billion in the data and artificial intelligence business in the next three years to help customers in various industries promote and apply artificial intelligence technology more quickly and responsibly, and improve growth, efficiency and resilience.

Accenture has been a leader in the field of artificial intelligence for more than ten years, with more than 1,450 patents and pending patent applications worldwide, and hundreds of customer solutions for different fields, covering marketing, retail and manufacturing.

Yu Yi believes that the current enterprise is facing a comprehensive business remodeling, and the business logic is undergoing great changes. "We have been doing digitization for so many years, and now we have reached a critical point in time." In Yu Yi's view, the Internet The source of a wave of digital dividends is the change of business models, and the next wave of dividends we will embrace will be the new improvement of people and overall efficiency with the help of artificial intelligence.

At present, Accenture has integrated artificial intelligence technology into its service delivery methods, helping thousands of clients improve efficiency, gain insight and accelerate value realization through leading intelligent platforms including myWizard, SynOps and MyNav. Six years ago, Accenture also pioneered the Responsible AI Framework.

In Yu Yi's opinion, to understand the emergence of new technologies from an industrial perspective, we need a new structural thinking framework. "In the age of intelligence, a new generation of 'Moore's Law' is also needed."

01 From Metaverse to AI

Chen Bai: From blockchain, Metaverse to today's new wave of artificial intelligence, how do you view the choice and iteration of technical routes?

Yu Yi: We know that there is a process in the diffusion and evolution of technology. This process may not be a one-way curve as we simply think, it may even be a nonlinear change.

For blockchain, cloud computing, metaverse, and even generative AI, I prefer to think of it as the changes brought about by combined technological innovation. It's not an either-or relationship, but a fusion of each other. For example, in the metaverse, it also needs to use the capabilities provided by generative AI. Of course, more fundamentally, it also needs the computing power support based on cloud computing. We believe that three key technology trends—cloud computing, metaverse, and artificial intelligence—will define the next decade and drive the convergence and interweaving of the physical and digital worlds.

At the same time, we also believe that this round of technological breakthroughs in generative artificial intelligence will have a profound impact. Enterprises need to act immediately to invest in data, talents, and customized basic models on a large scale to meet the needs of enterprises and realize technological value.

Chen Bai: Some people compare the current moment to the "iPhone moment", and also believe that the new industry dividends brought by new technologies are also breaking out. What is your verdict?

Yu Yi: It is not necessarily a certain technology that leads us to the "iPhone moment", but we believe that the improvement of efficiency is becoming the source of new dividends in the future. But this kind of dividend is different from the previous era. The source of the previous wave of digital dividends was the change of business models, and the next wave of dividends we will embrace will be the combination of people and overall efficiency in artificial intelligence. Get a new boost with help.

Chen Bai: The relationship between man and machine is becoming the focus of public attention. How do you view the relationship between man and machine?

**Yu Yi:**For example, we can see that Copilot launched by Microsoft is being embedded in various applications such as Microsoft's search and documents. We believe that artificial intelligence assistants will bring new efficiency to people's productivity in the future. promote. So it will be a relationship that gives individuals more freedom and more capabilities, rather than a simple human-machine replacement relationship. We believe that artificial intelligence assistants like Copilot will be able to bring greater improvements to human capabilities, so we do not think of it as a replacement relationship, but an enhanced and empowered relationship that not only brings new opportunities , can also help us better improve efficiency. Just like after the emergence of the mobile Internet, there are more new jobs.

Of course, the use of digital technology must have a threshold, just like in the PC era, the threshold is that you can at least learn to type; in the era of artificial intelligence, the threshold may be whether you have a better ability to make demands, so from the current point of view, the Ability will become a threshold test for us to enter the new world of artificial intelligence.

02 New Moore's Law

**Chen Bai:**What is the thinking framework for understanding the AI era?

Yu Yi: We believe that the AI era needs a new "Moore's Law". Moore's Law has some basic elements. First, it is a long-term cycle; second, it can meet the situation of large-scale and lower and lower marginal effects; third, it can penetrate into multiple fields to play an index on the development of the industry. type of impact. In the information age, Moore's Law focuses on the semiconductor field. With the development of technology and the increase of scale, the unit cost decreases; in the digital age, Moore's Law mainly reduces the unit cost through the distributed scale of the cloud; There should also be a law to define various aspects such as cost and benefit.

Chen Bai: How will the leap in artificial intelligence technology affect our future economic development?

**Yu Yi:**Artificial intelligence is a key technology that essentially improves efficiency. It can be combined with all aspects of enterprise application scenarios, which may be marketing, products or customer service. At the same time, it can also help enterprises in terms of risk compliance.

Accenture's latest "Technology Outlook 2023" report reveals four major technology trends. The first is general intelligence. Most of the Chinese business executives surveyed believe that such tools can stimulate great creativity and innovation, and achieve tangible results, such as fast and large-scale analysis capabilities (58%), and accelerated innovation (56%), etc. . Other trends include data transparency and frontier exploration.

Also, another trend I want to highlight is digital identity. It not only involves the pace of development of the industry, but also a wider relationship of trust. The integration of personal identity information and digital services, data and other information realizes the seamless connection between the digital world and the real world. This is not just a purely technical issue, but an integral part of corporate strategy. If enterprises dare to reshape the future of digital identity, they will be able to significantly improve their own security level, and have the resilience to deal with the change of the environment, and carry out mutual trust cooperation with customers and partners. Most importantly, these companies will gain a head start on creating a better digital environment and, ultimately, a better world. How to ensure resilience, security, privacy, consent, and trust will also be the next focus of enterprise organizations.

**Chen Bai:**For the real economy, how to make better use of new technologies to empower production methods when new technologies emerge in an endless stream?

**Yu Yi: **In the process of using artificial intelligence technology to integrate the real economy and the digital economy, there will be many room for improvement and fields that were not thought of before. For example, the original Industrial Internet has done some basic work to connect to the Internet of Things, sensors, and equipment, but it has not fully revitalized them. After the iteration of artificial intelligence technology, it is equivalent to playing the role of a central nervous system and brain. Managed at scale and efficiently, this will have immeasurable impact. At this stage, it is still in the process from industrialization to automation, and it has not yet been truly intelligent. But we are already on the accelerated path to an intelligent world.