埃森哲：人工智慧如何助力工業利潤和創新

新聞 06-30

REINVIGORATING

PROFIT POTENTIAL

THE VALUE OF

AI TO INDUSTRY

BOOSTING INDUSTRY

PROFITS WITH AI

CROSS-INDUSTRY

STRATEGIES FOR SUCCESS

APPENDIX

序言

Fortunately, a new factor of production—artificial intelligence (AI)—is emerging that can help kick-start profitability. AI consists of multiple technologies that can be combined in different ways to sense, comprehend, act and learn. Accenture research shows that AI has the potential to boost rates of profitability by an average of 38 percent by 2035 and lead to an economic boost of US$14 trillion across 16 industries in 12 economies by 2035.

But this will only happen if organizations adopt a people-first mindset and take bold and responsible steps to apply AI technologies to their business.

Our research has identified eight cross-industry strategies to help seize the AI opportunity.

Furthermore, this phenomenon is evident across most industries, from Manufacturing to Utilities to Financial Services.

Declining profits are a cause of concern in themselves. Even more worrying, however, is the effect of decreasing investment, innovation and long-term shareholder value. Why? Dialing back investments not only erodes a company』s ability to grow, but also freezes resources to innovate in an increasingly disruptive environment. Together, low investment and innovation efforts can drag on shareholder value as investors question a company』s ability to meet market expectations.

Indeed, the current data do not suggest an environment conducive to growth.

Business investment is already close to stalling. For instance, in Manufacturing

business investment growth has declined from 14.8 percent in 2012 to -5.2 percent in 2016 in the United States and from 5.9 percent in 2012 to -6.6 percent in 2016 in the United Kingdom1. And growth in R&D spending, a key indicator for an industry』s capacity to innovate, has equally been sluggish. For instance, Manufacturing』s figures fell from 6.6 percent in 2008 to -2.6 percent in 2013 in Germany and 7.4 percent to -0.9 percent respectively in Italy2.

While prospects may appear dismal, help is at hand in the form of a new factor

of production—AI—that can transform opportunities not only for economic growth,

but also for corporate profitability. Accenture defines AI as a constellation of technologies that allow smart machines to extend human capabilities by sensing, comprehending, acting and learning—thereby allowing people to achieve much more.

Driven by a massive increase in data, soaring computational power at decreasing costs and breakthroughs in technology, AI is becoming a commercial reality. More than a productivity enhancer, we view AI as an entirely new factor of production that can reverse the trend of falling profit growth in three ways: by optimizing processes with intelligent automation systems, by augmenting human labor and physical capital, and by propelling new innovations. (For more information, see sidebar as well as Accenture』s related report, 「Why Artificial Intelligence is the Future of Growth.」

But to capitalize on this tremendous opportunity, businesses in every industry will need to synthesize AI into their strategies and develop responsible AI systems that are aligned to society』s moral and ethical values and provide better outcomes for all people. AI』s unique characteristics as a capital–labor hybrid—such as the ability to augment human labor at scale and speed, self-learn and continuously improve over time—will require new approaches and models in areas such as investment, innovation and human capital development.

The economic potential of AI Accenture, in association with Frontier Economics, modeled the potential economic impact of AI for 16 industries covering a diverse field, from Manufacturing to Utilities to Healthcare. As our yardstick, we used growth in gross value added (GVA), a close approximation of GDP. GVA is an output measure that accounts for the value of goods and services produced in a certain sector.

It can be thought of as the contribution of different sectors to economic growth.

We compared two scenarios for each industry to assess AI』s future impact. First, the baseline case shows the expected economic growth for industries under current assumptions.

Second, the AI steady state shows expected growth with AI integrated into economic processes. As it takes time for the impact of a new technology to feed through, we used 2035 as the year of comparison (for further details see 「Appendix: Modeling the GVA impact of AI」).

Our research shows that Information and Communication, Manufacturing and Financial Services are the three sectors that will see the highest annual GVA growth rates in an AI scenario, with 4.8 percent, 4.4 percent and 4.3 percent respectively by 2035 (Figure 4).

In the Information and Communication industry, with its heavy reliance on technologies, AI capabilities can coalesce with existing systems to generate US$4.7 trillion in gross value added in 2035 (Figure 5).

For instance, providers can develop new AI platforms for offering cyber-attack

protection services to their customers.