Dive Brief:
- S&P Global plans to outfit its 35,000 employees with generative AI skills as part of a broader strategic collaboration with Accenture, the companies said Tuesday.
- The financial data company’s workers will undergo a comprehensive generative AI learning program that will roll out later this month. The goal is to accelerate workers’ ability to leverage AI solutions and bridge knowledge gaps.
- The two companies will also work to allow financial services customers to evaluate models using Accenture’s platform to select and customize models and S&P’s benchmark solution to assess model performance in specific use cases.
Dive Insight:
The financial services industry has a long list of potential generative AI use cases, such as augmenting software development or leading business teams to information faster.
More than 2 in 5 banks have integrated generative AI into their tech stacks, while one-third are in early experimentation stages, according to an NTT Data survey published in April. Despite clear signs of eagerness to adopt, most employees aren’t fully ready to leverage these tools, yet.
“An AI-ready workforce that can effectively deploy and scale the technology simply does not exist today — it must be created,” Accenture Chief AI Officer Lan Guan said in the announcement.
Giving tools to employees without proper guidance and training can amplify busy work and open the enterprise to a laundry list of risks. Like S&P, businesses that want to reach their AI-related goals are investing in building out AI skills.
IT leaders expect the technology to bring operational improvements this year, according to a Celigo report published in June. But the path to get there varies. Some are tapping citizen developers to lighten the load for overworked IT staff. As generative AI use expands in the workplace, so does the need for policies and guardrails to guide employees.
