Accenture CEO Julie Sweet speaks at India AI Impact summit | AI Growth in India |PM Modi |AI Use |IT

Public and private partnerships and the urgency of what we must do in order for AI to drive growth. So companies must be willing to reinvent how they operate their processes, how they've been doing work for the last decades. Underneath the headlines of a failure of AI is mostly a failure to reinvent. Companies have to invest to reshape their workforces and companies must commit to creating sustained entry-level jobs. Now, entry-level jobs make economic sense. They're the only way to create future leaders and they bring needed truly AI native talent to each of our organizations. But AI fundamentally is changing what an entry-level job looks like. And so a commitment means we have to be intentional about changing the roles, investing in training, which is exactly what Accenture is doing. We will hire more entry-level jobs this year than last year. But the skills we require and the way we're onboarding those individuals is fundamentally different. Now countries must also reinvent. They must reinvent their role and how they work with the private sector. They have to themselves as governments become the best credential for why AI matters. They must work with the private sector to help create lifelong learning because education is no longer a destination. We have to have lifelong learning. India is doing a great job of embedding AI into the educational system starting in primary school and governments across the world will need to do so. At the same time as countries are thinking differently, individuals have to think differently and recognize that formal education is no longer the destination. But perhaps the biggest fundamental change that must be made is that companies and countries need to pound the table for global standards. These standards should apply to safety but also to the industries where AI can make the greatest impact. For example, in pharma, if one country is allowing pharma companies to use the latest technologies to discover drugs and then test drugs, but other countries don't follow suit, it means that you won't be able to scale. You won't be able to bring it. And we know that most often that impacts the most vulnerable. Now we have a view of course that we have to reinvent. But as we think about that reinvention, our future is the fundamental belief that it is humans in the lead, not humans in the loop, that will shape that future. We should not confuse how you deploy AI responsibly. Of course, all of our compliance programs have humans. They have technology. That doesn't change the critical lesson that we've learned over and over again. Technology, no matter how powerful, is only a tool. It is simply a tool. It is leaders who decide how to use those tools. It is leaders who decide to commit to reinvent, who dedicate their time to making sure that people come along the journey. And it is leaders who must choose to work together to ensure the safe widespread adoption of AI. There are lots of headlines today that predict less. Less jobs, less opportunity, less human relevance. We are here because we see a future of more. At Accenture, we live by eight leadership essentials, the qualities we believe we need to run our company. And one of them is particularly important. We expect leaders to lead with excellence, confidence, and humility. As we look to our collective future, we should have the confidence to have the unwavering belief that together we can make a future that is better for all. We also must hold ourselves individually and collectively accountable for executing on that belief with a high bar of excellence because our people around the world are counting on that excellence. And finally, we must all have the humility to know that we cannot do this alone. Thank you very much.