AI will remain a technology tool, leaders will decide how to use it, says Accenture CEO Julie Sweet

Accenture CEO Julie Sweet .

• AI adoption boosts growth, productivity in IT services
• Accenture CEO says humans must lead AI-driven transformation
• Continuous learning is key for adapting to AI advancements

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Information technology (IT) services industry will also continue to thrive in the artificial intelligence world, as companies and countries embrace new technologies that drives growth and productivity, Accenture CEO Julie Sweet said at the India AI Impact Summit in New Delhi on February 19.

Her comments come as fear of AI-led disruption have roiled IT stocks in India and around the world. The recent launch of Claude Cowork by Anthropic triggered concerns that agentic AI could render IT services and software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies obsolete.

“It is humans in the lead, not humans in the loop, that will determine our future… When companies and countries embrace new technologies and then use them to drive growth and productivity, they prosper. Advanced AI should be the same,” Sweet said.

She pointed to a recent survey of C-suites across 20 countries where the executives saw AI’s greatest value in growth.

“AI should make the impossible possible. In a few years, as a CEO, if you cannot point to new products and services, new levels of performance that were not possible before, then you have not captured the potential of AI,” Sweet said.

Dire predictions about irrelevance of IT firms were made earlier too but have been proven wrong, she said. One such instance was robotic process automation (RPA), which predicted that 47 percent of US jobs would be automatable.

“We used RPA to automate thousands of jobs. As an industry, IT services embraced the new technologies of digital and classical AI, and we created many, many more jobs. We helped our clients adopt RPA, and those who did created investment capacity to invest in new technologies and grow. And in fact, the IT services industry has thrived over the last decade,” Sweet said.

Accenture has more than doubled its revenue and headcount over the last decade. Sweet said AI could also drive such growth for the industry but for that to happen, companies and people should reinvent.

“Companies must be willing to reinvent how they operate their processes, how they've been doing work for the last few decades. Companies have to invest to reshape their workforces,” Sweet said.

She said education has to change and learning has to be a continuous process for companies and people to adapt to AI. “Individuals have to think differently and recognise that formal education is no longer the destination. Governments must work with the private sector to help create lifelong learning,” she added.