AI agents can successfully advise executive leaders, Accenture CEO says

DAVOS, Switzerland – Companies are investing billions in AI applications to streamline operations, offer new tools, and avoid losing out on the AI hype cycle.

Why it matters: AI's rapidly advancing capabilities will have different applications for different industries, and can be applied to advance executives' agendas, several industry leaders said at Davos.

Axios' Dan Primack and Ina Fried moderated conversations with New York Stock Exchange Group president Lynn Martin, Accenture CEO Julie Sweet, and Google DeepMind COO Lila Ibrahim. The Jan. 21 discussions were sponsored by Lightspeed Venture Partners.

What they're saying: Adoption of AI is growing in business settings and has started advising high-level leaders in some cases.

1) AI agents are advancing quickly. Davos was very different last year, Sweet said, when digital agents were "not the buzz it is now."

• Sweet shared how an AI agent generated talking points to coach a senior leader on an upcoming conversation, and that she had no changes to the agent's talking points.

2) AI can monitor for security issues. "We've been using AI from our regulatory team to spot nefarious behavior in our markets," Martin said.

• NYSE employees are catching more bad behavior now using AI as opposed to a few years ago, Martin said.

3) The application of AI can vary from business calls and regulatory environments to health care.

• "The area I'm particularly excited about is using AI for scientific discovery," Ibrahim said.

• "If we can better understand the universe, can we unlock possible solutions to things like health care and diseases, to climate, to food security and crops," she added.

Sponsored content:

In a View From the Top sponsored segment, Glean co-founder and CEO Arvind Jain explained how AI can serve as an augmentative tool for humans.

• "That's the thing that I'm most excited about, [is] how humans can actually use AI to do things that they couldn't do before," Jain said.
• One example Jain cited is analyzing employee calendar data to get rid of unnecessary meetings, which is a task he was hesitant to give an employee to do.