Australia's audit firms race to own enterprise AI

The Australian arms of big four audit firms KPMG, EY, Deloitte and PwC are financially backing a new generation of artificial intelligence, machine learning, and cognitive computing into the enterprise.

iTnews can reveal where the firms are placing their bets as they scale up internal capability to address what all see as a rapid growth opportunity.

While the public face for AI’s latest push into the enterprise to date has largely been the likes of ANZ,Defence, Woodside, and Deakin University backing IBM’s Watson cognitive technology, in private many more are experimenting with or embedding AI into production.

One of the main channels being used to bring next-generation AI into the enterprise is through engagements with the big four audit firms.

“The demand is huge,” KPMG's lead partner for its Solution 49x project, Rod Bryan, said.

Solution 49x is a new AI team being assembled by KPMG that has grown to 30 staff in its first eight months. “

We’re not driven by a technique or even by data,” PwC Australia’s chief data scientist and partner in the modelling and analytics group, Matt Kuperholz, said.

“We’re driven by a business challenge, which may be to protect a space, get into a new space, or it may be to make a factory safer or a manufacturing process more efficient.

“The key is to start with the business problem and then take a look at the data assets that can be brought to bear, and only then to land on a technique.”

(H/T iT News)