Accenture CTO Paul Daugherty on how the cloud enables the AI revolution

Paul Daugherty, chief technology and innovation officer at Accenture, said that artificial intelligence will change how work is done, companies and their digital transformation efforts and the workforce. All of Accenture's core themes--AI altering the user experience, ecosystems and platforms, workforce marketplaces, new industries and human-centric design--rely on cloud computing as an enabler.

"In general, technology has been applied in a way so humans have to adapt. You need change management," he explained as he outlined Accenture's 2017 Tech Vision. "AI will be one of the most transformative information technologies and a lot of it will be powered by the cloud."

Among Accenture's predictions, the concept that every company should think about platforms and ecosystems is critical. AI will be built on top of platforms from public cloud providers from the likes of Google, Amazon Web Services, IBM and Microsoft Azure. Companies will then add value on top of those platforms.