On the Platform

COVID-19 has accelerated the massive growth of platform businesses. As platforms play an increasingly integrated role in how people live and organizations operate, trust is non-negotiable. But in such a dynamic and fast-moving environment, maintaining trust requires platform companies to keep up with new threats and continuously adapt.

Robin Murdoch is a guest speaker on The Information’s 411 Podcast series with Jessica Lessin. Listen as he discusses what hypergrowth companies can do to win customer loyalty from the ride-hailing sector.

Exploring committee-based governance for ethics and AI and the issues confronting companies and governments as it relates to ethics and technology rules out artificial intelligence.

Accenture’s Software & Platforms discuss the impact platform companies have on commerce – online and offline.

Accenture and Shopify discuss platform business models trends.

Digital platforms are extending into a range of new services in the physical world. For some new services, the digital interaction is the most important, for others it’s the human touch that matters most. The key for digital players creating new services is to understand what consumers value at every point – and then design and deliver the experiences that meet those exact needs.

As drones evolve from sensing the world to carrying and doing things in it, whole new vistas of opportunity open out. Businesses need to keep scanning the horizon for these high-flying technologies. Listen as Matthew Quinlan, Principal Director of Geospatial Platforms, Accenture Software & Platforms and Geospatial Platforms Lead at Accenture, is joined by Antoine Martin, Autonomous Systems Practice Lead at Accenture, to discuss the applications of drones and unmanned autonomous vehicles and the economic opportunities and lessons for a more autonomous age. In this podcast, you'll hear how drones are leveraging new technologies like edge-computing and GPUs to become more autonomous and smarter than ever. Their applications are expanding rapidly and have exciting implications for companies in every industry. From delivering vital medical supplies in hostile terrains to new forms of passenger transport and revolutionizing logistics, these powerful 'flying computers' offer endless possibilities. Learn more: accntu.re/2rcahwW

Consumers are hungry for content. Platforms must feed that appetite. And they're using AI to manage the huge volumes of content as efficiently as possible. The challenge? Making AI act responsibly. Listen as Martin Stoddart, Principal Director of Platform Experience, Accenture Software & Platforms’ and Principal Director for the Software and Platforms group, and Rumman Chowdhury, Accenture's Responsible AI Lead, explore some of the ethical risks and opportunities that companies face when introducing AI into their content operations. AI can have a huge impact on the productivity of content operations. But those gains can be seriously damaged if the work AI does to review, label and moderate content replicates and entrenches human bias. Responsible AI aims to eliminate that threat. In this podcast, you'll hear how platforms can make sure they design their AI to act in the consumers' and platform's best interests. Learn more: accntu.re/2rcahwW

Extended reality is reshaping our world, from watching a movie to visiting the doctor. And it's only just started. How can companies take advantage and make the right investments in the 3D future? Listen as Martin Stoddart, Principal Director of Platform Experience, Accenture Software & Platforms’ and Principal Director for the Software and Platforms group, and Rori Duboff, Accenture's Extended Reality Practice Lead, explore some of the challenges and opportunities that platform companies face when preparing for the explosion of extended reality (ER). In this podcast, you'll hear how companies and users are adopting new immersive experiences into their daily habits. But the market is still young, and many questions remain. Not least of which is backing the wrong ER platform. The priority? Thinking about the entire ER space strategically. That means pinpointing the new opportunities it creates, exploring new content formats and, crucially, understanding how to monetize innovation in this new world. Learn more: accntu.re/2rcahwW

Computer vision is like human vision with superpowers. From autonomous vehicles to new retail applications, it's opening new vistas of opportunity. But to realize them requires rigorous training. Listen as Matthew Quinlan, Principal Director of Geospatial Platforms, Accenture Software & Platforms and Principal Director of Geospatial Platforms, Accenture Software & Platforms and Global Geospatial Platforms Lead at Accenture and Daryn Nakhuda, CEO of Mighty AI, explore the challenges involved in making sure that computer vision algorithms are trained using the data and machine learning techniques they need to operate in complex visual environments. In this podcast, you'll hear about the wide range of factors that need to be considered when it comes to realizing computer vision's potential. Identifying the terabytes of data required for a specific use case is just the start. Synthetic data can augment visual information captured from real world environments. And all that data has to be labelled precisely, and at scale, before it can be loaded into a deep learning framework to start creating models for testing.