Accenture's AI: A Declaration of Autonomy

Should educational institutions follow their advice for businesses? Should universities recruit with bots that build emotional ties with recruits the same way businesses will connect with you?

I started reading Accenture’s new report, AI: A Declaration of Autonomy, earlier today.

It has some key statements that I started copying and pasting.

Then, I figured I’d share them here for those who don’t have time to read the report.

But then, I also started thinking, should educational institutions adopt some of the same practices they suggest for businesses?

• Should universities use bots that build bonds with students to recruit? If they don’t, will they be out-recruited? Are universities already doing this?

• Should we prepare student for the AI World the way industries are going to have to prepare their workers? Yes, for some, that is controversial.

• Should we encourage our students to talk to AI bots when they want empathy and not judgment?

• Will digital social media influencers who can build strong emotional connections with our students be good teachers once they learn our content?

• Should universities automate administrative tasks to reduce costs?

• Should we have autonomous robots on campus? Should departments be allowed to purchase robots?

• Should faculty be allowed to build AI TAs that connect emotionally with students?

• Meta donates $1 billion to a university, can faculty be required to have Meta AI “note takers” in class (this is a fictional Meta product at the moment)?

• How can we build trust between AI systems and administration, faculty, staff, students, families, taxpayers, and interest groups?

• Should student course evaluation forms include an evaluation of the AI teaching assistant?

  Fun debate topics for the following faculty meeting..,..

• 

The bold is my “debate tag.” What follows underneath is direct quote from the report.

Autonomous AI will transform work, social relationships, and governance

(A)s companies continue to scale AI—and use generative AI as a catalyst for reinvention—it will solve new problems, create new inventions, change how we work and live, and transform industries and governments...Together, we can prepare now for a bold future when AI is autonomous and helps us achieve more together…We anticipate we are living in a time on par with the biggest moments in technology, one which will be shaped and defined by AI-powered autonomy and the emergence of AI-based cognitive digital brains at all levels of society, and we’ve only just begun (Accenture, 2025).

Does this apply to schools?

Every company must be prepared to forge a new technological footprint, founded on AI—a unique DNA identifying and differentiating them as they launch into tomorrow’s technology landscape.

This is why it is critical leaders recognize the Binary Big Bang for what it is: a brief moment of transition where enterprises can take stock of the changing technology landscape and carve out how they compete tomorrow. Companies that lean into this moment and lay the foundation for systems that can autonomously create new solutions, identify malfunctioning (or successful!) features, and even self-heal, will cover far more ground in this transition phase than those which are static and waiting for periodic indicators to initiate change. It’s time to stop thinking about technology as a tool and see it as your biggest competitive differentiation.

Young adults prefer AIs to people

At the same time, people are beginning to experience emotional, real connections with AI. Nomi AI is creating AI companions that people can text in group chats or one-on-one.61 They have personalities and backstories; they even remember past conversations. In August 2024, Soul Machines, a company that creates autonomous AI avatars, released a survey finding Gen Z young adults are starting to prefer support from AI assistants over traditional self-help resources in areas like learning languages, boosting confidence, and exploring financial strategies—potentially demonstrating the appeal of talking to an agent at times when we want human empathy, but not judgement. And Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff said, semi-seriously, he will occasionally use ChatGPT as a therapist.

Could a social media influencer be a teacher?

Emerging efforts show they can—to great effect. In April 2024, Instagram began testing Creator.ai, which provides a program that will let influencers connect with fans through chatbots that mimic their voices.64 The bots will automatically message fans on the influencers’ behalf, letting them communicate and build rapport with far more people than they could ever do by hand. These are chatbots creating real-feeling connections at a scale and to a degree of personalization that has never been possible before.

Will bots bond with our students?

Imagine this: when a customer interacts with a business, they’re guided by a familiar face. A chatbot that acts like a beloved mascot or an influencer’s persona the company has licensed. This agent shows up on the company’s channels or can be invited into a conversation on other generative AI-based platforms. Over time, it supports and gets to know the customer—as an individual beyond purchase history or demographics. And it builds a trusted relationship, not just with its personality, but by taking relevant actions.

Should schools do this?

Build relationships in the growing personified AI ecosystem: Personified AI is still new with few vendors—though a growing number of companies are starting to create personified AI products

Will universities use these in recruiting?

Workers are using AI

75% of knowledge workers report using generative AI (Accenture, 2025).

We are building digital brains

(F)ew are looking past the separate pieces to truly understand the scope of what they are actually building: AI “cognitive digital brains” that will completely reshape the role technology plays across the enterprise and people’s lives. Accenture, 2025).

How individuals, businesses, and governments will use “digital brains”

For individuals, the cognitive digital brain will operate as a co-pilot or sidekick, something that will understand their job, learn their preferences, and get to know them through its interactions, in service of helping them be an enhanced version of themselves. For businesses, it might seem more like a central nervous system—an evolution of the enterprise architecture into something that can capture the collective knowledge of the business, its unique differentiators, and its culture and persona, and become a key orchestrator (and even autonomous operator) for parts of it. For What makes a Cognitive Digital Brain? industries, it may look like the common framework and communications protocol between companies in an industry, or engines codifying the grand challenges that shape an industry—models that will help grow our understanding of things like physics, genetics, movement, and more. And for countries and governments, it brings together the unique knowledge, language, culture, laws, and security to help industries, companies, and citizens engage. Critically, these cognitive digital brains won’t operate in silos. When they begin to interact at all levels, they will create a rising tide of intelligence that elevates the capabilities of every party involved

AI used in drug development

Take Insilico Medicine, a pharmaceutical company, which used generative AI to go from discovery to phase one trials of a drug in under 30 months, around half the time it usually takes.11 They used one model fine tuned on omics and clinical data to identify potential targets for drug therapy. To develop possible drug compositions, they used a generative chemistry engine that consisted of 500 predictive and pre-trained models

AI is powering robots

(AI is) giving robots a new degree of context and reasoning about the world, allowing them to take on a wider and more complex range of tasks and, most importantly, co-mingle with humans like never before. And of course, agentic and multi-agent AI.

Autonomous robots

We are reaching a watershed moment as the power of generative AI is applied to physics and the field of robotics. Gone are the days of narrow, task-specific robots that require specialized training. A new generation of highly tuned robots with real world autonomy that can interact with anyone, take on a wide variety of tasks, and reason about the world around them will expand robotic use cases and domains dramatically.

Productivity gains

(G)enerative AI is expected to drive productivity gains of 20% in companies leading in AI adoption.

Does this apply to schools?

Every company must be prepared to forge a new technological footprint, founded on AI—a unique DNA identifying and differentiating them as they launch into tomorrow’s technology landscape.

This is why it is critical leaders recognize the Binary Big Bang for what it is: a brief moment of transition where enterprises can take stock of the changing technology landscape and carve out how they compete tomorrow. Companies that lean into this moment and lay the foundation for systems that can autonomously create new solutions, identify malfunctioning (or successful!) features, and even self-heal, will cover far more ground in this transition phase than those which are static and waiting for periodic indicators to initiate change. It’s time to stop thinking about technology as a tool and see it as your biggest competitive differentiation.

AIs as agents of interaction

What makes the world interesting is diversity and personality in individuals, businesses, products, and experiences. While leaders hunt for the value machine-like consistency can bring, they need to ensure they don’t overshadow the very things that create enriching and personal human experiences. AI systems by design will be more consistent than the usual human interaction and engagement, and that can be a great benefit, but leaders must take extra care to inject the enterprise's personality in them—or they are at risk of losing what makes them unique..Gartner® predicts that “by 2027, chatbots will become the primary customer service channel for roughly a quarter of organizations and the primary lead qualification tool for 10% of B2B sales teams.”6