Accenture, Anthropic unveil massive AI safety push with $2 billion investment

Under the partnership, the companies each expect to invest at least $1 billion over five years in AI safety.

Accenture will draw on its decades of investment in responsible AI, as well as the deep technical and safety expertise of Faculty, one of the world’s leading applied AI companies, which it acquired.

Faculty has expertise in testing and evaluating models for some of the world’s leading AI labs and has extensive experience building complex AI systems designed to be safe and ethical.

The company’s work spans government, defense, healthcare and infrastructure. Among its projects was the development of the UK National Health Service’s Early Warning System during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Accenture is bringing together a dedicated team with deep AI, security and industry expertise to work alongside Anthropic,” said Julie Sweet, chair and CEO of Accenture.

“Safety requires both deep technical expertise and a clear understanding of how AI is used in the real world. Embedded evaluation is an emerging area and we look forward to partnering with Anthropic to help accelerate the development of embedded evaluators, which we see as an important part of the safety landscape going forward,” she added.

Dr. Marc Warner, chief technology officer at Accenture and CEO of Faculty, said: “Faculty, which is now part of Accenture, was founded on the belief that AI should be safe by design, not safe by accident. That conviction has guided our work with governments, defense, and healthcare systems across the world.

“Joining forces with Anthropic as embedded evaluators is exactly the kind of work Faculty was built to do—and as part of Accenture, we have the platform to do it at a scale that can genuinely move the industry.”