Industry news

IBM has said it will replace thousands of jobs with Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the coming years.

According to media reports, CEO Arvind Krishna, said that hiring in certain back-office functions will be suspended or slowed down. This could mean that 30% of non-customer facing roles will be replaced by AI and automation technologies over the next five years

Danielle Rolfes has been named partner-in-charge of the Washington National Tax (WNT) practice of KPMG LLP, the audit, tax and advisory firm.

During a time of great legislative change, an increasingly complex regulatory environment, and broad market disruption, Danielle is the right leader at the right time to help our clients navigate uncertainty,” said Greg Engel -Vice Chair – Tax at KPMG LLP.

Read more on CityBiz here.

Complex and diverse supply chains help cities by making them resistant to sudden supply chain shocks, according to a recently published paper from researchers at Pennsylvania State University,

“We found that complexity can be a good thing,” said Alfonso Mejia, the paper’s corresponding author and an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at Penn State. “Cities with diverse supply chains — sources from a broad range of domestic and global suppliers — appear to be better protected against shocks, and experience less-intense shortages

Fujitsu has unveiled its “Fujitsu Kozuchi” platform, which gives users access to a whole host of AI and ML technologies.

The platform can be used by customers across a variety of sectors to help them test and deploy advanced AI tech. For example,  through Fujitsu's AI Ethics for Fairness (for testing the fairness of AI models).

Read more on TechMarketView here.

The legal arm of big four firm Deloitte has continued to expand its offering in the U.K., hiring its eighth partner within the last 12 months.

Andy Casey, who was global head of corporate secretarial services at U.K. firm Eversheds Sutherland and its related arm Konexo until 2021, has joined Deloitte Legal as a partner in its legal entity management team.

Read more on Law.com here

Partners are among the most senior-level roles at accounting firms and some of the highest paid. They've also historically been one of the least diverse ranks among the Big Four.

Elena Richards, who joined KPMG in 2020, says the company has become more intentional about encouraging sponsorship relationships throughout all levels of the firm, especially between its managing directors (the level before senior leadership) and partners.

Read more on Yahoo Finance here.

Amazon is launching a new cloud-based generative AI service called Bedrock. The tech giant also announced new EC2 cloud instances geared towards model training and AI applications, and a free tier to its CodeWhisperer service.

Read more on Computing here.

Aviva announces the commitment of a further £150m to its corporate venture capital fund, Aviva Ventures. The fund will focus on delivering returns through investments into early stage businesses that bring Aviva new opportunities and insights into emerging technology and customer trends.

Digital transformation means there’s never been a greater need for STEM-qualified people in supply chain – getting more women into such roles will be key.

Some progress is being made on attracting women into STEM roles in computer science, engineering, economics, and physics, yet these areas remain disproportionately male.

Read more on Supply Chain here.

In order to better enable companies to outsource effectively, French company Webhelp has developed a program, dubbed “The Nest,” which is designed to support start-ups and scale-ups around the globe to scale up their teams internationally and improve their customer experience operations

Read more on Jerusalem Post here.