KPMG: Harnessing AI to Drive Sustainability Progress

The use of AI across enterprise operations is fast becoming inevitable.

As companies learn how to best harness the technology, they are uncovering ways it can fit into their operations and how it can be leveraged to boost efficiency, reduce costs and limit errors in processes. 

KPMG, one of the leading global consultancies, is currently supporting numerous companies in their AI transformations.

The company's Global Head of AI, David Rowlands, summarises: “It is a double-edged sword that will cut both ways – employing AI for good and using AI to mitigate the impact of developing it.

“The AI genie is out of the bottle – it's now up to humans to grab hold of it and use it for good and to manage the bad.”

The powerful capabilities of AI

AI and sustainability have both progressed as key topics of discussion within businesses in recent years, as company leaders consider the digital future of their organisation.

“The first thing that KPMG did was make sure that our people had the AI technology in their hands,” David remarks. “We knew that people would be innovative in the field and do great things with their clients on a day-to-day basis that could be enhanced by the general capabilities of AI.

“It is exciting to think about how the capabilities of 270,000 talented, diverse people multiplied by AI is going to go out in the interest of our clients.”

KPMG has been organising people, processes and technologies into operating models to boost efficiencies and production for years – the same is now true of AI.

The organisation is harnessing the technology in several ways across its business to enhance its services and capabilities. Namely through KPMG Ignite - a comprehensive tool to enhance business decisions and processes.

“We want to get AI woven into the operating models, value chains, strategies and senses of purpose of organisations. When you do that, the business and value case of AI becomes exponentially much more powerful.”

AI can also be used to increase the power of compute of sector specific cognitive engines.

“This is where winners and losers are going to be created in each of their sectors,” David adds. “In healthcare, AI is being used to analyse scans and is finding 14% more cancers than the human eye.

“In hospitals, we are using models to optimise resource allocation so that when a patient comes in, there's always a doctor, a nurse, a bed, the operating theatre – we’ve never had the compute power and the AI capability to be able to solve these things before.”

Looking more specifically at sustainability, AI can be used to boost efficiencies in areas such as land use optimisation and decarbonisation.

“The journey between the two tools is technology, not least of which is AI, which multiplies ideas to get outcomes,” David explains. 

David Rowlands: A passion for AI governance

David Rowlands is KPMG’s Global Head of AI, before which he was KPMG UK’s Chief Transformation Officer and spent nearly seven years as Head of Consulting for KPMG UK. 

In his current role, David is responsible for the development and implementation of KPMG’s AI strategy across the globe, including embedding AI into KPMG, supporting client uptake, installing the KPMG Trusted AI framework into operations and maximising the opportunities presented by AI technologies.

“When AI came along, we recognised its transformational nature straight away,” he says.

“It is a perfect fit for me because I'm all about transforming our clients and as well as my passion about KPMG. 

“We knew that AI was going to be transformational for us – it has shone a light on all the things that we want to do as a practice as KPMG.”

David’s role is multidisciplinary across the audit, tax and advisory sides of the business around the globe.

“We're trying to look at everything that we need to be and everything that our clients need to be at the same time,” he says. “This is the topic that our clients have been most interested in on our own journey that I've experienced.” 

KPMG describes itself as client zero – it is its own first client, which has the advantage of allowing a really granular development, at speed.

“We're creating a team of people who are driving forward AI around the world.”

“Despite AI existing for a long time, it's this new generative AI capability that's captured the imagination. It's being very resonant with people – the technology is predictive, probabilistic and therefore by its nature, it's resonant. The next thing that you hear it say is what you were expecting it to say. 

“It has encapsulated everyone's minds – from those who have worked in technology for a long time, to those outside of the space who are enabled to understand the power of technology in their environments and to start thinking about the transformation that it can give them.”

Embracing AI governance as a path forward

As the technology emerges, so follows the regulation – slowly, in comparison to AI’s swift emergence. 

“The pace of change is ahead of regulation,” David says. “Organisations are having to fill that gap with good corporate governance themselves, but investors are challenging that which is one of the reasons why boards are interested in how they're going to oversee AI in their organisations, as found in the report.” 

Finding a lack of official regulation on AI, many companies are turning to KPMG’s Trusted AI Framework to build capabilities.

“I think there's something very positive about the way the EU has described the AI act as a framework because that is probably going to be the construct of regulation that is echoed around the world, which is contextual risk-based with escalating amounts of transparency and reporting that will be required throughout that,” David continues. 

“So that combination seems to be a good framework on this that organisations can then get ahead of in their corporate governance.  

“In my view there is broad base support for greater regulation across AI and the internet to help organisations adopt more technology to move with greater confidence.”

Building corporate governance, based on the Trusted AI Framework, is a large part of how KPMG is supporting its clients.

“AI is something you need to govern, but it's also a tool that you can use to govern better and analyse the problem better. We're bringing AI into our ESG practice to help them implement that good corporate governance.”

KPMG’s Trusted AI Framework

As AI uptake grows, questions arise about how to manage it ethically. KPMG’s Trusted AI Framework has 10 values split between three foundational principles – values-driven, human-centric and trustworthy. 

“I think every individual and organisation are sort of split right down the middle between huge excitement about what this will do and then huge trepidation about what it might do,” David says.

Thankfully, this is not a new issue – existing ethical frameworks, technology risk frameworks and ISO standards have all supported the development of KPMG’s Trusted AI Framework, the first of its kind to come to market. 

The 10 capabilities are things that organisations need to master if they are going to be trusted in their use of AI. 

“When we invented the wheel it was generally a good technology, but it also ran over people's toes,” David says. “Similarly when the internet was developed it brought up many moral and ethical dilemmas.”

There are many risk management techniques in place to avoid toes being run over, just as there are many frameworks, regulations and mitigation strategies around the internet. KPMG has been a front-runner in supporting its clients to mitigate and manage risks in ethical AI use. 

“At KPMG, we know that to be trusted, you need to do more than just do no bad,” David continues. “You have to step forward on trust, you have to define trust. And so when we were working on our trusted AI framework, we added two important topics – fairness and sustainability.”

David is an advocate for equal access to AI, to avoid the further development of the digital skills gap. 

“When something like AI comes along, you want to make sure that there are no winners and losers, that everyone has access to AI,” he says. “At a global, country, corporation and individual level, are we giving people access to devices, the internet energy to be able to use it and the training that they need?

“AI can be a way of reconnecting back with the workforce and becoming more effective, more powerful.”

AI is already reinventing processes, embedding into global workforces and transforming workplaces – the fairness pillar centres around ensuring that companies use AI to bring people into the workforce and bridge the digital divide rather than further polarising.

“As we throw everything up in the air with AI, we need to ensure that what lands is a future that is a fairer, more equal and more equitable end output than the one we started with.”

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