S&P Global is training all 35,000 employees on generative AI

Ratings and analytics company S&P Global is partnering with consulting firm Accenture to train its staff to use generative artificial intelligence.

S&P Global is putting all 35,000 of its employees through a “comprehensive gen AI learning program” starting this month, the two firms jointly announced Tuesday. Workers will be trained using curated content from Accenture LearnVantage, a technology learning and training platform, to develop “AI fluency.” The bootcamp is part of S&P Global’s effort to address the financial service industry’s growing reliance on AI and AI talent, and give its employees the tools to leverage gen AI.

“AI is for everyone, and at S&P Global, we want to empower our people and our customers to adopt, build and innovate with gen AI,” said Bhavesh Dayalji, S&P Global’s chief AI officer. “Gen AI will continue to transform the financial services industry, enhancing our day-to-day work and our customer interactions.

“We are partnering with Accenture to ensure that our people and our customers are not only prepared for the gen AI transformation, but are ready to lead it,” he said.

The two firms are also collaborating on AI development and benchmarking across the entire financial services industry, combining Accenture’s Foundation Model Services, which help companies manage and scale large language models (LLMs), and S&P AI Benchmarks by Kensho, which evaluates the performance of LLMs for financial and quantitative use cases.

LLMs are a type of AI that are trained to understand and generate original content. One forthcoming study out of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business suggests that these models are able to outperform some financial analysts in predicting the direction of future earnings.

The growing capabilities of AI have made it a particular area of focus within the financial services industry in recent years, as banks and other financial institutions have doubled down on AI talent hiring, introducing AI-powered tools and assistants, and adopting hundreds of new use cases across their many businesses.

Bank of America, for example, is planning to spend $4 billion this year alone to develop new technologies, including AI. And JPMorgan Chase, a leader in the AI space among major banks, has more than 2,000 AI and machine learning (ML) experts and data scientists, and upwards of 400 use cases. Mary Erdoes, head of JPMorgan’s asset and wealth management division, said at the bank’s investor day in May that every new hire will be trained to use AI.

S&P Global said its collaboration with Accenture “will enable banks, insurers, and capital markets firms to strengthen the performance and efficacy of their solutions while ensuring that responsible AI is built into every use.”