How AI is transforming financial services

Artificial intelligence (AI) is infiltrating our lives at a frightening speed.

- MARTIN HESSE

I can no longer watch an online video without questioning whether it is Al-generated or not. Is that really astrophysicist Neal deGrasse Tyson telling us the Earth is flat? No, it turns out that Tyson made and shared an Al-generated deepfake video of himself to highlight the potential dangers and misleading capabilities of the new technology.

Thirty years ago, the internet revolution gave humanity an extremely useful communication tool - an ultra-convenient, ultra-wide-reaching media platform. It has been abused in countless ways: fanatics have used it to spread hate; organisations have used it to gather people’s personal information; fraudsters have used it to con people; pornography has pro-

liferated. However, a rational person using the internet is still generally able to distinguish right from wrong and truth from falsehood. Regulators, always in catch-up mode, have had some success in tempering excess and providing a degree of consumer protection.

Al is different. In my view, its danger lies not in eventually subjugating humans, a favourite theme of science fiction; its danger lies in becoming indistinguishable from humans. And that, on the internet, is already happening. At some stage, the only way to tell whether a communication is genuine or not will be through direct human-to-human contact.

What is AI?