In the race to adopt and advance artificial intelligence (AI), it’s easy to get caught up in the technological capabilities and buzzword bingo and lose sight of what truly matters: the impact on humans and our everyday lives.AI should break down barriers to financial services, not create new wallsAs financial institutions worldwide rush to implement AI solutions, we must pause to ask ourselves: are we building technology that serves all of humanity, or just a privileged few? And what do we stand to lose if we are not careful?The promise versus the realityAI promises to revolutionise banking by making services more accessible, helping us make decisions faster, and streamlining operations to become more efficient. And we have caught a glimpse of what AI is capable of — from fraud detection and credit decisioning to personal finance and customer service.But beneath this promise lies a more nuanced reality. Training advanced AI models requires massive computing resources, sophisticated infrastructure, and talent — and many of these assets are concentrated in the hands of a few powerful organisations.And the impact on the environment alone is staggering. By 2027, AI data centres could consume as much water as six Denmarks combined.The human stakesThe implications extend far beyond technological capabilities. Consider the language and cultural representation in AI systems. Most large language models (LLMs) are trained primarily on English and Western data, leaving many languages and cultures underrepresented. What happens to the communities whose languages and cultural contexts aren’t included in these systems? As banking becomes increasingly digital and AI-driven, these gaps could translate into real-world exclusion rather than the utopia that we were promised.When AI systems are trained on historical data that reflects societal inequities, they also risk automating existing biases and amplifying the disparities in our society. The human cost of biased algorithms in banking — from loan rejections to credit limit decisions — can be devastating.Trust in the age of AITrust has always been the cornerstone of financial services. But how do we maintain trust when faceless algorithms make decisions that affect the financial lives of real people? The rise of deepfakes and AI hallucinations introduces yet another layer of complexity to this challenge. Financial institutions must balance innovation with transparency, efficiency with accountability.A great example is Commonwealth Bank in Australia, which has developed an AI model to identify abusive messages in digital payments. The bank has since made the technology freely available to other institutions worldwide. This example demonstrates how AI can be used not just for profit and efficiency gains, but for protecting vulnerable individuals. Only by working together and collaborating across physical boundaries can we advance the technology for good, and to its fullest potential.A human futureThe qu
Lun. Feb 3rd, 2025
