GlobalData at Money20/20: AI to have a beneficial impact upon society

Money 20/20 Las Vegas is one of the world’s largest payments event, bringing together experts, companies and investors from the fintech world.

Machines that learn on their own 

Daoud Fakhri commented on several talks and discussions held on the topic of Artificial Intelligence. The first speaker was Ray Kurzweil, an experienced professional and researcher with a long career in the field. He made an analogy between the human brain and AI algorithms who can learn from their own datasets. Emerging technologies could make the advantages that our human brains offer us, obsolete, as Fakhri added, offering Google’s self-learning Go-playing program as an example. 

AI in ecommerce - a helping hand (or line of code) 

In another presentation, Matt Wood of Amazon Web Services outlined how the tech giant is using machine learning and AI to help its clients achieve better outcomes. Capital One, for example, is using Alexa to allow customers to pay their bills and check their balances through voice commands. Liberty Mutual is employing AI-powered chatbots to screen customer enquiries before routing them to the appropriate human advisors, and AON has managed to reduce its risk assessment procedures from 10 days to just 10 minutes, using AWS technology.

The AI Revolution - Letting computers do the hard thinking 

In his ending notes, Daoud Fakhri said that AI technology will help humans with many thought-based tasks, just like the earlier technological revolutions had replaced humans for physical labour. However, he does not envision a future in which humans will be replaced, as there are “many major developmental challenges to overcome.”