More and more financial institutions are embracing AI

JPMorgan may have restricted employee use of ChatGPT, but the broader financial services sector can’t escape the AI buzz.

A new survey from FICO and Corinium solicited responses from C-level AI and data leaders at 100 major banking and financial services institutions in the US and Canada, finding overall that demand for AI tools and processes seems to have accelerated faster than the implementation of responsible AI initiatives.

Half of those surveyed said that demand for AI products is higher than last year, while 71% said AI ethics and responsible AI isn’t a core part of the operational strategies at their organizations. Just 8% of leaders said their AI strategy was “fully mature, with model development standards consistently scaled across their organizations.”

“From a financial services perspective, that was surprising,” Scott Zoldi, FICO’s chief analytics officer, told us. He added, “Another interesting stat from the report was that 27% haven’t even established their strategy for responsible AI…Those sorts of stats were particularly surprising—I would’ve hoped it would be a little bit further ahead than the industry overall.”

Without a robust, responsible AI model development strategy, the race to adopt AI could be especially problematic in the financial services industry, as many companies build thousands of models, Zoldi said.

“When I talk to different data-science teams across our customer base, and my colleagues, they’re struggling with the fact that boards are often looking at the new tech and not really focusing on building this technology in a safe and responsible way,” he said.

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