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Guernsey should aim to be a world-leader in artificial intelligence for financial services to improve wealth creation, a local summit on AI was told.
The summit, hosted jointly by the Guernsey Financial Services Commission and Guernsey Finance – the Bailiwick’s finance industry marketing arm – focused on the “power and implications” of emerging AI technologies on the largest local sector.
William Mason, Director General of the Guernsey Financial Services Commission, said he hopes that Guernsey could rival the United Kingdom in being a hotbed for the building and testing of AI, finding a balance between meeting data protection obligations and enabling innovation.
He thinks the world is at a similar “inflection point” with artificial intelligence as farmers were with the green revolution, where food production was mechanised.
Generative AI, and what will come after it, will “increase efficiency and get rid of dull, mundane tasks... AI can do all of that,” he said. “We can’t ignore it."
Professor Philip Treleaven, Director of the UK Centre for Financial Computing, agreed saying “the genie is already out of the bottle”.
“The payoff in terms of wealth creation is absolutely huge,” he said, adding that Guernsey firms ought to “gently experiment” with automating compliance functions, especially since the UK is too big a jurisdiction to do so.
But he accepted that “changing the establishment is hard” with regards to simplifying those processes, such as anti-money-laundering identity verification checks.
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Mr Mason also warned there must always be a human in the chain of command to evaluate whether automated decisions were correct, particularly in situations where the consumer could be unhappy with outcomes.
It’s also necessary to “kick the tyres” by asking who coded the application, why they created it, and what biases may be inherent in the underlying dataset and those who wrote the algorithm, he added.
The GFSC is already using the emerging technology, in its authorisation processes for example, but it has thrown up “interesting results” which highlights the requirement for always having a “human-in-the-loop". This was echoed by Professor Treleaven.
Maury Shenk, Founder and CEO of LearnerShape, and one of several experienced speakers at the summit, joined on video link from Jordan.
He said while the 2010’s saw an acceleration in deep learning and algorithmic prediction, the 2020’s have introduced a “completely different paradigm” due to generative AI. And going forward, he “fully expects the future” to offer surprises.
“Human plus AI performs far better than just one on their own.”
Pictured: The GFSC said it welcomed responsible technology that can improve productivity.
While major risks do stem from the technology and pace of change, Mr Shenk said disproportionate focus has been placed on the lesser risks by the international media, such as “model-based” misinformation, super intelligent machines wiping out humanity, mass unemployment, and cheating in assessments.
These are the “most sensational headlines” which are “largely not correct”, he said.
The bigger risks, in his view, are; humans using the technology to deliberately create misinformation, rather than the algorithms inadvertently generating incorrect information; increased inequality in the job market; dangerous activities such as professionalised cybercrime and autonomous weapons; and nefarious viewpoints or recommendations being pushed which interfere with political systems.
For finance there are wide applications, he said, including quantitative analysis, trend prediction, chatbots for consumer fintech services - which are becoming increasingly sophisticated - and the blockchain.
Rupert Pleasant, Chief Executive of Guernsey Finance, in his closing remarks said the summit had “really shown us the immense role AI will play” in shaping the economy of the future.
Businesses are set to benefit from improved agility, productivity, and profitability, he added.
He also praised Guernsey’s financial regulator for “recognising the need to host” such an event, which was separately noted as being the first of its kind for similarly sized jurisdictions.
“[The GFSC] looks to the future and understands the march of change.”
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