Fuelling Finance with AI

[Music] good morning everyone pleasure to be here what a day to uh start and kick off this AI Forum at Abu Dhabi Finance week this topic is ubiquitous persuasive AI is everywhere as evidenced by its selection as colins dictionary's word of the Year AI is redefining the future of sectors around the world and finance obviously is no exception today we come together to examine the state of Commerce in the age of AI one of my uh most favorite recent uh I'm sure you familiar with the book stealing fire and uh one of my favorite quotes from the book is about Prometheus who's actually at the center of the the title as you can imagine Prometheus stole the fire from the gods and gave it to humans and so so it reminds me this quotes Prometheus stole fire from the gods we are each the hairs of that Divine spark used wisely the spark fuels one's journey and lights the way treated carelessly the spark consumes its owner and everything in its path so it's a bit fitting these uh these words have always fascinated me and especially in the context of how they summarize um Humanity or what Humanity has had to face uh with every breakthrough actually that has shaped our um history our lives and our civilizations The Dilemma of potential versus risks and every turning point in human history if you think about it uh we've had to deal with this dilemma whether it was discovering fire whether it was the invention of printing splitting the atom mapping Human Genome utilizing the internet social networks as you can all appreciate and now developing artificial intelligence it's always the question of potential versus risk and I think we all know the answer to the question there's no running away we have chosen we have consistently chosen progress over hesitation hasn't always been great outcomes but I think overall we've done okay those who have embraced this these receptions have always emerged as winners because progress waits for no one so where do we start not sure why I'm an empty slide gu um AI will require new skills and that being said it's actually been around for decades um it has gone through various hype Cycles but why is it being named the most consequential technology of the Year this answer lies in today's rapid technological progress and maybe the convergence of a number of things together wealth of data cloud computing computational power um algorithmic Innovation with large language models they're all converging and it's a convoluted network of neural models capable of creating humanik text at high speed at high scale that is something that we're witnessing today content that provides conversational answers to questions in a humanlike um form we've all experienced these GPT models right um they are trained on data and develop responses to user inputs based on billions of parameters learned during the training process ultimately it's the democratization of this technology that has led to this widespread use and development as we've seen it today to the thousands of plugins and use cases and applications that Leverage The Power of generative ai ai is poised to transform Commerce as we know it it in fact is revolutionizing our entire world and why we're all excited about the opportunities it brings um we're all excited about the opportunities it brings I would argue that also the world is not necessarily quite ready for it yet so where do we start AI will require new skills that employers need to train their employees in you've obviously all started probably just to witness that our role as Leaders is to equip our teams our stams our employees our staff with the skills they need to harness this power as we look for growth in our organization to clear bandwidth to allow people to do more creative work just look at at the potential of early use cases that um will act as super tools for companies from knowledge distribution collaboration and acceleration of projects a full-fledged AI powered marketing tools to allow for hyper personalized content delivered in real time at scale the possibilities really are Limitless but they don't come without pitfall FSE first if you think about it the space is ungoverned and Loosely regulated we are now living in a world where we need to question who is actually speaking to us who are we talking to is it a person or I don't know how many of you sometimes would open up um a website start talking and then would ask the questions I do I would say are you a machine or are you person second if we want to use a ey responsibly must address the risks and ethical concerns associated with it this includes data veracity the story of fake information and eliminating deep fakes promoting transparency safeguarding privacy and mitigating cyber threats I don't know if you guys know this but cyber fraud is growing four times the speed of e-commerce globally which is quite frightening we must also remove biases in gen and if if we don't this can lead to unfair discriminatory outcomes ranging from perpetuating stereotypes whether it's across gender race or other factors reinforcing harmful narratives and we're seeing this around us in media today or creating unequal unequal representation of facts of stories and that's unfair to many groups the reality is we can only move forward and we need to once again leverage breakthrough technology to redefine how we use AI to its optimal potential in a secure and ethical manner a case in point is cyber security where we've long used AI actually to identify fishing attacks to Boost network security automate threat response detect malware um improve authentication processes prevent cyber threats and design and deliver cyber security trainings maybe I'll just go back one more I would say in this context the UAE um has been a leader in the space it's really been at the Forefront of countries that have realized immense potential for AI and we're probably blessed to be living here uh in this place specifically um especially in this country where AI is spearheading innovation and the country in itself is really supportive uh and probably one of the very first around the world to actually have nominated a minister of AI with its Visionary mind and eagerness to embrace Cutting Edge Technologies it has evolved into a leading Innovation Hub and I think we're all feeling it around this room we're all feeling it in our day-to-day business and our conversations and our boardroom engagements a prime example I would I would like to highlight is mastercard's collaboration with the UAE prime minister's office to launch the center of advanced Ai and cyber security earlier this year in UAE this project aims to enable AI capabilities and Readiness in the region and Usher in a new era of transformative Technologies drawing on our technical knowledge and expertise the initiative supports the uee national strategy for artificial intelligence 2031 that seeks to position the country as a global leader in AI so what does the future hold in the era of AI entities with data and good data security I think they will do great financial institutions government Telos they will prosper they will be at greater Advantage obviously to leverage proprietary data and to change how we consume their services meanwhile ftech companies will continue to play a key role in driving transformation in a study we we we've We've ran last year identified Ai and data analytics as the top Technologies in driving the growth of the fintech industry um in the region this technology will ultimately allow fex to do more with less and actually bring down the cost of innovation and enhance customer experience Partnerships that build on complimentary strengths of fintech and large players to take their offerings to the next uh to new heights is the way forward I think the biggest missing components however will be trust because with more AI with more intelligence artificial intelligence I think trust would become a big question mark So what's next for AI we all know that AI means artificial intelligence but it could just as easily stand for achievements inspired or action immediate or Amplified impact or countless other positive things but let's not forget that can also mean actual intelligence we all possess that and it will not be AI that replaces our jobs but rather those who know how to use AI I implore you to be curious and be bold it is up to us to harness ai's transformative power to secure and build an inclusive and more Dynamic future of Commerce so before I wrap up um maybe there are three key takeaways I would like to leave with you as I think about next economy or what's ahead of us with the uh arrival of AI let's just say the first is widespread integration that will have an impact on almost all business functions nothing will be left undisrupted AI tools will become common place in organization we have to get used to that regardless of Industry regardless of function think of labor intensive tasks that your legal department does or your HR organizations they do parsing through large amounts of data having to read so many resumés or uh uh you know I look for especially in the legal domain pars through so many precedents that will be done by AI luckily your staff will instead spend their time validating Consulting collaborating strategizing really getting creative making way for smarter faster experiences faster results and better outcomes the second is bspoke AI we will move from application B based experiences to specialized and maybe smaller gpts companies will build smaller scale AIS and they will be specialized to do a very unique and specific function very specific task and it will do it very well and connect it to large language other large language model platforms think of this as the App Store to um enhance the capabilities of your iPhone um but instead of apps it's gpts and instead of iOS it's the underlying operating system it's Ai and instead of the iPhone as the hardware uh uh its smart glass or even its smart pins last but Lu not least we have differentiation with digital economy transforming the way we do business it was fintech that Sur as a response to help large institutions move into digital experiences they are more agile and can design Niche Solutions and go to market with better speed or higher speed partnering with large Banks or large institutions allows them to reach scale and expand to multiple Market markets so data differentiation and possibly data Partnerships will also become a new way of differentiating and finally my personal favorite which is not on the screen is trust trust will become even more important in the age of AI understanding who you're dealing with uh how they can be verified um and probably the tokenization of identity as a result would be in my mind a very important thing to think about as we manage and navigate this very interesting future forward with these notes I wish you a wonderful day ahead thank you for having me and you know have