FICO warns financial services of dodging responsible AI initiatives

Even with the growth in demand for AI-enabled financial products and offerings, many financial services companies have yet to scale up and hold themselves accountable to responsible AI standards.

Consumer credit rating provider FICO has hit out at the financial services industry for lacking responsible AI initiatives, which could undermine companies’ AI deployment by creating ethical and reputational risks.

Responsible AI initiatives aim to improve AI standards by creating ethical strategies and approaches to deploying AI, while providing customers with transparency about when and how AI is used. it is deployed in the services of a financial institution.

See also: Artificial intelligence will continue to make its mark in 2023

“While we’ve seen growth in demand for AI-enabled financial products and offerings, many financial services companies still need to scale up and hold themselves accountable to Responsible AI standards,” said Scott Zoldi. , director of analytics at FICO. “Beyond fulfilling an ethical responsibility to their customers, implementing responsible AI standards that are explainable, verifiable, and ethical helps improve brand loyalty, reduces reputational risk, and enables better comply with regulatory standards.

In a study published by FICO of 100 C-level AI managers surveyed, it found that less than 10% of respondents had fully mature AI strategies with consistent scale model development.

“To achieve AI digital transformation success, it is imperative that organizations commit to strong ethical AI practice and governance,” said Chun Schiros, SVP and Head of Enterprise Data Science. at Regions Bank. “As we increase the use of AI applications, continuous learning and considerations of fairness and explainability are essential to support.”

Failure to develop best practices for AI development and deployment can lead to myriad problems in the future. However, it’s clear that leaders in the financial world understand this, with 74% of respondents saying that better customer experiences can come with responsible AI. Meanwhile, 69% said it could create new revenue opportunities, and 63% saw it as helpful in minimizing reputational risk.