Cybersecurity vignette with CB Insights analyst Will Altman. Recorded June 20, 2018 at the Future of Fintech Conference.

Beyond cryptocurrencies: AI enabled financial technologies, possible existential risks and a need for reorganization of financial infrastructure. Joscha Bach, Ph.D. is an AI researcher who worked and published about cognitive architectures, mental representation, emotion, social modeling, and multi-agent systems. He earned his Ph.D. in cognitive science from the University of Osnabrück, Germany, and has built computational models of motivated decision making, perception, categorization, and concept-formation. He is especially interested in the philosophy of AI and in the augmentation of the human mind. Joscha has taught computer science, AI, and cognitive science at the Humboldt-University of Berlin and the Institute for Cognitive Science at Osnabrück. His book “Principles of Synthetic Intelligence” (Oxford University Press) is to appear later this year. Joscha authored Seven Principles of Synthetic Intelligence, Representations for a Complex World: Combining Distributed and Localist Representations for Learning and Planning, Enhancing Perception and Planning of Software Agents with Emotion and Acquired Hierarchical Categories, and MiniPsi, der Mac-Roboter, and coauthored MicroPsi: Contributions to a Broad Architecture of Cognition, The AEP Toolkit for Agent Design and Simulation, The Artificial Emotion Project Handbook, Mental Models for Robot Control, Designing Agent Behavior with the Extensible Agent Behavior Specification Language XABSL, and Using pattern matching on a flexible, horizon-aligned grid for robotic vision. Currently, he is working as an entrepreneur in Berlin, Germany. ==== Something unusual happened at Davos this year: new ideas coming not from the usual collection of rich and famous, their symbiotic journalists, or even from political activists. This was the voice [More]

Another episode of #FraudFactFriday Live! is in the books. Today, I discussed the topic of Artificial Intelligence with Daniel Faggella. Here is what we covered: FraudFactFriday Fast Facts about Daniel – 2:17 Dan’s background – 3:37 Definition of AI – 5:00 Main takeaways and scope of AI podcast – 6:00 Why the fraud fighting community should be excited about AI – 12:35 How are fraudsters using AI – 17:50 Impact of AI on false positive and false negative alerts – 21:00 Deep fakes – 22:45 What does it take for true technology adoption – 27:30 Thanks Daniel for your time! One viewer said his comment and question didn’t come through during the broadcast – Another LinkedIn Live bug 😉 If you had similar issues, don’t hesitate to reach out to Dan or myself about this topic.

While we are still at the beginning of a new computing era, AI is already driving innovation and efficiency across a number of areas in financial services. Whether that is by transforming the way financial institutions engage with their clients, by “augmenting the intelligence“ of employees who are overwhelmed by data and information or by automating complex tasks, AI can help financial services organizations to drive differentiation and achieve significant economies of scale. Deutsche Bank and IBM will jointly present how a leading bank is approaching this AI transformation, what the current focus areas are and finally present a real case of how IBM Watson can Augment Advisors to leverage customer and market insights to provide much more personalized and relevant financial advice to their clients. Presented by Francesco Brenna, IBM and Roberto Mancone, Deutsche Bank at LendIt Europe 2017 on 9 October 2017.

This video originally appeared in Financial Post – http://innovators.financialpost.com/2011/10/31/human-in-a-box/ © 2011 National Post, a division of Postmedia Network Inc. If computers could learn, grow and evolve the same way humans can, the world would be a much better place, Dr. Geordie Rose argues. The co-founder and chief technology officer of Burnaby, B.C.-based quantum computing firm D-Wave Systems Inc. contends that humanity would gain unprecedented access to education, health care and information if only his company’s technology were more widely adopted. Having sold its first quantum computing system to Lockheed Martin Corp. for approximately $10-million, the doctor of theoretical physics spoke to Financial Post technology reporter Jameson Berkow about his plan to change the world. The following is an edited transcription of their conversation. Q: You probably get this question every time you meet somebody new, but… A: What is quantum computing? Q: Exactly. A: Well I start by telling them what the machines do, not what they are. So the machines are designed to solve what are called machine learning problems. This is a sub-field of artificial intelligence whose main purpose is building software that gets better over time. So imagine you build a piece of software that learns and gets better at what it does as it lives in the world. It does that by being shown examples of what good behaviour is and what examples of bad behaviour are and it learns to mimic good behaviour and learns to avoid bad behaviour. Read the rest of the story [More]

Video recap conference about Artificial Intelligence for accountants in business in the Netherlands: Deep Finance What does deep learning and artificial intelligence mean for accountants in business? How much of the ‘human element’ will still be incorporated in the figures? Are we headed for a future of ‘self-driving financials’? The accountants in business member group of the NBA (The Royal Netherlands Institute of Chartered Accountants) share the findings of the annual conference. More than 500 financials in the Netherlands attended the Deep finance congress: the next step in financial intelligence. The video recap (with English subtitles) takes the form of a mini documentary, revealing the most important insights gained. Various speakers feature in the video such as Marcel Smits, CFO of agri-business Cargill, and Gerard van Olphen, Chairman of the Executive Board of APG Group. APG manages the pensions of 4.5 million clients, amounting to 370 billion euros of invested assets. They are both accountants in business and illustrate how big data and self-learning systems are used in their organisation. Critical thinking Is data self-evident? Christien Brinkgreve, professor of social and behavioural sciences, published the book ‘Weten vraagt meer dan meten’ (There’s more to knowledge than numbers). This work reveals the dangers of thinking we can just mindlessly allow ourselves to be at the mercy of data. Her fundamental argument is that we should not blindly trust data but keep thinking critically and continue to pay attention to what we see and hear. What does the future hold for accountants [More]