Inspired AI Summit 2020 Top Takeaways: Episode 8
Inspired Minds! AI Summit 2020 returned once again this week for the penultimate episode focusing on AI innovation. The Brainpool team was fortunate to attend the majority of sessions and see first-hand the means by which Start Ups and Scale Ups are disrupting industries to transform the way we do business. As always, we are here to give you an in-depth look at our favourite talks of the week. Laura Mintandjian’s, Head of Product at SlimmerAI, case study on the real value of client data hits on how we might update legacy systems to create more effective and efficient operating processes. Turning CEO, Jonathan Siddarth, also lead a fantastic session on the future of remote hiring, exemplifying how post-Covid digitalisation is revolutionising the way people are employed.
More than meets AI: The Real Value of Client Data
Laura Mintandijan’s session outlined how the adoption of ethical AI by financial institutions can improve operational efficiency and provide previously undiscoverable insights.
She opened by explaining that current legacy systems lead to a lack of operational efficiency. Every 10 minutes 10,000 alerts are made on unusual transactions, with 99% of these being false positives and only 1% of total money laundering being detected. Mintandijan highlighted how understanding your customers allows for more effective fraud detection. Explaining that the decline in frequent face-to-face interaction with customers results in financial institutions not being able to assess a customer’s trustworthiness.
AI now allows for financial organisations to make better use of their customer data and generate new insights as a result. This is done through unlocking and structuring data, then using it to generate client centric insights. Mintandijan’s team have applied this to financial fraud, building network analysis to better understand customers and therefore improve operational efficiency in the detection of suspicious activity. AI network analysis enables this, through analysing names, IP addresses and accounts allowing new patterns and anomalies to be discovered.
It was further highlighted how Artificial Intelligence can be used to develop additional insights whilst improving operational efficiency, with a case study of a private school. This example displayed how leveraging the power of AI allowed for the inclusion of seasonal analysis when looking at customer data, this removed false positives and provided previously unseen insights. Not only is this an innovative tool in fraud detection, this is also an example of ethical AI as this allows for complete transparency of its decision-making process.
The Future of Remote Hiring
It is perhaps obvious by now that the post-Covid world has led to a rapid shift to digital spaces. Johnathan Siddarth’s presentation on the Future of Remote Hiring drew attention to the speed of this movement, suggesting that the last 6 months has seen 5 years' worth of digital transformation occur. Siddarth believes that this shift is partially acute for Software Engineers, who are used to working in in a distributed way. The current set up for tech companies has not supported this, with central large offices dominating the way we work. Siddarth predicted we will soon see this set up change to optional smaller office hubs and a rotational home working system. His talk championed this vision as one which will connect businesses to the best and brightest possible employees. No longer held back by physical locational requirements the new digital world allows for companies to get the best out of their people.
The big question within this however is how this vision is achieved. From time zone difference to understanding the quality of your team's work, there are a menagerie of logistical issues that must be solved in the transition. This is particularly interesting for us at Brainpool as our newly bolstered team, which is split across three continents have mostly never met in person. Recent news headlines concerning bosses placing monitoring software on their employees work laptops is perhaps the most controversial way that some have tried solving the challenges sprung up by digital transformation. Siddarth outlined the three barriers to digitalisation as: finding high quality talent, ensuring it’s the right skills match and ensuring high quality collaboration. His platform, Turing, aims to deal with this by offering an effective vetting system to match employers with Software Engineers. The approach of pre and post project analysis of skills and quality gives the company a true comprehensive understanding of their members. These deep developer profiles are essential for any business aiming to hire remotely, allowing companies to ensure candidates are a right fit for them. At Brainpool we offer staff augmentation services for AI and ML experts wherein we develop a rich and uniform understanding of our community to cut through any barriers and match the best people to projects. Digital hiring is now the new reality and companies must ensure they have processes in place to break down the Siddarth’s barriers to transformation.
Brainpool Thoughts
At Brainpool AI we applaud the move to digital as a tool for the further democratisation of Artificial Intelligence. We have always tried to promote access to AI for all and with the ever more remote world this mission is becoming more and more of a reality. The barriers to digitalisation outlined by Jonathan Siddarth can only be broken down by high quality and in-depth understanding of your employees, a standard which we consider best practise in matching our Data Scientists to projects. Laura Mintandijan’s examples of how AI can transform the financial sectors operational effeciency are exactly the kind of projects we always aim to prioritise. Not only does it perform a social good by preventing customers from falling victim to fraud, but it is built in an ethical way that allows for full oversight and transparency in its processes.
Next Time
Next time we are looking forward to the finale of the 2020 Inspired minds AI Summit, where we will be attending the sessions such as “Protecting Forests with AI and satellite data” and “Human rights & AI: what role can we play?”.
By Dominic Richmond and Joe Duszynski