“Banks Warn of Risks in Increasing Reliance on Big Tech for AI”, European banking executives in Amsterdam cautioned that the surge in artificial intelligence adoption will deepen banks’ reliance on major American tech firms, posing fresh risks to the industry. They highlighted concerns about potential vulnerabilities and emphasized the need for proactive risk management strategies amidst this growing dependence on Big Tech for AI solutions.
The enthusiasm for integrating artificial intelligence (AI) into financial services has surged, especially following the introduction of OpenAI’s widely popular chatbot ChatGPT in late 2022. With AI already extensively employed for detecting fraud and money laundering, banks are now exploring opportunities to leverage generative AI technologies for various applications within the industry.
ING’s chief analytics officer, Bahadir Yilmaz, overseeing the Dutch bank’s AI initiatives, informed Reuters of their anticipation to increasingly depend on Big Tech companies for infrastructure and machinery in the foreseeable future.
Banks’ dependency on a small number of tech companies was “one of the biggest risks”, ING’s Yilmaz said, emphasising that European banks in particular needed to ensure they could move between different tech providers and avoid what he called “vendor lock-in”.
“AI requires huge amounts of compute and really the only way that you’re going to be able to access that compute (computing power) sensibly is from Big Tech,” Joanne Hannaford, who leads technology strategy at Deutsche Bank’s corporate bank, told an audience at the Money20/20 conference earlier this week.
