Craig Adams, Managing Director at Protecht, Examines Why It Is Important to Weigh Up AI-Powered Systems Versus the Challenges to Find the Sweet Spot For Risk Management.
In barely two months after its initial public release in late 2022, ChatGPT has amassed 100 million monthly users and reached one million users in just five days. Major companies like BT quickly announced intentions to replace thousands of employees with artificial intelligence (AI). in the same time, reports about AI-powered systems already outperforming trained people in different corporate activities and applications immediately flooded the newspapers.
Naturally, not everyone has welcomed the development of AI. While significant concerns about issues like data privacy still hover heavily in the air, nations like Russia and China acted quickly to outlaw it.
However, now that Pandora’s Box has been fully opened, AI is not only here to stay but is also poised to completely transform how many organizations handle their core business operations, including risk and compliance.
AI-Powered Systems: Possibilities and Dangers
To be clear, AI-powered solutions provide tremendous potential across risk and compliance processes, especially in areas like automating routine work, providing quick evaluations, and improving understanding and risk management. The potential is genuinely huge, whether it’s quickly analyzing hundreds of pages of rules from various countries or quickly finding holes in policies and control systems.
That is not to suggest that it doesn’t also provide certain hazards of its own. First and foremost, risk management and compliance processes are only just beginning to integrate AI, so any mistakes or teething issues will almost definitely result from the existing lack of knowledge. In fact, risk experts are finding themselves working around the clock in many organizations to figure out the best way to retroactively integrate AI into tried-and-true, well-managed programs and procedures.
Furthermore, existing iterations of AI-powered systems are far from perfect. ChatGPT has created a lot of great headlines, but it has also generated a lot of bad ones, notably in relation to high-profile gaffes, skewed material, and limited understanding of the world past 2021 (at least for now).
Therefore, industry experts need to carefully consider both the opportunities and problems it provides before determining the best course of action for effective adoption in order to make the most of AI’s enormous potential without running afoul of its existing limits.
Before considering a partial or complete deployment, risk managers should consider understanding the technology, its applications, and its hazards as key needs.
Using The Possibilities Offered By AI-Powered Systems
The capacity of AI to automate time-consuming and repetitive operations that humans frequently struggle with due to their banal nature is one of the largest possibilities that it brings to risk and compliance professionals, just like it does to many other sectors.
For instance, it has been demonstrated that AI-driven customer service solutions not only lower operating costs but also boost service quality.
Evidence like this explains why companies focused on providing excellent customer service, like BT, are already investing so much in AI-powered prospects. They are among those that stand to earn the most in terms of increased productivity and cost savings. Businesses with strong risk management operations might use the same motives.
However, behind the scenes, AI has the ability to offer priceless insights into an organization’s risk profile by analyzing enormous volumes of data at a rate unmatched by human capacity.
For instance, AI may be employed to evaluate hundreds of pages of intricate international legislation before providing precise advice for the application of a certain regulation. By allowing risk and compliance experts to focus more of their time on strategically vital tasks, this type of capacity may dramatically lessen their workloads while also enhancing overall organization security.
It’s crucial to remember that AI-based systems are only ever as good as the data they can use. If AI is based on inaccurate data, it may be unable to recognize important hazards or adhere to pertinent rules, and it may even begin to affect the AI system’s own logic.
It’s a predicament that brings to mind the early years of computer technology in the 1950s, when the adage “garbage in, garbage out” was originally used to emphasize that the caliber of the input determines the caliber of the output.
In order to assure the accuracy and objectivity of the data fed into their AI-powered systems at all times, organizations must take some difficult steps. Failure to do so increases the potential of major mistakes, as well as the significant reputational harm to the organizations involved and the use of AI generally.
The possible replacement of human employees and the effects on the larger labor market are also very important concerns. While it’s obvious that AI will be utilized to automate a variety of tasks presently performed by human employees, completely replacing people isn’t without its disadvantages. The importance of human insight, judgment, and decision-making is natural and irreplaceable, especially in fields as crucial as risk management, where experience is a major factor in all domains.
Determining The Ideal Risk Management Setting
So how can businesses strike the right balance between utilizing the advantages of AI-powered technologies and protecting themselves from their inherent risks?
Here is a list of best practices that will provide a systematic strategy for using AI with complete transparency and visibility throughout the risk management function:
- Analyze the impact of AI on the organization’s overall risk profile first, then look for any new compliance difficulties that follow.
- Create organizational controls, such as an AI policy that specifies how workers may use AI, as well as technological controls that restrict access to and keep an eye on how employees use AI services on the web in accordance with your policy.
- Inform employees on what they can and cannot do with regard to AI, as well as the hazards that come from knowledge gaps or even information fabrication, through employee communication and training.
- Define your risk tolerance with regard to AI so that you and your organization can agree on how eager or resistant you are to seize both the opportunities and the potential downside risk it entails. Then, create metrics to track your progress.
Long-term, it is crucial to build efficient controls on the scope of AI-powered systems’ use and the quality of their output. In order to make sure AI complies with the organization’s risk appetite and compliance framework, these measures should include a dedication to manual monitoring, continuing ad hoc testing, and the adoption of any other necessary safeguards.
In this situation, a hybrid strategy that combines human and artificial intelligence efforts is most likely to produce the greatest outcomes.
Adapting To the Revolution Propelled By AI
It’s crucial to keep in mind that our adventure with AI-powered technologies is only getting started.
There is no reason why AI can’t have a significant influence on the capabilities of risk management and compliance operations in the future, provided that current obstacles can be solved.
The capacity of AI to adapt and give insights into evolving risk needs at rates far above human competence is expected to be important as regulatory environments throughout the world continue to evolve quickly.
On the other hand, there are still open questions regarding AI, and there probably will be for a very long time.
Industry experts are already raising their voices in favor of tighter regulation and oversight of AI while they continue to learn more about it. How this discussion develops will probably have a big influence on how much different governments and sectors decide to embrace it.
There has never been a better moment to begin researching AI-powered risk management, even if many organizations will find the idea intimidating.
