How artificial intelligence is disrupting the finance function

EY Global Trusted AI Advisory Leader Cathy Cobey discusses the spectrum of technologies covered by AI and how they are being used for finance.

Trust is the foundation on which organizations can build stakeholder confidence and active participation with their AI systems. However, in the finance world, one mistake, or the perception of a mistake, can harm an organization’s trust in the technology. How do finance functions build trust into their AI?

Podcast host Myles Corson welcomes Cathy Cobey, EY’s Global Trusted AI Advisory Leader, to discuss how she helps organizations understand some of the new risks that AI brings and how, most importantly, they can start to create the right governance and control mechanisms.

They explore the definition of AI, and its use in the COVID-19 landscape. With AI introducing new risks and impacts that have historically been the purview of human decision-making, organizations need a new framework for identifying, measuring and responding to the risks of AI to make it operational.

The discussion also covers how AI is being used in the finance function, from the early days of AI predominantly being used for anomaly detection, to some of its current uses, which include valuing securities, financial forecasting, and data quality and assessments. 

Key takeaways

• AI is really a broad spectrum of technologies starting to be applied in all industries.
• In response to COVID-19, AI is being used to create a global map to track cases, and in labs to try identify potential treatment plans.
• There are serious operational risks of using AI without a robust governance and control mechanism around it.
• To build organizational trust, AI needs to be trained properly, with a lot of boundaries around it at first. Then you have to monitor its performance after it is put into production so you can understand its flaws