WILL AI REPLACE COMPLIANCE PROFESSIONALS?
Handwringing over technology and automation replacing human beings in the workplace, far from being unique to our times, has a long history. Unveiling his automated assembly line, Henry Ford, instead of acclaim, was met with opprobrium from workers fearful of losing their jobs. Contemporary concerns on how artificial intelligence (AI) and automation will affect financial services is no different.
New technology has always generated speculation on job losses. Such reactions are understandable, if often unwarranted.
The challenge that AI and automation represent is not one of making employees surplus to requirements, but in ensuring that staff are trained in using these technologies appropriately and efficiently.
A survey by IBM estimated that in the next three years, 120 million workers worldwide will need to be reskilled due to the impact of AI. Similarly, in a 2018 report, PwC claimed that employees in financial services may be ‘relatively vulnerable to automation in the shorter term’, due, in part, to workers currently spending a large amount of time doing ‘simple computational tasks’.
Reinforcing these findings is the successful adoption of AI in other sectors. The UK Serious Fraud Office (SFO) has employed AI to automate document analysis, and, as part of its 2018 case against Rolls-Royce, used a ‘robo-lawyer’ to reportedly scan documents for legal professional privilege content which was 2000 times faster than human lawyers.
Jan-Mar 2022 Issue
International Compliance Association