RBC launches new lab for artificial intelligence and machine learning

If you use your credit card to buy a latte in Vancouver and a couple of minutes later that card is making a purchase in Singapore, that's a red flag for fraud. But increasingly sophisticated fraud calls for more sophisticated measures to deal with it, and that is among the challenges behind RBC Research's announcement today that it is launching a new lab to explore the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning in the financial sector. Richard Sutton, a computer scientist and pioneer in artificial intelligence, has been named head academic advisor to RBC Research in machine learning. The new lab will work with the Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute at the University of Alberta, where Sutton is a professor. Foteini Agrafioti, head of RBC Research, which was launched last fall in Toronto, said the announcement will help her organization to play a major role in advancing AI research in the future of banking. Agrafioti said that as the complexity of fraud evolves over time, it becomes increasingly difficult to detect it.