AI Playbook: Many FI Systems Are 'Artificial' PYMNTS.com

For all the talk about artificial intelligence (AI) in financial circles at present – it seems everything is "AI-powered" – it turns out there's a lot less genuine AI in place than we might have imagined. The March 2020 Unlocking AI Playbook: FI Edition, a PYMNTS and Brighterion collaboration, explains that while the use of AI solutions by banks and financial institutions (FIs) skyrocketed 70 percent in a single year (2018-2019), less than 10 percent of all banks say they use AI today. "AI's real-world usage may appear limited compared to the fanfare surrounding it today, but our research aims to accurately depict its adoption, so we precisely define AI," the report states. "Systems fitting our definition must have current business applications and be able to work with and learn from dynamic data sets in real time, and these capabilities must be able to associate with specific entities within a system." Fear of implementation cost and complexity are major deterrents to adoption, with 82 percent of banks turning to existing technology, such as a business rule management system (BRMS), to mimic the data insights promised by true AI.