How banks are harnessing artificial intelligence

Since 2016, Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) has focused on AI through its dedicated research division called Borealis AI. In October 2020, Borealis AI and RBC announced the launch of Aiden, an AI-driven electronic trading platform for institutional investors. Aiden uses "reinforcement learning," a form of AI based on behavioural psychology that either rewards or penalizes an algorithm when it makes a decision. This is the same type of machine learning used for AlphaGo, a Google-owned computer program that beat a human player at Go, a sophisticated board game, in 2016. But making trading decisions in a live market is more complicated than playing a board game, noted Foteini Agrafioti, chief science officer at RBC and head of Borealis AI. "It's a much more complex environment where we were able to deploy [Aiden] and we're extremely happy with the results," she said.