The hidden risk of blind trust in AI's 'black box'

Artificial intelligence is gaining traction in enterprises, with many large organizations exploring algorithms to automate business processes or building bots to field customer inquiries. But while some CIOs see self-learning software as a boon for achieving greater efficiencies, others are leery about entrusting too much of their operations to AI because it remains difficult to ascertain how the algorithms arrive at their conclusions. CIOs in regulated industries in particular, such as financial services and any sector exploring autonomous vehicles, are grappling with this so-called "black box problem." If a self-driving rig suddenly swerves off of the road during testing, the engineers had darn well better figure out how and why. Similarly, Finservs looking to use it to vet clients for credit risks need to proceed with caution to avoid introducing biases into their qualification scoring.