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.

Some of the biggest players in the industry have already started to embrace disruptive and cutting-edge technologies, but this year we will see smaller and medium sized manufacturers incorporating the same technologies into their processes with equally as effective results. The entire industry is on the brink of an upheaval parallel to the industrial revolutions it has experienced throughout history – those that centered around technologies like steam-powered machinery and the linear assembly machine. The pending industrial revolution will be underpinned by a range of technologies that have already begun to pervade their way across the sector, such as 3D printing and artificial intelligence, and will continue to do so in 2018. See also: Combatting the manufacturing industry's skills gap Perhaps the most important technological shift we will see across the manufacturing industry in 2018 is the increasing adoption of genuine artificial intelligence by manufacturers of varied size across the sector. There is a distinction to be made between the ostensible ai (colloquially known as'lowercase' ai) that we have seen dominating the press throughout 2017, and the genuine AI (known as'uppercase' AI) that will be rolled out across the sector this year.

This is an exciting time to be alive in the fintech space -- and also an interesting time to be a chatbot, as the experiences of Microsoft's Tay proved last week. As FIs and startups alike leverage the best in entrepreneurial and technological insight to adapt to customers' lives, the gap is narrowing between financial operations (payments, budgeting, etc) and how these interactions are integrated into the lives of users, increasingly cultivating a seamless banking experience. This seamlessness may have taken a step forward last week as German mobile banking startup Number26 introduced a new app that lays the groundwork for extensive artificial intelligence (AI) in financial services. Dubbed PULSE26, Number26's new banking app analyzes customer saving and spending habits to optimize the digital banking experience for each user. PULSE26 alerts the user with quick and comprehensive updates based on personal banking history.