The global banking industry faces heightened risks due to the evolving financial crime compliance mandates to clamp down on money laundering and sanctioned entities and maintain CDD/EDD. Among all, money laundering appears the most pernicious, with more illicit transactions evading anti-money laundering (AML) systems yearly. In tandem, screening sanctioned entities, SDNs, blocked persons, etc., is now a perennial need of financial institutions. Industry estimates place the laundered money to the tune of 2.7% of the annual global GDP, a whopping US$ 1.6 trillion loss. With an estimated 24,000 sanctions worldwide in 2022, inadequate watchlist screening and KYC (EDD/CDD) pose prodigious risks.

For this edition of My Journey In Data Science column, Analytics India Magazine got in touch with a data scientist, influencer and blogger. Rahul Agrawal, Data Scientist at Walmart Labs, shared his exciting journey in data science, and also offered advice on best practices for aspirants to thrive in the ever-changing data science landscape. Rahul is a mechanical engineer from IIT Delhi, who started his job in a steel company in 2010, but quit the job since it was not interesting enough. Then he joined Fractal Analytics in 2011 as a business analyst. "Initially, I wrote a lot of SQL and made dashboards – most of the work revolved around reporting. And it was not a love-at-first-sight for me," says Rahul.

"The potential benefits are huge, since everything that civilization has to offer is a product of human intelligence; we cannot predict what we might achieve when this intelligence is magnified by the tools AI may provide, but the eradication of disease and poverty are not unfathomable. Because of the great potential of AI, it is important to research how to reap its benefits while avoiding potential pitfalls." It is a sunny morning in Bangalore. Rahul is a young machine learning expert working for a globally dominant technology platform company. He has come up the hard way from a low income family. He secured excellent marks in school and cracked the engineering entrance exam.

Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi is headed to the United States where he is likely to meet the pioneers of research on Artificial Intelligence (AI), the science of making machines that think like humans. Gandhi, who recently returned from Norway, is gearing up for another offshore visit, this time to the Silicon Valley in the US to "expand his thoughts about artificial intelligence", party sources said. The sources said Gandhi wants India to lead in the niche area which comes after software development, in which India has already won global recognition.While AI is still a nascent subject to most in India, many countries including China have begun investments in the area to strengthen research in it. A senior Congress leader said the idea was to bring back knowledge and implement it at the policy level in the Congress party's vision documents.Facilitating Gandhi's US visit is the chairman of Overseas Congress, Sam Pitroda, a technology innovator who was brought back to India by Rajiv Gandhi and was among thosebehind the telecom revolution in the country. The Congress VP had met leaders in the field of biotechnology during his Norway visit.

Young people in India have traditionally had their marriages arranged by their families but now, armed with smartphones and dating apps, some are taking control of their own love lives. Simon Maybin spoke to three couples who met online. Two pairs of eyes meet surreptitiously, then flit away from each other, their owners hoping no-one has noticed. No Bollywood love song plays - in this real-life romance, the only soundtrack is the unmistakable clackety-clack of a train beetling across eastern India. The eyes belong to 22-year-old Varsha and Rahul who is 27.