Artificial Intelligence or AI is the buzzword these days. So much so that my school has a subject named AI even though it deals with general computer-related awareness needed for school children. The syllabus does not talk about Artificial Intelligence in the true sense. A reason I can think of is AI sounds much more marketable plus kids like me get a feel of the technology trend which is expected to dominate the world in near future.
So, what is Artificial Intelligence? In simple terms, it deals with the ability of machines to behave and work like humans. For example, these days we see Siri & Alexa executing voice commands on smartphones. We ask them for a particular song they play, we ask them to call a particular person they call, we ask them to search on a particular keyword they display the result and so on. Another interesting application of AI we see these days is an autonomous car which can travel without a human driver. This is still under trial though.
While discussing it with my father I came to know about ChatGPT which is a recently launched revolutionary chatbot by OpenAI. This AI-powered chatbot responds to your text-based questions in your preferred language. It responds so phenomenally well that academicians have started worrying about it. Students can potentially outsource their academic work such as essays, assignments, and other exam-style questions. On the other hand, the software engineers have already started using ChatGPT to resolve their coding queries. Twitter chief Elon Musk once said, “ChatGPT is scary good. We are close to dangerously strong AI”.
Further on the positive side, AI is increasingly being used by the medical fraternity world over in the diagnosis and treatment of cancer and many other diseases.
As we have seen, all sectors including healthcare, retail, education, manufacturing, telecom, financial services etc are now using AI in some form or other.
Let us delve into some applications of AI specifically for finance-related services:
Robo Advisory: A robo advisor is an AI-powered virtual financial advisor. It gathers information from the client on some surveys and uses it to make investment decisions on the client’s behalf.
Algorithmic trading: Typically used by large investment firms, the software automatically invests money in financial assets based on the ups and downs of the market in a fraction of a second.
Credit Decisions: The AI solution helps banks and other lenders evaluate borrowers' creditworthiness using multiple factors including social media data.
Customer Service: AI-based chatbot becomes the first level of customer service agent which helps financial firms extend desired support to customers.
As we have seen there are plenty of advantages to applying artificial intelligence to various walks of life. The trend of its usage will only go up from here. However, there are certain dangers too. It will inevitably replace humans for repeatable mundane tasks causing unemployment. It will also make us dependent on technology to act and think on our behalf. As we have seen in Rajnikant's starrer movie Robot, it can potentially dominate humans in times to come.
At the end of the day, it all depends on us how prudently we use it for the betterment of this world.
Tanay Patni
Grade IX Student
By invitation
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