We sat down with social media expert Jay Palter to discuss AI, influencers and making real connections at FinTECHTalents 2019.

Watch the video now:

What is the biggest issue in financial services at the moment?

The biggest issue in financial services is – my personal interest is AI and Tech. I’m really big on AI. I am looking for anything about how we’re using data and data analytics and artificial intelligence to make smarter applications these days.

How does automation and efficiency interlink with connecting people together?

The connectivity app already is helping connect some people have had some great meetings through that. I think you know I think what’s funny about that is that people need to sometimes just talk to each other, get to know each other. We’re talking about AI, we’re talking about tech, we’re talking about financial services, but I’m a big advocate that you’ve just got to spend time getting to know people. I mean I work in influencer networking, influencer marketing and it’s really about building relationships with people, right? Relationships are how business gets done and we’re focused on that a lot at this event.

What are some of the themes here today?

I think for me a huge issue is ethics and purpose around your AI. There’s a lot of data analytics you can do, but I think you have to decide what your goal is. I think it’s important that you have to guide your technology applications with some ethical guidelines. Privacy is important and yet we can get benefits from technological automation and data analytics. We just need to do it in a way that is ethically sound.

Who calls the shots on what those ethics are?

I think it’s important to actually have the conversation. It’s not clear to me that there’s a lot of conversations about AI, you know being revolutionary and bringing all kinds of benefits, but there’s not the same kind of discussion happening about:

• What AI is going to be okay?
• How ,you know, how do we protect privacy?
• Who has a say in that?

I think those are the kinds of conversations we need to have more of instead of being so Pollyanna-ish about AI. Everybody’s optimistic AI is going to solve a lot of problems and I think it’s going to make things better, but I do think we need to be having a discussion too about the ethics behind that and how to do it right, how to do it and protect people’s privacy and rights too.

Privacy on one level – what level would you place ethics in AI?

No matter where you go with AI there’s ethical issues that are often not at the forefront. Certainly the technologists are often not trained ethicists in that sense. It’s important, I think, for policy makers, important for everybody. The public has a say, government policy makers have a say too and need to be setting the ground rules within which we’re innovating and developing.

I would argue as well the vendors who are bringing these solutions to market also have a responsibility to bring some ethical analysis and do the right thing. I think some of the vendors out there are distinguishing themselves that way and some could do a better job.