Are You Ready for the Age of the AI Assistant?
Siri co-inventor Adam Cheyer says we’re just a few years away from AI assistants being a primary medium of interaction between customers and their banks
Siri co-inventor Adam Cheyer says we’re just a few years away from AI assistants being a primary medium of interaction between customers and their banks
Every 10 years there’s a major shift in how we interact with computers, with every connected user and every connected industry (including banking) being significantly transformed. First it was the mouse and windows in mid-1980’s; ten years later in the mid-90’s, we saw the web emerge; and then in the 2000’s it was smartphones. The next shift will see customers using personal assistants empowered by artificial intelligence to manage their money and provide service for all their financial needs.
All the big internet companies are spending billions on personal assistants in the race to develop the conduit for your daily computing. Once a dominant assistant platform and marketplace emerges, every developer will need to take advantage of this new channel to drive value and traffic to their services, just as they utilize the web and mobile computing today. This will transform every field in a significant way, with commerce-oriented industries at the top of the list. I believe that today we’re just two or three years from this.
Banks need to be thinking about this next shift. AI assistants will change the way banking happens in many ways, and that change will happen fast. And once it starts, the changes will not stop.
The most significant change will be banks introducing AI assistants as the primary interface for interacting with customers. That will happen sooner than you think, and it’s going to change everything, forever.
Once this happens, banks will need to get used to constant evolution and innovation if they are to thrive. The successful will constantly examine their models, product lines, services and be brave when they consider the short, medium and long term. When Apple launched iPads, for example, this risked cannibalizing its own PC sales, but it drove ahead, following progress, and thereby reaped the rewards.
TCF 2019 is full of innovators and pioneers who are changing the way the banks think and operate. This is essential because AI, along with the cloud and other new technologies, are changing not just the rules but the game itself.