Future of AI in Finance

Autonomous Agents and Artificial General Intelligence

Autonomous Agents

GenAI systems are capable of generating data, and LLMs (Such as ChatGPT) are the most important advancement thus far of GenAI. As LLMs are trained with more and more data, their output becomes more and more accurate and human-like, enabling many functionalities in finance such as robo-advising, fraud detection, back-end processing, enhancing end-customer experience, and internal software and code development and harmonization. The last 15 years of AI development, since the beginning of the deep-learning era, has built up to the creation of GenAI systems such as LLMs. The next frontier of GenAI development is the Autonomous Agent.

Autonomous Agents are GenAI systems built on top of an LLM that have expansive capabilties such as planning capabilities, long-term memory and access to external tools such as the ability to execute computer code, use the internet, or perform market trades (BIS).

Autonomous agents have been deployed before in High-Frequency Trading, but the new generation will be even more powerful, as they have the intelligence of the LLM that they’re built on. Developers hope to create agents that can analyze data, write, test and update code as needed, and even create other agents.

In Financial Intermediation, Insurance, and Asset Management, AI Agents present opportunities such as the automated design, marketing and sale of new financial products without human intervention.

In Payments, AI Agents will increase the speed of information processing, resulting in faster payment flows and better fraud prevention.

Artificial General Intelligence (AGI)

Leading AI labs like OpenAI have their targets set on AGI — Artificial General Intelligence. AGI is the hypothetical stage when AI systems match the cognitive abilities of human beings across any task (IBM). Current AI systems are narrow and built for specific tasks. AGI would be capable of reasoning, problem-solving, abstract thinking across a wide variety of domains, and transferring knowledge and skills across different fields, just like humans (BIS).