Machines Take Over at the Point Where Humans Stop Understanding Correlations, Says Tandem Bank CEO

One of the important dilemmas surrounding artificial intelligence is ethical, according to Ricky Knox, the co-founder and CEO of Tandem Bank. Speaking Thursday at Calcalist’s third Mind the Tech conference in London, Knox, who is aiming to disrupt the established banking system by creating a completely independent phone-based bank, said Tandem Bank is using its AI powers for good, specifically to benefit customers.

“Ultimately banks are risk management businesses, a lot of it is about credit,” Knox said. The primary job of a bank is taking money from one guy and lending it to someone else and underwriting the risk in the middle, so AI can be really useful in building a fantastic financial service institution, Knox said.

The challenge with AI is that if you only have 500 loans to make, it is not going to be much use to you, Knox said. “When you get into the millions, you can really start to generate the levels at which humans stop understanding the correlations, and the machines start to understand the correlations,” he said.