The AI Book

CHAPTER 49The Wisdom Vantage

By Esther Lancaster¹

¹AI Ethics Specialist

Innovation will continue to disrupt until we are satisfied that humanity is being benefitted at the highest level. This will only happen once we have challenged the underlying principles of each existing system – including the financial system – through the precise and exacting lens of an Artificial Intelligence.

As with all areas where we code our human intelligence into machines, algorithmic biases reveal where we as a society are at. The automation of our financial user experience through AI shows us the very way we have structured this value system, and enables us to decide what we want, and what simply does not serve the evolution of humanity. This is a natural progression.

For example, if a credit card company develops an algorithm to predict a customer’s creditworthiness whilst adhering to a business model of maximized profit, it will invariably undermine principles of fairness. The system, when considered as a circuit must serve all parties; if it doesn’t, new solutions will be found that support a profitable, prosperous financial model. For example, Universal Basic Income is a healthy option for a new world that looks nothing like the previous version – like nothing we can even imagine.

Right now the resistance and scepticism regarding UBI is strong, because we are still coming at it from a scarcity mindset, one that suggests that we as a species have limited resources and must push against what ...