Know more how AI is emerging as transformative technology

Having left an important global job at Barclays to create an AI start up focused on providing investment ideas to customers of brokerage houses, one could legitimately claim that I am biased. But bias alone does not invalidate an argument.

My team and I at Bridgeweave passionately believe that AI is a transformative technology that will transform the way people invest – either directly or through advisors. We have seen this first hand in the global context …. It can learn from your most recent behaviour, profiling you in real time (as against once a year risk profiling of today). It can look through hundreds of millions of daily data points, performing many complex computations to identify patterns that are hard for a human to detect. It can apply a methodology with equal diligence to all global stocks without leaning towards any one sector, market or stock. This is very valuable for an investor. I am certain that a poll of the 20,000+ strong community of InvestorAi users will tell you that they would rather be with an AI powered tool than to be without.

Further, let me categorically debunk the notion that there are no AI use cases in Indian brokerage. They may not be visible to everyone just yet, but I know they exist because my team at Bridgeweave is working with at least 3 Indian brokerage houses, right now. The gratifying thing for me is that although these use cases represent early thinking, they also represent creative use of AI. More importantly, they are backed by imaginative leaders who will not stop at one use case.

Is everyone doing this – no. Are brokers putting out tall claims on AI without substantiation – quite possibly. Does marketing hype exceed reality – probably. But show me one industry where such overstatement does not happen. Can you really get clearer skin by using a cheap skin cream? Can you really achieve your dreams just by buying a 3BHK in a leafy picture? Can you really look like Hrithik Roshan by using a deodorant? Can you really explain risks of investments by reading out a paragraph very fast? We all know that hyperbole is a part of the world we live in … India is nothing if not periodic spells of exuberant optimism.

I am reminded of my days in BPO industry in 2002. It was early days. Both providers and customers were learning how to outsource and scale. Tall claims were made, few were substantiated. We all complained in private. But it was a very supportive ecosystem and we all learnt at an exponential pace and we got better and better with each passing month.

AI is also new. But it is a great technology. It can do a lot but it needs what I call "Imaginators" – more people with imagination to challenge how things are done today. Many ideas will be rubbish but a few good ideas will change things for the better. What we need in the industry is tangible support, real imagination, courage to experiment and possibly fail, desire to innovate, hospitable platforms to co-create, ability to test and learn. One cannot dis an entire technology because a credible use case to someone's satisfaction has not emerged.

I firmly believe that one way or another, sooner or later, AI will prove its point for the mainstream brokerage as it has done in healthcare, genomics and other industries. I hope it is sooner and I hope it will be Bridgeweave that does it – but we will applaud with equal enthusiasm even if it is not us because someone will have taken a small step to move the industry forward.

Author

Akshaya Bhargava, Founder and Executive Chairman, Bridgeweave.