Debrief: Fordham Fintech Network’s 2018 AI & Big Data Conference
By Amanda Shea
The Fordham Fintech Network hosted their AI & Big Data Conference on Tuesday, February 27. The event took place at Fordham’s Lincoln Center campus, and was well attended. Four inspiring speakers discussed their roles at their firms, as well as provided their take on the AI and Big Data industry as a whole.
The first speaker of the evening, Chris Butler, is Philosophie’s Director of AI, and his presentation was centered on human interaction with AI. His extensive product and business development experience has brought him to his leading role in human-centered AI engagements. He emphasized that humans give machines purpose as he explained the techniques of Empathy Mapping for the Machine and Confusion Mapping, both of which he created. He went into detail about theory of mind (ToM) and humans’ trust of machines. To illustrate this, he explained “The Minimum Bar,” which helps determine whether we build or lose trust in machines. For example, if a machine doesn’t load or is unreliable, we lose trust. However, if the machine is proactive and transparent, the machine earns our trust. He closed with, “Build AI for trust so humans will engage.”
Oliver Christie was the second speaker of the night. He spoke about his role at Opus AI, of which he is a co-founder. Opus AI is an AI powered human resources platform that works to eliminate bias, while also working to perfectly match candidates and jobs. Christie explained that the most bias occurs during the CV screening to move candidates on to the first round of interviews. To eliminate this bias, Opus AI extracts information from the CV and creates a new candidate profile without names, gender, race, or age. This then creates a bias free profile that is then read and analyzed by a computer. Once analyzed, the computer creates a perfect match between candidate and job, without any bias. This process in turn promotes more diversity in the work place, which has been proven to have a multitude of advantages.
Followed by Oliver Christie was Frances Zelazny. She is currently the Vice President of Marketing at BioCatch, which is a leading Behavioral Biometrics company that uses machine learning to protect online and mobile users against fraud. The BioCatch platform collects data on a users’ physical, cognitive, and response behaviors to create a behavioral biometric profile. One way in which BioCatch collects this data is through their patented “Invisible Challenges” that collect data such as screen pressure, scroll patterns, shortcuts used, figures used, and more. With this profile, the BioCatch platform can identify behavioral anomalies in transactions, account creations, and other cybersecurity threats. The BioCatch system was able to stop a fraudulent transaction of 1.6 million pounds because the system recognized a discrepancy in the user’s fraud patterns, as well as shortcuts that were not normally used.
The final speaker of the evening was Kumesh Aroomoogan who is the co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Accern, as well as a member of the 2018 Forbes 30 Under 30 list. Accern is a data design startup that uses AI to design predictive analytics solutions. The platform collects data form over one billion websites and financial news data feeds. Their innovative technology is able to analyze and interpret the articles in milliseconds, and using sentiment analysis, can determine whether the article is positive or negative. Currently, hedge funds are Accern’s main clients. Other services provided by Accern include revenue predictions for analysts, breaking news for traders, and bankruptcy predictions for banks. Accern is revolutionizing how we get and interpret financial news.
Overall, the event was a success provoking interesting questions from the audience, as well as awareness of all of the amazing things occurring in the industry. Thank you to all of our speakers and those who attended. Congratulations to the Fintech Network e-board for putting on such a successful event.
