How AI is changing the way we work
Gen AI is gaining ground as employees around the world – in industries ranging from finance to healthcare – experiment with the new technology. And its appeal is unprecedented: where traditional AI can manage tasks such as translating a text or predict an outcome based on trends, gen AI is a sophisticated type of machine learning that processes data to produce new, unique content – including text, images or other outputs. The system uses continuous feedback loops to improve its performance over time, and promises a number of benefits, such as boosted productivity.
For example, it can pull relevant information out of huge numbers of files, and can use ‘optical character recognition’ to interpret hand-written notes and combine them into simple summaries of long and complex documents. These tasks might take a human hours or days, but gen AI can make them much less onerous.
The risks and limits of gen AI
While gen AI can streamline work processes, the technology is rapidly evolving – and an essential consideration in this uncharted landscape is data security. Respect for customers’ and other users’ data must be the highest priority at all times, and data protection must be at the core of all processes for developing new tools.
Gen AI is carefully regulated, and for good reason: it’s essential for organizations – especially in the finance industry – to be able to explain every decision we make. The biggest limit is, currently, gen AI’s lack of transparency. When the technology makes a statement or a decision, we can’t always know where it has pulled the information from, and it won’t always make the same statement in response to the same input. It can also occasionally ‘hallucinate,’ presenting fabricated or incorrect information as fact.
Allianz Trade approaches these tools cautiously. Our teams are vigilant against hallucination errors, and we are careful to ensure full compliance with regulation before any new tool is rolled out.
Gen AI at Allianz Trade: innovation with care
At Group level, we were quick to identify the potential of gen AI, as well as its risks and limitations; Allianz launched its first internal solution in September 2023, offering secure, internal data integration to our teams. And in addition to respecting local regulations on AI, the group has also implemented strong Ethical AI policies to ensure our use is in line with best practice.
Today, Allianz Trade’s data scientists are working on finding uses where gen AI can enhance the expert work done by our teams. We conduct workshops across regions and functions to identify them together, and to help our teams understand how an idea becomes an AI model as well as how to best use AI. Some of our projects and solutions can benefit every team, and some are more specific to a function and its needs.
One clear benefit is to our credit analysts: our business relies on enormous sets of data, which gen AI can help us unlock more quickly and efficiently. It can take on time-consuming work like sorting and summarizing information, leaving our people free to concentrate on more critical tasks, such as making decisions on complex credit assessments.
For our data science team, potential uses include computer programming, as it enables people to code in natural language, explaining in their own words what they want. And for our sales and commercial teams, we are working on an AI-powered tool to create clean slide decks for customer meetings.
A future focused on integrity and accountability
Our teams’ unique skills remain the core of our business, and our work with AI is designed to give them the best equipment to execute our strategy. Gen AI has already added significant value to our teams, and as its capacities advance we will continually evaluate how to adapt these transformative technologies to our business, with a focus on compliance, security and ethics.
We are supporting our teams as they navigate these new tools. The technology is developing quickly, and Allianz Trade is working to get the best from this rapid innovation, while still keeping integrity and accountability at the center of our approach.
