AI: Is it Helping or Hurting Businesses in the Quest to Stay Compliant?
The business world is currently abuzz with talk about artificial intelligence (AI). With incredibly intuitive tools such as ChatGPT making headlines outside of traditional tech circles, many businesses will be wondering how they can integrate AI into their processes, and whether it will help or hinder their efforts regarding compliance.
AI can be a powerful tool that can speed up and improve a number of tasks within a business, from marketing to data analytics, to sales, operations, and more. It can also be integrated into a business’s approach to compliance.
With AI’s ability to streamline data analytics and catch issues that humans could easily miss, it could be a valuable tool in the compliance manager’s toolbox, though there can be some downsides to using AI in compliance as well. Whether AI helps or hurts may come down to how businesses want to use AI tools and their expectations.
How AI Can Help with Compliance
Compliance can be a daunting task for businesses to approach, especially within fields that are regulation-heavy such as healthcare and law. Many risk managers and compliance specialists are trained to look for errors and missteps in regulation by combing through collected data.
Although this process of collecting and analyzing can be long and tedious for human beings, it is one that AI can complete quickly and accurately. With AI’s assistance, compliance managers can garner information to work with and with which to make decisions that affect the business as a whole.
AI can also play a role in simplifying information for compliance managers. Compliance matters can often be complicated, and the newest AI programs can succinctly summarize what can often be a sea of legalese and confusing jargon. When compliance managers better understand their role, they can apply what they’ve learned to help the business be better compliant.
AI has become such an aid in compliance matters that even regulatory bodies have started implementing its use, as rapidly evolving technology often brings the subsequent need for greater regulations across most industries.
Just as AI can help analyze large data sets and help with recommendations, it can help regulatory bodies discover where there may be a need for more oversight or new regulations within a given industry. When AI is used to help the regulated and regulators sift through data to find the information that matters, human management can concentrate on applying that information in the most useful way possible.
How AI Can Potentially Harm Businesses
Although AI can be almost invaluable in its role of quick data collection and analysis, improved productivity and efficiency, and a host of other benefits, it is still a machine created by humans and prone to errors. No machine can replace the intricacies of the human brain — at least, not yet, anyway.
AI is only as smart as the information with which it was trained, meaning companies can run up against bias and a lack of algorithm transparency with AI. If the data an AI program relies on to perform is inherently biased, the information coming from the AI program will showcase similar bias and skew the results.
Many workers have also questioned the rise of AI and its role in potentially eliminating jobs in certain industries. Because AI can be so efficient, it can save businesses a significant amount of money, time, and other resources. This has led to AI taking over certain tasks previously conducted by human employees, who are essentially now rendered obsolete.
Another concern with AI is the privacy and security of the information it collects. Whenever sensitive information is entered somewhere digitally, there is always a risk that this information will fall into the wrong hands. This can be especially problematic to those in the medical or financial sectors, where an information leak could be catastrophic. Therefore, businesses should ensure that their security measures and technological oversight are well established.
While the positives likely outweigh the negatives with AI for most businesses, businesses must be aware of what could possibly go awry when using AI for compliance purposes.
The tech world is changing rapidly, and businesses that do not keep pace are likely to fall behind their competitors eventually. However, when it comes to compliance matters, utilizing AI to help with data collection and analysis, simplifying information, and making the job of the compliance manager easier can help businesses stay competitive and scale effectively.
Sandy Fliderman is the Founder & President of Industry FinTech. Sandy is an experienced CTO and entrepreneur with expertise in cutting-edge technology, big data analytics, and large-scale operational systems. He has been involved in all levels of technology firms from start-ups to publicly traded companies with areas of focus across multiple industries. Sandy has expertise in developing new technology platforms including holding several patents in the cybersecurity space.
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