Sibos 2020, a major annual conference for the financial industry, is being held between October 5 and October 8, 2020. This year it’s virtual, and its business program has welcomed Sberbank top executives, Alexander Vedyakhin, First Deputy Chairman of the Executive Board, and Anatoly Popov, Deputy Chairman of the Executive Board, as speakers.

Alexander Vedyakhin held a session called AI as a Power for Self-Driving Organizations. Alexander Vedyakhin spoke about how artificial intelligence would be changing the management paradigm for complex organizations in the next few years.

According to him, the load managers have to carry and the cost of potential errors increase dramatically as organizations grow bigger and face more data that has to be processed and used to make decisions. Amid that, the complexity of making managerial decisions often lies beyond the cognitive capabilities of a person. The only possible solution for large companies is to introduce artificial intelligence into corporate workflows to help their employees.

Alexander Vedyakhin compared managing a company to driving a car: as self-driving cars have evolved through six levels of autonomy – from vehicles fully controlled by a human driver to 100% automated self-driving cars – so there are six common levels of AI-driven autonomy in an organization. Although the sixth and fully self-driving stage is far ahead, stakeholders should get ready for it now, he believes. To that end, AI transformations of entities should have a precise foundation of ethical principles. AI algorithms must be controllable and manageable, explainable and predictable, stable and reliable, fair and unbiased, Alexander Vedyakhin stated. He further said that Sber participates in various international Committees and Task Forces on AI to promote international adoption of ethical AI principles into international regulatory frameworks.

The First Deputy Chairman of the Executive Board emphasized that AI lets stakeholders create fully self-governing organizations that deliver the best services, as well as resolve social and environmental challenges, making people’s lives better. This is why when developing AI, it is vital to focus not only on commercial results but also on resolving these problems.

Anatoly Popov took part in the Sber panel session called Disrupting the Usual Banking: Creating Value for Customers through Technology. Moderated by Denis Bugrov, partner at McKinsey, the session also welcomed representatives of the largest international financial institutions such as Hubert J.P. Jolly (J.P. Morgan) and Alex Manson (Standard Chartered Ventures).

Session participants discussed how banks use cutting-edge technology to help their customers maintain and develop their businesses. As an example of how Sber adheres to this approach, Anatoly Popov cited three widely used tools such as speech recognition, text recognition, and AI-based risk models created by Sber ecosystem companies and opening up opportunities to save the customer’s time and money. Other participants shared insights into their solutions in this area.

The Deputy Chairman of the Executive Board paid special attention to Sber’s technological transformation and the solutions this helps create for customers, including the smart management system that saves billions of rubles.