‘Five minutes’ about artificial intelligence

  • ECO News
  • 20 April 2018

Bruno Antunes, head of cognitive computing in Novabase, spoke to ECO about the present and future of artificial intelligence. The company is developing apps for the banking sector.

Where is artificial intelligence heading? This was one of the questions ECO asked Bruno Antunes, head of cognitive computing in Novabase, in a five-minute conversation about the main technological trends for the future. Novabase, the Portuguese tech company that has been working on the artificial intelligence field, is developing different technologies for the banking sector and others. Novabase already has a “top North American bank” in its portfolio, although it refrained from revealing the name of the entity.

Artificial intelligence is present in our day-to-day lives through certain services that we don’t even acknowledge sometimes”, Bruno Antunes stated, in another ‘Five minutes’ feature from ECO. He is referring to Facebook’s algorithm that recognizes people’s faces in pictures, for example, or the “personal assistant in our smartphone”, such as Siri for the iPhone user, he explained.

Concerning banking, artificial intelligence is already capable of analyzing data and making decisions, for example, for assessing the risk when granting loans. Novabase has developed an idea that helps banks “optimize the analysis of financial and investment information”. “We automatically classify documents according to a set of topics and we make those documents available to users in a selective manner, based on an intelligent  recommendation and search system”, Bruno Antunes stated.

That technology, made in Portugal and exported to the United States of America, will also allow for time and resources to be saves. “This used to be a long and tiring process, there were one hundred people that had to read the documents, classify them, distribute them. Now, those people are free to do more complex and rewarding tasks”, he stated. That is why quality and productivity were significantly enhanced, the head of cognitive computing in Novabase assured.

"Artificial intelligence is present in our day-to-day lives through certain services that we don’t even acknowledge sometimes.”

Bruno Antunes

Head of cognitive computing da Novabase

Another key thing to consider in the field of technology is truth and integrity of data, so that the machine can make the right decisions. Bruno Antunes believes this is one of the many challenges this type of “revolution” brings, as it was the case with the internet over two decades ago. Even so, he acknowledged: “Concerning banking, those challenges are greater, without a doubt. But experience [with past tech revolutions] tells us we can solve them”.

Lastly, there is a general idea that artificial intelligence has come to replace humans in everything. But that might not be the case: evolution causes the labor market to change, “which is only natural”, Bruno Antunes stated. But “new jobs will be created”; Bruno Antunes believes that “fear” must be set aside. “That’s a fear people shouldn’t have. People will always be useful for many important things“, he concluded.