American Express is considering using artificial intelligence to decide whether or not to approve customers for credit cards.
The financial services giant said it would use the controversial technology to decide whether or not to give customers the go-ahead for lines of credit – and to analyze user feedback and even respond to people on social media.
Executives at American Express Digital Labs, the company’s innovation arm, said the technology could be used “behind the scenes” to predict how customers would fare over time with different products.
However, the company, which is believed to have more than 56 million cardholders in the United States, said business beat it has no plans to follow in the footsteps of other big companies such as Google by launching its own generative AI program.
It comes as more than 350 industry experts, including OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, creator of ChatGPT, have signed an open letter calling for urgent regulation to mitigate “the risk of AI extinction”. .
American Express will use AI to decide whether to approve customers for credit cards
Credit card giant American Express reportedly has over 56 million cardholders in the US alone
Luke Gebb, senior vice president of Digital Labs, said business beat that American Express would like to use AI to “predict how our customers will behave over time and approve cards and lines of credit.”
He said he’s considering the technology used to facilitate transaction approvals — the process by which a credit card issuer ensures that charges have been billed by the customer — and even customer interactions.
Laura Grant, vice president of product development for emerging platforms and AI, told the outlet, “The way I think about AI is how we think about customer experience. What will it do to make people’s lives easier and improve the customer experience? »
She said AI technology is being used “behind the scenes” to analyze all customer feedback and inquiries through the company’s customer service portals to understand how to provide appropriate and helpful responses.
Grant added that it is also being used informally on social media to review feedback from customers of the financial services, credit card and concierge services giant remotely.
Despite this, Gebb said the company will not “develop” its own technology from scratch, but rather use existing offerings to improve its own offerings.
Digital Labs is a division of American Express that was established in 2017 to test new products before they are rolled out enterprise-wide.
Luke Gebb, senior vice president of Digital Labs, said the company has no plans to develop its own AI technology.
Companies like Google have developed their own artificial intelligence programs
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, creator of ChatGPT, has signed an open letter calling for urgent regulation of the AI industry
It comes as a growing number of companies are embracing in to their processes – or by creating their own.
Google, for example, created its own AI product, Bard, but the company’s CEO admitted last month that he didn’t “fully” understand how it works.
Sundar Pichai said oOne of the big problems uncovered with Bard is something he called “emergent properties,” or AI systems learning unforeseen skills on their own.
Google’s artificial intelligence program was able, for example, to learn Bangladeshi without training after being prompted for the language.
A new open letter read to Congress today called for action on technology regulation, saying it “should be a global priority alongside other society-wide risks such as pandemics and nuclear war”.
In addition to being signed by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, it was endorsed by other well-known AI leaders, including Demis Hassabis of Google DeepMind, Dario Amodei of Anthropic, and executives from Microsoft and Google.
Altman was quizzed by lawmakers earlier this month for five hours on how ChatGPT and other models could reshape “human history” for better or worse, comparing it to the printing press or the atomic bomb.
Altman admitted his “worst fears” were that “significant harm” could be done to the world by using his technology.
“If this technology goes wrong, it could go wrong, and we want to talk about that. We want to work with the government to prevent this from happening,” he said.
American Express declined to comment further when contacted by Dailymail.com.
