Unleashing The Power of Data: Inside The AWS Financial Services Symposium
Story by Joao-Pierre Ruth
Key Points:
Michael Kearns, Amazon scholar and professor in the computer and information science department at the University of Pennsylvania, moderated the chat with Michael Gerstenhaber, vice president of product with Anthropic, and Johnna Powell, managing director of technology research and innovation with the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC).
In their conversation about challenges and opportunities in deploying AI responsibly in the financial services world, Kearns said his role at Amazon Web Services (AWS) includes overseeing operational work around responsible AI.
Finding a path to responsible AI can be a very collaborative effort within organizations. Powell said DTCC started its GenAI journey about a year ago, tasked with defining a strategy to go forward. “We launched a massive survey across the DTCC; we did a bunch of internal research, external research, surveys, and so on,” she said. “We came up with about 400 use cases and had to sift through all of them.”
Anthropic, whose founders include expatriates from OpenAI, is a San Francisco-based startup that studies AI safety elements. That includes developing research on AI -- its risks and opportunities -- to develop reliable AI systems. “My primary goal is to enable engineers to use generative AI safely,” Gerstenhaber said.
Policymakers and regulations could be part of shaping responsible AI, however, the policy landscape is less than uniform when it comes to AI.
Powell’s closing thoughts on the responsible deployment of AI included a bit of a reality check that might allay some assumptions that surround the technology, but she remained grounded in its inevitable presence within organizations.
Welcome to InformationWeek's Big Picture!
You already know that every day at InformationWeek brings expert insights and advice to help today’s IT leaders identify the best strategies and tools to drive their organizations forward.
That means original reporting from our team of journalists and unique commentary you won’t see anywhere else! But in case you missed them, here are some of our other must-read favorites from this week:
GenAI's Impact on Unstructured Data
Story by Shane Snider
Key Points:
Salesforce has announced the general availability of its Data Cloud Vector Database, which uses GenAI to quickly sift through a company’s trove of PDFs, emails, transcripts, online reviews, and other unstructured data.
The ability to use that previously untapped data quickly will improve efficiency by “orders of magnitude,” says Rahul Auradkar, executive vice president and general manager of Salesforce Unified Data Services and Einstein Units.
Data Cloud will work with the Einstein 1 platform to link unstructured and structured data to allow quick data analysis for sales teams, marketing teams, customer services teams and more. The tool improves the accuracy of Einstein Copilot, the company’s conversational AI assistant for enterprises, the company said.
Saleforce also announced new AI and Data Cloud capabilities, including a pilot for hybrid search that will combine semantic search with traditional keyword search; data cloud in sandbox environments that enables IT teams to configure and test innovations before deployment; and Data Cloud on Hyperforce in the UK available July 31.
Headspace's Privacy Operations Center (POC)
Story by Brandon Taylor
Key Points:
As Shobhit Mehta ( Shobhit M. ), security and compliance director of Headspace puts it, “We truly believe privacy is an existential risk to healthcare companies.” Speaking last month at the RSA Conference in San Francisco, Mehta and former Headspace CISO Puneet Thapliyal described the work the company has done to improve data privacy, including establishing a privacy operations center.
Headspace must comply with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) in addition to the increasingly rigorous privacy regulations demanded by app stores, and other global laws. (The company operates in 190 countries.) Further, the HIPAA Privacy Rule treats mental health clinical notes somewhat differently than other medical data, which adds extra complexity to Headspace's challenges.
This led Headspace to come up with a Privacy Operations Center (POC) with a single goal to bring all privacy, security, and compliance initiatives together. Data classification is incomplete without inventory, but complete data inventory is extremely difficult to have, explained Mehta.
Underpinning the POC is Headspace's privacy-focused data storage “vault” architecture. Thapliyal said as part of Headspace’s privacy initiatives, the company realized that the data stored in its databases is extremely sensitive, more so than most organizations.
Inside the Danger of Deepfakes
Story by John Edwards
Key Points:
The deepfake threat is large problem that's growing larger with easy access to AI tools and services, says Ari Lightman, professor of digital media at Carnegie Mellon University’s Heinz College of Information Systems and Public Policy in an email interview.
"Part of the problem is that it’s hard to classify the intent," he notes. "In many cases, they are deliberately designed to deceive for a political, ideological, or financial reason -- in other cases, the intent is harder to assess."
Deepfakes can harm enterprises in several ways. "They can damage the reputation of the company or its executives by spreading false information or creating fake videos or audio recordings," says Robert Rendell, CFE , global head of fraud market strategy and fraud prevention at financial crime compliance support provider NICE Actimize in an email interview.
Rendell says that for now and the immediate future, IT leaders can take proactive steps to mitigate the impact of deepfakes by implementing robust fraud control measures across all of their transaction channels.
Collaborating on Cloud Migration
Story by Nathan Eddy
Key Points:
As organizations shift to hybrid- and multi-cloud environments, the scale and dynamic nature, not to mention the explosion of data they produce, make migration management increasingly complex.
Olivier de Turckheim, solution architect at Cycloid - Sustainable Platform Engineering, says that before anything happens, organizations need to run a comprehensive assessment of existing workflows, applications, and data structures to identify areas for optimization and improvement.
“Leadership teams need to foster a collaborative environment between teams, a strong strategy to migrate to cloud-native solutions, encouraging cloud-centric innovation and, most importantly, a true DevOps mentality,” de Turckheim says.
Amir K., CEO of Alkira, says because cloud migration impacts various teams across an organization, the IT operations team will be shouldering the bulk of the responsibility of provisioning and managing resources in the cloud.
Latest Major Tech Layoff Announcements
Original Story by Jessica C. Davis, Updated by Brandon Taylor
Key Points:
As COVID drove everyone online, tech companies hired like crazy. Now, we are hitting the COVID tech bust as tech giants shed jobs by the thousands.
Updated June 7, 2024 with layoff announcements from Oda, Microsoft, and Google.
Check back regularly for updates to our IT job layoffs tracker.
Commentary of the Week
Story by Ben Blanquera
Key Points:
In a recent survey of global IT professionals sponsored by Rackspace Technology, business leaders cited artificial intelligence and cloud transformation as two of the main areas deserving of increased spend in 2024. This speaks not only to the potential transformative power of AI, but also the degree to which it is intertwined with the continued evolution of cloud strategies.
Cloud computing serves as a gateway to AI, enabling companies of all sizes to remotely access sophisticated AI models and scale their computing resources as needed. By offering scalable infrastructure, the cloud allows organizations to seamlessly expand their operations, efficiently manage resources, optimize costs and maintain agility.
Without AI- and cloud-powered process optimization, businesses face rising operational costs and inefficiencies. Failing to invest in AI could also mean missing out on insights and opportunities, ranging from predictive analytics to personalized services to customer behavior insights to new revenue streams.
By leveraging AI and cloud computing to their fullest potential, organizations can not just survive in this new era but emerge as leaders, shaping the future.
Podcast of the Week
Podcast and Story by Joao-Pierre Ruth
Key Points:
A weeklong exploration of the technology scene in New York kicks off June 3. Startups and incumbents, new founders and veterans of the market will come together at NY Tech Week to discuss their respective innovations as well as what they are curious to see evolve.
New York continues to make its presence known as a tech hub as startups rise from its streets while big names such as Google and Meta have offices here. Sometimes those big players even offer supportive resources to up-and-coming New York tech companies.
But is New York still just a work in progress as a tech center? What are New York’s strengths when it comes to tech and innovation? Where could it mature further?
In this episode, Julie Samuels, president and CEO of Tech:NYC; Julian LaNeve, CTO with Astronomer; and Spencer Kimball, CEO of Cockroach Labs, share their thoughts on the New York tech ecosystem, what their organizations find engaging about the local tech scene, and what they hope to see develop.
2024 InformationWeek US IT Salary Report:
A Look Back at 2023 -- Profits, Layoffs, and the Continued Rise of AI
2023 was full of economic contradictions. Record profits. Massive layoffs. It was also the year AI possibly saved (or possibly sacrificed) IT.
Continued job uncertainty stemming from massive and sustained layoffs in IT during a loudly hailed booming economy is taking a toll. Despite being satisfied with their jobs overall, more than half of respondents in the latest InformationWeek IT Salary Survey rated their stress as a 6 or higher on a 10-point scale.
Find out how you compare:
Salary Parity
Gender Pay Gap
Non-Salary Benefits
Stress Level
Job Perks
Raises & Bonuses
WATCH ON-DEMAND!
“Generative AI: Use Cases and Risks in 2024”
An archived LIVE webinar from May 29:
Presented by InformationWeek and Snyk
Money talks, especially when generative AI finds itself facilitating more than just chats. Modern enterprises continue emphasizing the need for a clear AI strategy that is aligned with organizational goals. While real-world use cases are nearly limitless, so are potential risks.
In this archived keynote session, Sidney Madison Prescott, MBA, CEO of Moonshot Productions, explores ways to integrate GenAI into enterprise technology to increase business efficiency and productivity. This segment was part of our live webinar titled, “Generative AI: Use Cases and Risks in 2024.” The event was presented by InformationWeek on May 29, 2024.
Watch the archived “Generative AI: Use Cases and Risks in 2024” live webinar on-demand today.
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