LAS VEGAS–As Chad Ritchie reminded, in 2007 former Apple CEO Steve Jobs walked out on stage with a black box in his hand and said, “This is going to change everything.” In 2023, there’s another black box, and it’s going to transform the world even faster than did the iPhone.
That new black box is generative AI.
In remarks to Mitchell Stankovic’s Underground Collision here, Ritchie, the CIO with Ventura County Credit Union in Ventura, Calif., predicted generative AI is not just going to change everything, it’s going to do so “in a way we can’t imagine.”
To help credit unions respond, Mitchell Stankovic formed a working group of which Ritchie is a part that is about to release a 40-page white paper that examines multiple AI-related questions.
“Why is it such a pervasive technology? Based on your prompts, it generates whatever you want,” said Ritchie. “It can develop content for your website on serving the underserved. You can ask it to develop some code for a funds transfer app.”
The Questions Being Asked
The white paper, said Ritchie, is not meant to prescribe a certain technology. Instead, the goal of the discussion is to assist CU leaders who are being forced to interact with the technology and to help answer some of the questions CU leaders have, including:
- How do we respond when our staff comes to us with questions?
- Can we use this?
- What are the risks?
- What are the strategic implications, risk, best practices, economic value, risks?
“The two most meaningful things I took away were the idea around culture and fear,” said Ritchie. “With culture, every time you interact with it, it can give you a different answer. It’s not like anything we’ve used before. Sometimes, it can be wrong, it can hallucinate. How do we train these models? You can train them on your culture, your ethics, your values. They can communicate your specific brand.
‘Am I Going to Lose My Job?’
“The other part of the working group that was most impactful was this idea of fear. Am I going to lose my job? What happens to me? People aren’t afraid of change, they are afraid of loss. So, it’s how we educate our staff on technology. Technology is never going to replace a job. It can complement a job.”
Ritchie predicted that within a decade or two credit unions will be using AI just as readily as they do their phones now.
“So, think about that now,” he said.