Artificial intelligence lacks the human judgment needed to set interest rates, the head of the Monetary Authority of Singapore said on Monday.
But artificial intelligence could make it easier for criminals to carry out cyberattacks, said Chia Der Jiun, managing director of the Central Bank of Singapore.
He said artificial intelligence is used in some economic models and in areas such as fraud detection, but stressed that it is not at a stage where it could “replace human judgment.”
“Understanding and imagining the future path of inflation requires a lot of judgment… (and) ‘monetary policy transmission,'” Chia said during a Bank of International Settlements panel session on the utilize of artificial intelligence.
“Perhaps one day we will be able to blame artificial intelligence for mistakes in monetary policy,” he joked. “But if a man has to take the blame, he will have to make the judgment.”
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Chia, who took over as head of MAS at the beginning of the year, also warned that the main risk was related to the utilize of artificial intelligence by cybercriminals.
“The other dimension that isn’t talked about much is that AI has the potential to democratize – not in a good way – but democratize access to malware,” Chia said.
He said there are already tools available on the Internet “for people who are not very sophisticated in terms of technical skills” that can be used to carry out cyberattacks. “This is a space we need to watch.”
(Reporting by Marc Jones; Editing by David Gregorio)
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