LONDON — The U.K.’s financial services regulator has approved a tie-up between chipmaker Nvidia and the country’s banks to “safely experiment” with artificial intelligence.
The Financial Conduct Authority said it will launching what it is calling a “Supercharged Sandbox” that will “give firms access to better data, technical expertise and regulatory support to speed up innovation.”
The initiative, which is to launch in October, will allow financial services institutions in the U.K. to experiment with AI using Nvidia’s accelerated computing and AI Enterprise Software products, the FCA said in a press release.
The effort is designed for firms in the “discovery and experiment phase” with AI, the FCA noted, adding that a separate live testing service exists for firms further along in AI development, the FCA said.
‘Test for Ideas’
“This collaboration will help those that want to test AI ideas but who lack the capabilities to do so,” Jessica Rusu, the FCA’s chief data, intelligence and information officer, said in a statement. “We’ll help firms harness AI to benefit our markets and consumers, while supporting economic growth.”
The FCA further said the new sandbox addresses a key issue for banks, which have faced challenges shipping advanced new AI tools to their customers amid concerns over risks around privacy and fraud, according to CNBC.
Privacy Issues
“Large language models from the likes of OpenAI and Google send data back to overseas facilities — and privacy regulators have raised the alarm over how this information is stored and processed,” CNBC said in a release. “There have meanwhile been several instances of malicious actors using generative AI to scam people.”
Many of the biggest banks in the country already use AI to varying degrees, the report stated.
