A new survey shows that AI-powered fraud in US and UK firms is spreading fast, and many finance teams can’t spot it. A survey by software automation firm Medius polled 1,000 finance professionals across two countries about fraud and generative AI. Medius finds that nearly a third (32%) of finance professionals in the US and UK admit they wouldn’t recognize a fake expense report if it landed on their desk. The research warns that the launch of OpenAI’s GPT 5.0 could make detecting false receipts even harder. Since early 2024, when GPT 4.0 went live, three in ten finance workers…
Author: Henry Kanapi
The chief executive of Barclays says artificial intelligence is changing financial operations at a structural level — but warns that lasting results won’t come from shortcuts. In a new interview with Bloomberg, Barclays CEO C.S. Venkatakrishnan responds to a question about an MIT study showing that 95% of firms adopting AI have failed to deliver profits. According to Venkatakrishnan, integrating AI across large institutions requires not just new tools but also the conviction to reshape a firm’s workflows. “So there’s technology at one side, and there’s making it available to our staff, which we have done. And then there is…
A number of people on welfare in the US and UK say they do not trust the government’s use of AI to decide who gets help, after being wrongly denied benefits or accused of fraud. The warning comes from a Nature Communications study by researchers from the Max Planck Institute after surveying 3,249 respondents in the US and the UK. The study notes that while AI can speed up welfare payments, it also risks wrongly denying people or falsely flagging applications as fraudulent. Amid the potential inaccuracies, the survey finds a clear divergence between non-claimants and claimants. Non-claimants or the…
An executive at the world’s largest alternative asset manager says investors fixated on AI bubble talk are overlooking the scale of the coming productivity boom. In a new interview with CNBC, Blackstone president and COO Jon Gray says the current wave of capital pouring into chips, data centers and energy infrastructure reflects a rational pursuit of long-term productivity gains rather than speculation. He points to early results in several industries showing tangible benefits from AI. “But I do think the AI, which gets a lot of bubble talk, it’s worth thinking about why people are investing this much capital. We…
A new survey shows a majority of bank leaders believe agentic AI will fundamentally reshape the industry, and many of them aren’t waiting to get on board. The report, commissioned by SoundHound AI and conducted by Arizent’s American Banker, polled 200 qualified managers, executives and directors working at US retail, commercial banks and credit unions, with assets ranging from under $10 billion to more than $1 trillion. The survey finds that 70% of US banking leaders now expect agentic AI, systems that take action on behalf of users, to have a “significant or game-changing” impact on the banking industry. In…
A top technology investor is eyeing the possibility of another multitrillion-dollar AI firm, one co-founded by Elon Musk, joining the market’s elite. In a new interview with WEALTHTRACK, Baron Opportunity Fund portfolio manager Michael Lippert says OpenAI is just getting started and could easily have billions of users in the coming years. “I mean, 800 million users. It’s the fastest adoption in history. Before that was Instagram, then TikTok, and now it’s OpenAI. And I think pretty soon we’re going to have a billion weekly active users on that. But remember, Meta, Facebook and Instagram, they have three billion people…
A Goldman Sachs executive says the current AI boom doesn’t yet resemble the dot-com bubble as stock market leaders continue to tout strong balance sheets. In a new episode of the bank’s The Breaks of the Game podcast, Tony Pasquariello, head of hedge fund client coverage at Goldman Sachs, says today’s leaders are more profitable and better capitalized than the market darlings of 1999 and 2000. He cites research from Goldman’s chief global equity strategist Peter Oppenheimer showing that top-index stocks today are in a much better financial footing than those from the dot-com era. “I think Peter Oppenheimer did…
A leading researcher at Meta’s Superintelligence Labs says technology is rapidly advancing to a level where the cost of intelligence is zero. Speaking at the Stanford AI Club, Jason Wei, one of the researchers behind large-scale reasoning work at Meta, says advances in adaptive compute are ushering in an era where intelligence becomes as accessible as electricity or data bandwidth. According to Wei, AI has surpassed the early frontier stage, or a phase when systems can’t perform tasks effectively. He says AI is now in the second phase, where AI gains an ability that can be commoditized. Using the Massive…
Japanese investment behemoth SoftBank is doubling down on OpenAI but only if the ChatGPT creator gets its corporate structure right. SoftBank has reportedly greenlit a second $22.5 billion installment to complete its planned $30 billion investment in OpenAI, Reuters reports. The deal hinges on the AI company finalizing a corporate overhaul that would clear the path for a potential initial public offering (IPO), says a person familiar with the matter. The board approval follows SoftBank’s initial $10 billion commitment earlier this year. The remaining funds, set aside in December, are contingent on OpenAI’s transition to a for-profit structure before year-end,…
A top Microsoft executive says the company is taking a contrarian stance in the AI era—betting on human-centered optimism rather than automation or attention-driven design. In a statement unveiling the Copilot Fall Release, Mustafa Suleyman, CEO of Microsoft AI, says the company’s mission is to build technology that should “work in service of people,” and not the other way around, ever. Instead of developing an AI that replaces human judgment, Microsoft says it is designing its systems to help people come up with better decisions, while sparking creativity and deepening connections. “There’s a lot of noise around AI. Headlines, hype,…
