LONDON (Reuters) – Artificial intelligence lacks the human judgement skills needed to set interest rates, the head of the Monetary Authority of Singapore said on Monday.
But AI could make it easier for criminals to launch cyber attacks, said Chia Der Jiun, managing director of Singapore’s central bank.
He said AI was being used in some economic models and in areas such as fraud detection, but stressed it was not at a stage where it could “supplant human judgement”.
“There is a great deal of judgement involved in understanding and having a view as to the forward path of inflation… (and) “the transmission of monetary policy,” Chia said during a Bank for International Settlements’ panel session on AI use.
“Maybe it will happen one day when you can blame the AI for mistakes in monetary policy,” he joked. “But if a human has to take the blame then the human will have to make the judgement”.
Chia, who took over as MAS chief at the start of the year, also warned the main risk was of AI being used by cyber criminals.
“Another dimension that is not talked about that much is that AI has the potential to democratize – not in a good way – but to democratize access to malware,” Chia said.
There were already tools available online he said, “for people that are not too sophisticated in their technical skills” to use to launch cyber attacks. “It is a space we have to watch.”
(Reporting by Marc Jones; Editing by David Gregorio)
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