Technology breakthroughs follow a predictable path of rapid improvement that eventually slows down and tapers off until the next breakthrough.
In the beginning, the iPhone improved dramatically with each new release but now there are no lines in front the Apple store and no dramatic improvements year to year. Same pattern for the x86 chip family, speed of cell service and many other examples.
AI and large language models (LLM) are rapidly improving. Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) mitigates hallucinations and focuses the AI on an information set you select. The new O1 model from OpenAI can reason. Human matching artificial general intelligence (AGI) is expected to be coming soon. Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, predicts “It is possible that we will have superintelligence in a few thousand days…”. Super intelligence is AI that surpasses human abilities.
The internet resulted in online banking (and lending and account opening and etc.), smart phones created the opportunity for mobile banking, AI will have a much broader and deeper impact on credit unions than previous technology revolutions.
We don’t know exactly the how, when or what of AI but we do know credit unions can’t afford to fall behind when change is happening so rapidly.
Access Softek released the first downloadable application for mobile banking in 2004. By 2008 we could see that our clients were growing 2-3x faster than the industry average. Credit unions who are aggressive with new technology grow faster and do better. AI is new technology to aggressively adopt.
Buckle up credit unions, the future is coming.
Author: Chris Doner, Founder and CEO, Access Softek