The UK’s FCA has said it will provide firms the opportunity to experiment safely with AI to support innovation through its launch of a Supercharged Sandbox. The regulator has said in a press release “firms will have the opportunity to experiment with AI using NVIDIA accelerated computing and NVIDIA AI Enterprise Software.”
It’s worth mentioning that the FCA has already launched an AI Live Testing Service that helps firms who are further along in development and ready to use AI.
“The sandbox will help firms who are in the discovery and experiment phase with AI,” the press release adds.
Earlier this year, the FCA published its new five-year strategy which called for harnessing advanced technologies such as AI in order to achieve economic growth.
The UK regulator has also committed itself to becoming a smarter regulator, and to reducing regulatory burden on the industry and streamlining its operations.
According to Jessica Rusu, the FCA’s chief data, intelligence and information officer: “This collaboration will help those that want to test AI ideas but who lack the capabilities to do so. We’ll help firms harness AI to benefit our markets and consumers, while supporting economic growth.”
But there was also a warning from Nvidia, as the company’s CEO Jensen Huang warned that the UK did not have enough computing infrastructure to exploit the full potential of AI.
Speaking at London Tech Weekly on Monday, Huang did however acknowledge that the country had one of the best AI research bases in the world. He also praised the government’s overall AI policy and said: “The ability to build these AI supercomputers here in the UK will naturally attract more startups, it will naturally enable all of the rich ecosystem of researchers here.”
AI adoption
The announcement of the collaboration between the UK financial regulator and one of the world’s largest semiconductor manufacturers comes at a time more and more businesses around the world are turning towards technology for compliance, cost reduction and productivity purposes.
According to a recent State of Financial Crime report report compiled by ComplyAdvantage, “91% of firms are willing to trade AI explainability for efficiency, despite 70% believing they understand regulatory oversight of AI in financial crime detection.”
The report also adds that there is global consensus on the principles of safe AI, and that many countries will implement relevant rules, something that is also highlighted in FCA’s latest statement.
According to Dr Jochen Papenbrock, EMEA head of financial technology at NVIDIA: “AI is fundamentally reshaping the financial sector by automating processes, enhancing data analysis, and improving decision-making, which leads to greater efficiency, accuracy, and risk management across a wide range of financial activities.”
Elsewhere, the UK government is also stepping up efforts to encourage and increase AI adoption and digitalise the entire government apparatus. Last week, early results of a landmark trial by the government revealed civil servants could save up to two weeks of time they spend on administrative tasks if they use generative AI.
In the long term, the government has plans to save tens of billions of dollars by making greater use of advanced technologies such as AI co create a lean and modern state.
