“In late 2016 I took a very early morning American Airlines flight from Dallas to Seattle”, recalls Michael O’Neill, Sales Director of Cloud Solutions at TechStar Group.  “We arrived at Sea-Tac airport at 9 am and were greeted with a heavy blanket of fog covering the airport and zero visibility.  Our pilot explained that we would circle for about 45 minutes before he would have to divert to Vancouver to pick up more fuel.  Just before that happened, a distressed pilot announced that we were to prepare for a landing immediately.  The plane had a smooth landing in the densest fog I have ever seen and then proceeded to park on a runway for another 45 minutes until the fog lifted enough that the pilot could drive us to the gate.  It was one of the first fully automatic landings by an American Airlines plane in the U.S.” “I talked to the pilot afterward for a few minutes, and he did not like handing over control of his plane to the A.I. software.  However, he assured me that there were many safety protocols to govern autonomous landing operations and that his fingers were never more than an inch away from the flight yoke the entire time.” “On February 9^th, I have the chance to interview Sriram Ganapanathy during our next TechStar webinar.  Sri is a veteran Microsoft employee that has achieved his global black belt as an A.I. specialist. He will be lending his expertise during a Q&A session we have designed to discuss opportunities for A.I. in Finance and Banking.” “My autonomous landing years ago has me thinking about what kind of regulations and security constraints are being applied to A.I. systems today that control strategic infrastructures like the financial markets?  I also want to know:
 

• What keeps the A.I. from continuing to sell when the markets start dropping? 
• How do you determine as an organization when the level of trust of A.I. allows you to move from testing to production?  
• How can A.I. augment a very personal business service like banking and provide advanced services without losing that human connection? 
• What factors help remove bias and prejudice from A.I. processes like approving a loan?”

“I will have an hour with Sri to discuss these issues and more in our upcoming webinar. If you would like to participate in this session, please follow this link.