Artificial intelligence (AI) is key for companies creating movies to sports betting odds as the world undergoes a data-led economic transformation, former Fiserv Inc. chairman and CEO Jeff Yabuki said Friday at a UW-Milwaukee Artificial Intelligence and Analytics Symposium.
“We’re still in the very early innings of unlocking the potential (of AI) and turning it into this incredibly large prize,” Yabuki said at the symposium.
Yabuki, who served as Brookfield-based Fiserv’s CEO from 2005 until July 2020, is now the chairman of private equity firm Motive Partners. He is also chairman of Sportradar Group AG, a global sports data company that filed for an initial public offering (IPO) in 2021.
Yabuki said 86% of business leaders say AI is becoming mainstream technology at their companies. He added that AI could add $10 trillion to $15 trillion in annual value across industries.
Hosted by the UWM Lubar School of Business’s Center for Technology Innovation, the virtual symposium included a series of panel discussions with academic researchers and business representatives.
Yabuki said Fiserv’s response to the Great Recession to develop a system that used transaction-based data to make credit decisions – despite the industry’s dependence on FICO scores – was an early example of AI in financial services that will become more common in the future. Fiserv received at least six patents related to the algorithms that emerged from the work, Yabuki said.
“We built a team of data scientists to review debit, checking and bill payment data for consumers and small businesses to enable us to create new predictive and risk management models,” Yabuki said. “We found tremendous insights in the data.”
AI is already integrated into industries like movie production, Yabuki said. “Top Gun: Maverick,” which is already the highest grossing film of 2022, includes voice clones developed by AI voice synthesis company Sonantic of actor Val Kilmer, who suffered damage to his voice from throat cancer, Yabuki said.
Swiss-based Sportradar Group AG is another example of a company using AI, said Yabuki, who is also chairman of the company. Sportradar is the largest supplier of data to bookmakers in the world, covers about 70% of sports globally and uses AI to enable real-time sport betting odds in what Yabuki called a “whole new world.”
Yabuki warned that business leaders would also be responsible to train workers in artificial intelligence as the technology becomes more common across industries and threatens to eliminate 13% of all jobs globally.
“I think it’s important to spend just a moment on the risks and dangers that sit in this technology stack,” Yabuki said. “We, in business, have to assume the obligation of advanced training people so that they can have other opportunities within the landscape.”
