Sam Altman says he’s “very nervous” about the use of artificial intelligence in the banking world.
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The OpenAI CEO spoke with with Federal Reserve Vice Chair Michelle Bowman at the Fed’s Integrated Review of the Capital Framework for Large Banks Conference in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday. During their conversation, Altman talked about his fear of an “impending fraud crisis” in banking, given the huge threat that AI poses to current methods of authentication.
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During the discussion, Bowman said that the banking industry is “really interested” in fraudulent activity from individuals impersonating others. She went on to ask Altman if there are ways banks can mitigate this kind of fraud if AI is being used in this type of impersonation.
“I am very nervous about this,” Altman began. “A thing that terrifies me is apparently there are still some financial institutions that will accept a voice print as authentication for you to move a lot of money or do something else. You say a challenge phrase and they just do it.”
He said that is a “crazy thing” for banks to still be doing, noting that “AI has fully defeated that.”
“AI has fully defeated most of the ways that people authenticate currently, other than passwords,” Altman said while highlighting some of the “fancy” methods banks use that no longer work with AI, like “take a selfie and wave or do your voice.”
He said banking’s use of these authenticators is leading the industry to have “a significant impending fraud crisis.”
Altman said methods of impersonating the voice of an individual are “going to get so compelling.”
“We have tried, I think other people in our industry have tried, to sort of warn people like, ‘Hey, just because we’re not releasing the technology doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist,’” Altman said. “Some bad actor is going to release it. This is not a super difficult thing to do. This is coming very, very soon.”
Altman added that people are going to have to change the way they verify. “Right now it’s a voice call, soon it’s going to be a video FaceTime. It’ll be indistinguishable from reality,” he said.
“This is a huge deal.”