Wishful thinking

“People always ask me about Gen AI,” started a recent LinkedIn post from a chap I used to work with.

The job is still about new technology, but it’s not about the ‘if’… it’s about the ‘how’

It made me laugh.

I would bet money that nobody has ever asked him about Gen AI and even if they had, I would hazard a guess that the conversation didn’t get far.

He is a nice chap, my old co-worker… let’s call him Adrian.

He is a good chap, Adrian.

He was in banking doing banky stuff when the innovation train pulled up into the station, and for the first heady years of it all… he was always willing… but timid. He always came as far as the station but never climbed aboard. Maybe at the time it felt too risky. It wasn’t clear what those of us doing innovation stuff in banks would do if the whole thing fell flat on its face.

We knew that as well.

We were reminded of that by the more traditional colleagues and bosses at the time. This fintech thing would never catch on, apparently.

We knew we were taking a risk, of course we did.

The ‘innovation crew’ had digital marketing folks in it… who would just go back to marketing, I guess. And engineers, who would go back to dealing with less exciting tech. And business folks like me who probably were taking the biggest risk – not because we wouldn’t be wanted back in the main shop… but because, as the poem goes, ‘the only way for the goldfish to endure its bowl is to have never contemplated the enormity of the sea’.

So, Adrian didn’t take that risk. For over a decade, he didn’t take the risk.

And as time passed and this fintech thing didn’t go away, the risk became smaller. And he still didn’t take the risk.

And then he did.

He jumped onto the train enthusiastically. Shouted ‘I am here now’. And he was. He was finally ready to play with new technology and fight the organisation to get things through. Only… that was not the conversation anymore. Innovation was still a division in the bank. But it was no longer a battlefield. Innovation is still a consideration, of course, but competing in a digital economy has a shape now. We are no longer debating if and what. We are talking about how and when and how fast.

This was always the aim, by the way. This is success. Slow and grudging and painful. But this is what we were hoping for.

More of us doing this.

The conversation moving onto the next set of questions.

Experts coming into the room to help us answer them.

Because I had to come up with creative ways of explaining to my CEO what an API is, but I was never going to build the gateway alone. Because I walked into a room full of payments experts to explain Bitcoin and DLT back in the day, but I was never going to develop digital asset capabilities alone.

Being the person who had to cram and understand and distil and translate to make it easier for the organisation to get moving without being spooked, overwhelmed or lulled into a false sense of ‘this isn’t for me’… that was part of the job.

Not the best part, frankly. But the obvious part.

Ten years on, that is not the job anymore. That is literally the only part of the job that is no longer needed.

Organisations have learned how to learn.

So, although I have no doubt that the organisation Adrian works for is toying with Gen AI use cases, I also have no doubt they are not asking him about it. Unless he became an expert in large language modelling while I wasn’t looking (he has not).

And banks will go to the experts. Finally.

And that is a good thing… for everyone but Adrian.

The cycle of navel gazing and contemplation, understanding and doubting whether things are real is shrinking… if not finished entirely.

We spent a long time, when I started on this journey, persuading FS decision makers that things may be what we called ‘3xR’ even if they had not been sanctified by use inside banks.

Robust, reliable and real.

It was possible for technology to be all of those things even if you didn’t bless it.

Furnishing proof to that effect was the job for a long time.

Proving to people that things can be real even if they don’t exist inside our halls is a crazy situation and thankfully it has come to an end.

So, by the time Adrian joined the dance, that is no longer the job. The job is now very different. And it can’t be done by a lone and determined voice.

The job now is about harmonising tech estates and streamlining operating practices.

It is still about new technology, but not about the ‘if’. It’s about the ‘how’.

So, I bet nobody is asking Adrian about Gen AI. Because the only reason we would have been asked, back in the day, was that the organisation didn’t know how to learn… and that is no longer the case. Not only is the proactive engagement with the evolution of tech a thing now in FS, 15 years of fintech evolution also means that the number of things that need to be understood and assessed have deepened in complexity and widened in scope.

The expertise needed has shot through the roof.

So why go to Adrian to ask him a question that he will then go scramble around for answers for when, in a rather mature landscape, you can go directly to the experts? In some cases, you can go to the experts inside your very own organisation.

Look, I get the LinkedIn post.

It makes sense in the context of a world that, if you say something out loud enough times, people act like it is true.

And then all you need is some swagger and some buzzwords.

Only that’s not true either.

I have a friend who is a futurist. Or rather was a futurist 15 years ago and made a very good living doing it. Let’s call him Mike.

Unlike Adrian, he jumped when the world started shifting. He painted a picture of the changing world that was challenging and engaging, scary and provocative.

Unlike Adrian, he found a niche that he could claim in a shifting world.

He was unafraid.

It was glorious.

But very much like Adrian, he counted on that thing still being the thing as time passed.

Can you blame them?

Adrian wanted that job… and hesitated so long till it was no longer a thing.

Mike had the job… and held onto it for dear life. Even if it is now no longer a thing.

Because on the day of Adrian’s post about Gen AI and how everyone is asking him about it… Mike also posted a piece about Gen AI and how everyone was asking him about it.

Only they are not.

And they are not because he doesn’t know anything about Gen AI that he didn’t learn by asking ChatGPT.

And look.

This saddens me a bit. Because I like the people involved. I like Adrian and I like Mike.

And because I get the human urge to hold onto what we know… or what we have long dreamt of… or what we spent a long time building. I get it.

But I can’t help but bristle also.

Because the job Adrian wants, of being the font of all knowledge now that knowledge is respected and the font not dismissed… that job is no longer a thing. The dismissal was what made it a job, sadly. The discomfort came with it.

And the job Mike wants, of being the firebrand provocateur who paints a picture of a future everyone else has to scramble towards, comes with being able to keep looking ahead. Because the future he painted is here and he’s still talking about it in the abstract.

But also because when the world was young and I had the job Adrian sort of wanted but not till it was easier… and Mike had the job he wanted and did it well, back then when it came easily to him… the job for both of us was mostly to get a whole industry to accept that just because you like it the way things are… or you wish things would carry on a little while longer… doesn’t mean that the world will pause to suit your career preferences.

That was the job.

That is still the job.

Not the job these guys want, perhaps. But it’s the job nonetheless.

#LedaWrites

Leda Glyptis is FinTech Futures’ resident thought provocateur – she leads, writes on, lives and breathes transformation and digital disruption.

She is a recovering banker, lapsed academic and long-term resident of the banking ecosystem. 

Leda is also a published author – her first book, Bankers Like Us: Dispatches from an Industry in Transition, is available to order here.

All opinions are her own. You can’t have them – but you are welcome to debate and comment!

Follow Leda on X @LedaGlyptis and LinkedIn.