BCBS’s de Cos: AI impact ‘could change the course of history’

Instead, global leaders should work together if they hope to arrive at the “right solution,” Pablo Hernández de Cos, the chair of watchdog Basel Committee on Banking Supervision and Bank of Spain governor, told the Financial Times in comments published Monday. If they don’t, AI could “change the course of history not necessarily for the good,” he warned.

“If we are not able to give a co-ordinated global response, the likelihood of getting the right solution to these challenges will be reduced,” de Cos said.

The governor spoke about financial institutions as an example of how global cooperation can help make systems more robust and safe.

“The fact that we are keeping this degree of coordination on financial stability is really remarkable, in particular because in other domains we are not seeing the same and perhaps we can to a certain extent leverage from this experience,” de Cos said in comments from the FT interview published on the BCBS website.

A similar approach as that of the world’s financial regulators should be applied to AI, de Cos suggested.

“We know that it is impossible to solve the challenges posed by topics such as AI or climate without a common international agreement,” the financial watchdog’s chair said, adding that financial stability was just one aspect where AI’s impact can trickle down and potentially result in bad consequences.

“Financial stability is only one dimension, there are many other potentially more important
consequences related to AI. Issues that if not properly managed could change the course
of history…