Dive Brief:
- JPMorgan Chase is linking AI use cases to tangible outcomes as part of a “pragmatic and disciplined” approach to the technology, CFO Jeremy Barnum said during the company’s earnings call earlier this month.
- The financial institution is focused on curating a “contained, well-chosen list of high-impact use cases” and is directing resources to those applications, Barnum said.
- “There’s clearly some very significant opportunities," Barnum said during the earnings call. "At the same time, we’re JPMorgan Chase. We’re not going to be chasing shiny objects here in AI.”
Dive Insight:
JPMorgan Chase is on the hunt to reap the expected benefits of generative AI while trying to drown out the hype, a quest that resonates with most organizations.
“We want to do this in an extremely disciplined way,” Barnum said. “We’re holding ourselves accountable for actual results.”
The company hired Teresa Heitsenrether as its chief data and analytics officer in June to lead AI adoption across the company. During the earnings call, Barnum said the appointment was an indication of the priority that the company is placing on AI.
Behind the scenes, the company is working to ready its systems.
“We're still making sure that we're investing in our foundational capabilities, so we can accelerate our AI opportunity,” said Marianne Lake, co-CEO of consumer and community banking at JPMorgan Chase, during a conference last month, according to a Seeking Alpha transcript.
Other companies in the industry echoed a measured approach to AI.
Bank of America spent $3.8 billion on new technologies in 2023, with plans to keep pace this year as it develops and deploys generative AI capabilities, according to the company’s Q4 2023 earnings call Friday.
“We think that there's vast promise for AI and we're deploying it in places, a lot of internal stuff,” Brian Moynihan, CEO at Bank of America, said during the company’s earnings call earlier this month. “There's still the care that has to be taken on data and usage and models and accountability.”
