Make boards responsible for AI failures, banking regulator suggests

Boards and senior managers in financial organizations could be made directly responsible for institutional risks created by artificial intelligence under a new consultation published this week by Singapore’s financial regulatory authority.

Although the principle of executive responsibility for AI risk is already part of regulatory regimes in other parts of the world — the EU’s AI Act, for example — this appears to be the first time that guidelines have been put forward that spell out the shape of this in such detail.

By intervening now, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) has an opportunity to make clear the responsibility of boards in advance of the technology becoming more deeply embedded in the sector.

It’s a timely intervention as Singapore’s financial sector is currently in the grip of the same boom in AI investment affecting institutions across the globe. Prominent in this are three of the city-state’s biggest institutions, DBS Bank, Overseas-Chinese Banking Corporation (OCBC), and United Overseas Bank (UOB), which all recently announced plans to retrain their entire 35,000 Singapore-based workforce to use AI.

[....]