#50 - Robin Grosset, CTO at MindBridge Ai - On how human centric AI transforms financial auditing

This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that has the power to 10x the impact financial auditors can make, and my guest is Robin Grosset, CTO at MindBridge AI.

Robin has a track record as an entrepreneur, having worked in and founded successful software startups. This resulted in him joining IBM in 2008 through the acquisition of Cognos, where he was appointed IBM Distinguished Engineer. He has over 20 years of commercial experience in the field of Business Analytics. He was formerly the technical lead and chief architect for Watson Analytics, a groundbreaking cognitive analytics system. Robin holds many patents in the areas of analytics, data processing and security.

Today, he leads the development of the next-generation MindBridge AI Auditor that helps professionals detect and prevent financial anomalies, including fraud. He’s created a vision around Human Centric AI, and shared that vision recently at TEDxOttawa.

This triggered me, hence I invited Robin to my podcast. We explore the challenges in the financial auditing practice, and how, even after decades of automation, much of the practice is still very manual and sample-based, leaving huge opportunities for fraud. Beyond that, we discuss why a human/machine approach will always provide the optimal combination to create exponential impact.

Here are some of his quotes:

“The existing ways that people were analyzing or auditing financial transactions were inadequate.

So, typically, they would use rules-based systems to do this.

With the rules-based system, you're only going to catch something, you're going to find something that you anticipate

So, you have to imagine the circumstance to find the rule and then it will work it will never find anything you don't anticipate.

We think it's a significant problem in the world. There's a group called the ACFE, the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners and they estimate the amount of fraud, misconduct, irregularities that are caught each year. They say that that's about $200 billion a year. But they also estimate the amount we don't find. So, these are not detected by any method we have today. And that amount is about somewhere north of $3 trillion per year. So, if you put that number in perspective, that's a little under $500 for every person on the planet.”

During this interview, you will learn three things:

1. Why human-centric AI is the key to take the impact and insight of virtually any solution to a different level
2. How to overcome inertia for AI-driven innovation, especially in an industry that’s sceptical by design
3. That to truly disrupt an industry you need to avoid looking at the conventions and existing standards