If AI is good enough to power self-driving cars, isn't it good enough to make credit risk decisions? What are the challenges lenders face using AI and machine learning models today?
In this podcast for Lend Academy, FICO Blog author Dr. Scott Zoldi talks about his role as FICO's Chief Analytics Officer, the company's AI innovations and how they are being applied in credit risk, fraud management and more.
Listen to the podcast:
"I'm excited that machine learning and AI is the rage again, I think that's a really positive thing because it's a tremendously interesting set of technology," Scott says in the podcast. "What I worry about is it takes a lot of care to properly productionize and operationalize AI. From making sure that models aren't overtrained, to making sure that you have the proper amount and degrees of freedom, that you really thought about the data you bring into the machine learning models so it doesn’t learn relationships that might cause bias or might cause the model to not perform in predictable, reliable ways.
"At FICO we have a lot of experience with this and we treat it with a lot of care and we have a lot of governance around these models in terms of how to develop them. We encourage our customers to apply governance once these models are installed. A lot of people look to machine learning as being kind of a savior for all these investments they've made collecting data over these years and, one of the worst things we can do is just blindly apply these technologies."
Scott discusses:
- Why his background in theoretical physics was perfect for studying fraud and credit risk.
- The importance of being able to explain how a credit model works.
- How advanced machine learning models can be explained to regulators.
- What Scott thinks about the sudden embrace of artificial intelligence in the last couple of years.
- What he worries about with so many new companies coming into the AI fray.
- How Scott views alternative data and using new data sources.
- His thoughts on disparate impact and the use of alternative data.
For more information, visit the Lend Academy page on this podcast. This episode of the Lend Academy Podcast was sponsored by Wunder Capital.
You can follow Scott on Twitter @ScottZoldi.
