The History of the Ball: Explaining AI to Corporate Treasurers

In the sweeping landscape of human achievement, few inventions have captivated our collective imagination like the simple ball.

Since its inception some four thousand years ago, we have been chasing after it — in sports, play, and even in business, following our inner drive to run where opportunity rolls.

This analogy also reflects our historical approach to technology and progress: invariably reactive, rushing toward opportunities only after they’ve appeared. However, as we stand at the brink of a new era, the advent of Artificial Intelligence calls us to reconsider our stance. What if, instead of chasing the ball, we could anticipate where it will be?

This idea isn’t just revolutionary; it’s evolutionary, signaling an inflection point akin to the major industrial revolutions of the past. Just as the advent of electricity and the internet redefined the parameters of the known world creating new industry and the modern life, AI promises to transform not just how we conduct business but how we envision our future.

Over the past forty years, the internet has served as the catalyst for unparalleled efficiency, competition, and value creation, giving rise to the digital economy. This sector now grows at a rate three times faster than the traditional economy. With a remarkable 300% growth over the last 15 years, the digital economy, fueled by innovative business models, has transformed the global business landscape. It has also penetrated the previously elusive $25 trillion informal economy, promoting financial inclusion and driving significant socio-economic development.

Reflecting on the first Industrial Revolution, we see a time when economic growth was a straightforward reflection of population growth, heavily reliant on physical assets. The introduction of electricity marked the first major inflection point, pivoting the world towards automation and an economy that began valuing intellectual property over industrial might. As the echoes of the Internet revolution fade, we find ourselves at the threshold of another transformative era, marked indelibly by the launch of ChatGPT in 2022 — a modern Netscape moment. This milestone in AI development is not just a leap but a quantum jump in what we conceive as possible with technology.

Over seventy years ago, the grand architect of computer science, Alan Turing, laid the foundational stone for what we today celebrate as AI. Turing envisioned machines that could be programmed to mimic the human brain — capable of learning, processing, and reasoning. This vision is now being realized as we engineer artificial brains that learn much like ours do. AI models today follow a structured architecture: an input layer that absorbs vast amounts of data; a hidden layer where pattern recognition and machine learning take place; and an output layer that delivers predictions and recommendations. This tri-layered approach enables AI to convert information into a comprehensible pattern, akin to a child recognizing a mother’s face and associating it with the word “mama.”

Advances in deep learning and the development of pre-trained transformers allow today’s AI systems to process multimodal data, offering unprecedented intelligence capabilities. To put the magnitude of this advancement into perspective, consider ChatGPT-3, which was trained on 500 billion words — an undertaking that would take a human a millennium to read and process, yet it accomplished this in just 1.5 years. These advances have propelled AI from the fringes of tech fascination into a mainstream phenomenon, igniting a new dimension in business transformation.

So, how does this revolution impact a day in the life of a Treasurer, or any business leader for that matter? AI can streamline complex financial operations, enhance accuracy in forecasting, and provide strategic insights that were previously unattainable without extensive labor and long cycle times. While the scope of AI’s impact could fill seminars, during my keynote to Corporate Treasurers who attended the Citi Latin America Treasury and Finance Conference 2024, I focused on its role in augmenting existing teams in driving efficiency, transforming risk management, and opening new avenues for value creation in finance.

Looking ahead, as we once marveled at electricity’s ability to turn night into day, AI stands poised to redefine industries, infiltrate every sector from medicine to finance, and sculpt the future of human endeavor. It is not merely a technological upgrade but a fundamental shift in our industrial and societal paradigms — an inflection point that will undoubtedly shape the future of humanity.

As we continue to explore and harness this potent technology, the potential is limitless, and the implications are profound. And for those willing to lead the charge, the rewards could redefine what it means to be at the forefront of innovation.

This transformation invites us to not just chase after the ball but to predict where it will land, and perhaps, for the first time in history, to get there first.n In the sweeping landscape of human achievement, few inventions have captivated our collective imagination like the simple ball.

Since its inception some four thousand years ago, we have been chasing after it — in sports, play, and even in business, following our inner drive to run where opportunity rolls.sports, play, and even in business, following our inner drive to run where opportunity rolls.

This analogy also mirrors our historical approach to technology and progress: invariably reactive, sprinting towards opportunities only after they’ve manifested. However, as we stand at the precipice of a new era, the dawn of Artificial Intelligence beckons us to reconsider our stance. What if, instead of chasing the ball, we could anticipate where it will be?