Artificial intelligence could help humanity to overcome some of its very human frailties.

Zia Chishti, the chairman and chief executive of Afiniti holds that AI is especially good at “the identification of patterns in complex data.” “Do not believe the hype about artificial intelligence” October 18.

I agree but sometimes we also need help identifying what we humans for some reasons are unable or find hard to see in very simple data. 

That’s why I have often tweeted out asking for IBM’s Watson’s (or Goggle's DeepMind) help, in making bank regulators understand that their risk weighted capital requirements for banks have gotten it all wrong. Had they really looked at simple data on bank crises, they would have immediately seen these were never caused by assets perceived ex ante as risky, but always by assets that when booked by banks were perceived as especially safe.

Perhaps the safe-is-risky and the risky-is-safe might just be a too hard concept for humans to swallow and act on. If that’s the case, in AI’s assistance we trust.

PS. Another useful factor is that AI has the advantage of being able to admit mistakes easier, as it has (I pray) a smaller ego than humans

PS. Here is an aide memoire on the mistakes in the risk weighted capital requirements for banks.

@PerKurowski