Pension plan sponsors’ integration of artificial intelligence will be a disruptive event that will require a delicate approach with sufficient testing, according to Alpesh Sethia (pictured right), chief technology officer at the Healthcare of Ontario Pension Plan.
Speaking during a panel session at the Canadian Investment Review’s 2024 Investment Innovation Conference, he described the testing lab set up by the HOOPP to measure how the technology stacks up to the investment organization’s more complicated business activities.
“We want to run experiments within an AI lab to see what there may be potential for and understand the risks as much as we can. . . . The lab is intended to actually focus on specific areas of the investment lifecycle and to run [experiments] to learn from and to see if there’s actually viability to where we believe AI can benefit us.”
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When it comes to the dynamic between investment decision-making and the use of AI, Sethia said he’s not sure it’s predictable or how to manage potential risks. The HOOPP isn’t formally introducing AI to the investment side of its business, he noted, but is deploying the AI lab to focus on advanced use cases by running experiments in a segregated environment.
In addition, the HOOPP introduced the use of Microsoft Corp.’s AI workplace tool Copilot to the entire organization. Sethia also approved the use of AI tools for specific business functions on the technology side of the business, including developers using AI to write code or test cases.
“That strategy is quite simple in the sense that we’re going to work on stuff that we can manage within AI and govern AI within a normal course of activities.”
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The Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology pension plan also uses Copilot within the organization, according to Michael Dawson (pictured left), the CAAT’s chief financial officer, noting its recognized a 20 per cent boost in productivity from the average user of the tool.
The organization also has an AI steering committee that selects which projects move forward. Dawson said he’s interested in deploying AI to support customer service tasks but, so far, it’s still in the testing phase.
“We have individuals that are very experienced in customer service. They’re looking at the results, trying to find where the gaps are in the model. It gets better every time we focus on it. But we’re still not quite there yet.”
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Also speaking on the panel, Chelsea Kittleson (pictured middle), executive director of the British Columbia Municipal Pension Plan, said her organization has started using AI to answer direct correspondence from plan members.
“We do try to template it a little bit for consistency and for efficiency. But sometimes you want to get the tone right or there’s some nuances to the correspondence, and so, using some of these tools can help us find these right words or just get a more finished product quicker.”
All three panellists have organizational guidelines for the responsible use of AI. Moving forward, Kittleson wants to review the potential to integrate AI into their investment policy.
Read more coverage of the 2024 Investment Innovation Conference.