Istanbul, June 27, 2024 – The AIWARENESS event hosted by Garanti BBVA examined the current status and future potential of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies. The event, themed "Productive AI, Finance and Business World", brought together expert speakers in the field and shared their valuable opinions.

The event began with the opening speech of Garanti BBVA Engineering Services and Data Deputy General Manager İlker Kuruöz, who summarized Garanti BBVA's vision in the field of artificial intelligence. Drawing attention to the work of the Turkish Informatics Foundation (TBV) and the Turkish Artificial Intelligence Platform (AITR) in the world of technology and informatics, Kuruöz emphasized the value of the cooperation between Garanti BBVA and AITR.

Following the opening speech, İlker Kuruöz left the stage to AITR Co-Chair Prof. Dr. Altan Çakır and Garanti BBVA Technology Data and Advanced Analytics Deputy General Manager Ali Özgür Tüzemen. In their conversation, the duo provided information about the effects of generative artificial intelligence on the finance and business world, the breakthrough it will create, and the future.

Özgür Tüzemen emphasized that the transformative algorithms that came into effect in 2017 signaled the beginning of a new era and major changes all over the world, and said that the full impact of these was felt with the launch of Open AI GPT4. Tüzemen said, “After this, very different algorithms, very different major language models, and applications began to enter our lives rapidly. There is an incredibly rapid change and development in the axis of artificial intelligence. Many issues that we thought would not happen are becoming possible, things that we thought would be very difficult can be done, and we can suddenly see many projects that were thought to take a long time. As Garanti BBVA, we continue our work to benefit from these new technologies and algorithms in such a rapid change and transformation, both in our own ways of doing business and in the points where we touch our customers and improve the experience.”

Regarding the use of artificial intelligence algorithms and cloud technologies in the finance sector, Özgür Tüzemen said, “As the banking sector, due to regulations, the areas where we can use cloud technologies and the areas where we can process data are relatively more limited compared to other technology-focused sectors. We have no restrictions on processing public, publicly available data and using cloud-based artificial intelligence applications at these points. However, of course, we cannot use such platforms when it comes to customer data and financial information. On the other hand, as is applied due to regulations not only in Turkey but also in many countries around the world, we have to act somewhat conservatively in credit evaluation processes.” Tüzemen also provided information about the “Responsible Artificial Intelligence” strategy implemented by Garanti BBVA.

Stating that data is one of the most critical business titles of modern organizations in the rapidly developing digital world, Prof. Altan Çakır talked about the importance of a strong data governance that creates procedures and standards to ensure effective data management, data quality, integrity, traceability and security. Stating that as the volume and complexity of data increases, data ownership and responsibility are distributed across domains, Prof. Çakır showed the participants a short speech addressing academic recommendations that emphasize the importance of data network architecture that encourages a traceable, cross-process traceable approach.

Pointing to the importance of the data network as a methodology that will address the foundation of software models and the compatibility of real-world business domains, Prof. Çakır stated that domain-driven design (DDD) will facilitate better communication and collaboration between technical and non-technical stakeholders by encouraging a common understanding of the business language and processes of data architectures. In this context, generative artificial intelligence will play a very important role in automating and accelerating the creation of data products, enriching data catalogs, and generating insights that enable organizations to utilize the full potential of their data assets, and pointed out the importance of the coming together of these technologies, reshaping the way businesses manage, use, and extract value from data, and planning them for a data-driven future.

The question and answer session was held after the bilateral conversation. Participants enriched the event with qualified questions on the use of artificial intelligence in the business world and the approaches of companies.

The AIWARENESS event provided a broad perspective on how artificial intelligence can be used in the business world and the financial sector. The event underlined the transformative power of artificial intelligence technology and provided valuable information and a vision for the future to participants.