By Oliver Blower, CEO, VoxSmart
If Nvidia’s unprecedented growth is anything to go by, the future looks more than bright for AI. Heralded as the ‘most important stock’ on planet Earth by Goldman Sachs’ trading desk, the chipmaker last month revealed stunning financial results that exceeded even the most optimistic expectations.
While there has been no shortage of sensationalist language surrounding Nvidia’s rise, the fact that the 30-year-old company’s market cap recently exceeded the combined value of all the firms listed on Germany’s DAX index – many of which are over a century old – pretty much speaks for itself. Indeed, its market cap – which at the time of writing sits just shy of $2tn – has even led various market experts to question whether the AI boom has now entered bubble territory.
Aside from the remarkable speed of Nvidia’s growth, one of the reasons analysts have expressed concerns over a potential market bubble enveloping the largest AI firms is the fact that much of the mania remains rooted in blue-sky thinking, with relatively few practical use cases having been implemented across industries. This is particularly true of the capital markets arena. Despite AI’s potential to revolutionise the way in which financial institutions analyse and trade a whole range of asset classes, the technology has thus far had a relatively limited impact.
However, one aspect that could be transformed considerably by AI over the coming years is how financial institutions record key conversations between their employees. Transcription engines have until recently faced significant challenges in voice-to-text accuracy – particularly within complex industries in which jargon reigns, such as the financial markets. This made it unreliable for numerous crucial tasks within financial organisations that might benefit considerably from the tech, be it real-time market analysis, meeting regulatory compliance demands, or managing risk via accurately documenting meetings, discussions, and decision-making processes.
But recent breakthroughs in AI – particularly in the development of large language models and machine learning – are revolutionizing transcription capabilities. These advancements hold the potential to bring about significant progress and transformation in the capital markets space. After all, in today’s data-driven landscape, there is burgeoning demand for extensive business intelligence, and untapped audio data represents a potential goldmine of insights. This is becoming increasingly evident with the increasing uses cases among leading financial institutions.
For instance, the largest bank in Canada is using speech-to-text transcription to process a host of audio files and inject uncovered insights into its investment research platform, ultimately providing intraday insights into activity surrounding its repo desk. The second largest bank in the US is also using transcription to enhance trading activity. The firm is using deep learning models, trained with its own communications, to track missed trading opportunities across chat channels and increase overall profitability of its trading desks.
There are many, many more potential use cases for AI-powered transcription, with new opportunities emerging continuously. If AI innovation can be applied to other activities and asset classes across capital markets as successfully as it has with voice-to-text transcription, it is hard to deny the tremendous growth potential posed by the technology. But this is a big if, and one that will prove fundamental to whether we look back on Nvidia’s meteoric growth as one of the first signs of a major market bubble.
