Artificial intelligence will replace tasks rather than jobs, industry experts told delegates to Convergence 2023, the annual conference presented by ILS Bermuda.

Hasan Rizvi is the founder and chief executive of San Francisco-based Arvo Labs, a generative AI solutions and services company.

He agreed with a previous speaker in stating: “This [AI] is not going to replace jobs but you will be replaced by somebody who’s using AI, which means that it’s not about the jobs, but it’s about tasks.

“You need to start looking at all the different roles. Start looking at what the jobs are, what the tasks are, where it applies, where it doesn’t apply.”

Mr Rizvi was among four speakers addressing the topic AI Unleashed: Will ILS Rise to Join the Technological Revolution? .

He was joined by Adrian Jones, an investor; Magdalena Ramada, EMEA insurtech innovation leader, Insurance Consulting and Technology, Willis Towers Watson; and Duncan Card, a partner in the Bermuda office of law firm Appleby.

The moderator was Michael Hamer, partner and senior analyst at Albourne Partners.

Mr Rizvi said of AI: “It is transformative technology that I think is different from all the other hype cycles that you’ve seen coming out of the technology industry. We’ve gone through Web3, we’ve gone through crypto, and they didn’t quite live up to the promise.

“In this case, with generative AI, we have seen enough to be able to see that this is really going to transform how we operate – and I think I can safely say that over the next three to five years, every one of your employees will be using this in some form or another.”

With most new technology, Mr Rizvi said, society generally overestimates its near-term impact and grossly underestimates its long-term impact.

However, he said: “For the first time, we are able to apply machines to what were traditionally considered human domains, which is understanding language, understanding basically what you hear, what you see and what you read, which is fundamental to how we operate.”

Importantly, he said, foundation models were now available for organisations to use as a building block in their system.

Mr Rizvi said: “What’s happened over the last year, particularly, is that the bar has lowered quite a bit in terms of being able to apply that. Before, it used to take a group of data scientists six months, a year, to build these applications.

“Now, with these re-useable building blocks called foundation models, or large language models, that bar has been lowered. You can now do things in days what took months with a high-powered team.

“That’s really what’s democratised and is beginning to commoditise, this – and that’s why I think the implication is that this is going to have a pretty profound impact on how every business operates.”

Mr Rizvi acknowledged that there were some problems with AI.

“These systems are very good at making up stuff. Somebody said it’s the smartest and the dumbest person at the same time, in terms of how you interact with it.”

He said a major challenge for organisations was the change management aspect of implementing AI.

“People are used to doing things a certain way and this is going to really challenge them in terms of how they work.

“This is going to take some time and my message is that the earlier you start, the better, because it’s moving really fast.”

Mr Rizvi said that the real value of AI would come when organisations started taking their proprietary data and began marrying it with these systems.

Already, he said, there has been a shift from only focusing on productivity, to a concentration on growth.

He said: “This is not just about saving money. It’s also about growing your businesses in terms of how you reach customers.”