AI doubts at Asia's largest fintech festival
At the region's biggest fintech festival in Singapore, quantum computing and tokenisation were hot topics. But the chatter about last year's star, AI, was notably subdued.
More than 65,000 delegates, including 3400 policy makers, 665 central banks, regulatory authorities and government organisations, attended the Singapore Fintech Festival (SFF) over the first week of November.
The spectacle spanned six halls and 123,000 square metres — four times the size of Sydney’s ICC — and covered all the opportunities and challenges in the fintech ecosystem.
Perhaps the most interesting narrative was that AI, even generative AI, seems to have peaked.
One of the opening day keynotes, "Building tomorrow: Explaining the AI tech stack", featured BlackRock, GitHub and Citi. BlackRock’s chief innovation officer Kfir Godrich was blunt — he did not dispute the productivity benefits available in coding, data interpretation, reporting and compliance but said that was yet to translate to revenue and new business.
