customized services to users, thereby increasing economic welfare. in view of such potential benefits of new technologies to the economy, public authorities, including central banks, should be cautious not to deter the development of new information technologies by focusing solely on their negative side effects. we, policymakers, should always try to maximize the benefits of new technologies while minimizing their negative impacts, and i firmly believe we can do so by taking the appropriate actions. moreover, it is also essential for us to constructively consider desirable ways in which humans and ai complement, rather than confront, each other. for instance, human judgment is not completely free from existing paradigms, and thus is sometimes negligent to changes. in this regard, ai could adjust our bias by neutrally analyzing and finding new correlations among a myriad of data. meanwhile, humans could compensate for ai's weakness with their intuition, common sense, and imagination. iv. concluding remarks when i think about ai and human beings, i think of blaise pascal, a french philosopher and mathematician of the 17th century, as the forerunner who expressed advanced ideas, such as automated processing of large numbers of data and innovative algorithm, which took the lead in developing today's information technology. almost 400 years ago, pascal invented the first computing machine, an ancestor of today's computers. pascal also came up with an idea of an omnibus coach as the first public transportation in the world. this was based on an algorithmic idea to efficiently transport many people by establishing routes that crisscrossed and surrounded the city of paris. this should have been a much more epoch - making idea in those days than today's idea of car - sharing. at the same time, pascal emphasized the importance of independent thinking for human beings in his famous phrase : " man is a reed, the weakest of nature, but he is a thinking reed. " i believe this phrase has great implications for us in dealing with new technologies. if there is any risk the role of human beings are overwhelmingly replaced by ai, that would be when human beings stop thinking independently and autonomously. from a financial perspective, it is most important for us to think independently and positively on how to make an efficient and effective use of new technologies such as ai and big data analytics to further develop and improve financial markets and services. from this viewpoint, today's conference is a great opportunity, where numerous experts with various backgrounds gather to discuss the most advanced issues in finance, such as the

april 13, 2017 bank of japan ai and the frontiers of finance remarks at the conference on " ai and financial services / financial markets " haruhiko kuroda governor of the bank of japan ( english translation based on the japanese original ) introduction today's conference focuses on the overlapping areas of new information technology, such as artificial intelligence ( ai ) and financial services, which now constitute the frontier of finance. indeed, the fact that experts in various fields are gathering in this meeting room of a central bank symbolizes the current trend in finance. i. ai, big data analytics, and finance information processing as a basic function of financial services today, concepts such as ai and big data analytics are seen ubiquitously on the news and in magazines. these new information technologies have been utilized in the marketing of consumers'attribute analysis and applied in various areas such as system control, bio - medical sciences, economic analytics, and weather forecasting. the financial field is also attracting significant attention as promising areas in which ai and big data analytics are expected to explore new frontiers. indeed, various measures have been taken to utilize these technologies in a wide range of financial businesses, such as providing innovative services called " fintech, " high - tech oriented trading in various markets, risk management, and the operation of call centers for retail customers. it is not at all surprising that such new information technologies are expected to be utilized in various financial services, considering that the basic function of finance is information processing. financial infrastructure, including financial markets and payment systems, efficiently processes large amounts of information. for example, it is impossible for a single individual to assess the risks and returns of a vast number of projects spreading all over the world. in financial markets, the assessment of projects by many market participants are aggregated and shared in the form of " price, " where each participant is able to use the assessment made by many other participants. in this way, financial services, through efficiently processing large volumes of information, continuously allocate limited economic resources to promising projects, thereby supporting economic development. in this respect, ai and big data analytics is considered to have a great potential for making the information processing function - - which is the fundamental function of finance - - even more efficient and advanced, as they enable to generate new value added through processing large volumes of information. further data utilization another motivation for applying ai and big data analytics to various financial services is that finance activities generally accompany large data volumes, which have great potential to be utilized in