Time for new AI to digitally transform the Metaverse to protect users says Guildhawk director

LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM, November 15, 2021 /EINPresswire.com/ — My Guildhawk Voice avatar was in Jersey last week speaking at the School of International Financial Services (SIFS) 2021 Economic Crime & Compliance Symposium, communicating in English and Spanish. Why was he there, and equally, why did I escape Zoomland and travel to be at this physical event?

Demonstrating the power of the latest multilingual Artificial Intelligence technologies was one reason. AI like this can digitally transform (DX) a company and keep people safe by making sure vital messages are understood by millions of people in over 50 languages rather than only being heard by those who speak English. Guildhawk’s multilingual avatars are just one of the features in the new, immersive world of physical and virtual interactions known as the Metaverse – and it’s going to change your life.

International corporate firms spend huge sums of money on policies and wizzy e-learning packages as part of their Reasonable Prevention Procedures regime. These are to protect them and their people from allegations of wrongdoing. However, many firms are at risk of falling foul of the law. Telling staff in English how they can stop the company inadvertently downloading ransomware, getting into bed with money launders or being prosecuted by HMRC for the criminal offence of failing to prevent tax evasion, is a risk in itself if the person being trained doesn’t speak English well.

Helen Hatton, the charismatic Director of SIFS knows a thing or two about keeping nations and businesses safe, and is widely recognized as the prime architect of the modern Jersey regulatory regime. She invited me to attend the symposium on behalf of the Fraud Advisory Panel charity and tell delegates in person about the types of fraud we have seen. My avatar gave a snapshot of the many activities our COVID-19 Fraud Watch and team at the charity has done during the pandemic. Friends say my avatar is far better to listen to than the real me.

Harsh as this seems, they have a point!

It is exciting to see new developments that will make Guildhawk Voice avatars even more immersive and able to interact with humans to keep people safe on construction sites, in the office, home, out at sea or up in space for that matter. These disruptive innovations are possible because of two things – brilliant people writing beautiful code, and AI that is trained and uses an ultra-pure multilingual data lake that we have created over the past 8 years.

When these new products arrive, people will find they can easily live and operate easily between the real and virtual worlds in the Metaverse. In this space you may choose to be yourself in a Microsoft Teams meeting or decide to be seen as a cartoon character, whatever is considered appropriate.

For the SIFS, it was appropriate to be there in person and that provided a great opportunity to finally meet various experts and listen to them in the physical world. I was very interested to meet HMRC Directors Simon York CBE and Samuel Dean who spoke about fraud investigations, the criminal offence of failing to prevent and powers it gives their investigators. They stressed this is not tax legislation – it’s to deal with conduct that facilitates deliberate, dishonest behaviour.

Mr. York, HMRC’s Chief Investigator has years of experience, receiving a CBE from Queen Elizabeth for his outstanding service. A skilled investigator, he balances this with humanity and understanding of the big picture, pointing out “The vast majority of professionals are a force for good”. Appalling then to hear that a small minority of people who hold positions of trust such as lawyers, accountants, bankers and company directors would ever dream of turning a blind eye to what might be fraud, tax evasion or money laundering. Worse still, deliberately instigating fraud against the public purse or their own company.

Shockingly, that is precisely what some professionals have done during the pandemic, at a time when the UK was in danger and taxpayers’ money was quickly given out to help save jobs. It was refreshing to hear that HMRC treats these ‘professional enablers’ of fraud as a priority for their investigations. Mr. York spoke of the ground breaking work HMRC undertakes to share data and collaborate with international.

Speaking about the Corporate Criminal Offence (CCO) of failing to prevent tax evasion, Mr. Dean alerted the audience to how an organisation can be found guilty regardless of whether it had knowledge of the associated person’s criminal conduct. A defence is available if the company had Reasonable Prevention Procedures (RPPs) in place to prevent its associated persons from facilitating tax evasion.

He explained that this is why dynamic risk assessments, training and monitoring procedures are so important and why tick-box staff training is not enough. There is also a risk to M&A deals as buyers are extra cautious to make sure nothing has happened in the past that could result in the buyer being prosecuted later. HMRC themselves see corporations without procedures in place as being high risk.

In my session I spoke of weaknesses in bank technologies that should have been fixed after the 2008 The counter-fraud community provided the government with solutions to fix these, including the creation by banks of a central data repository to share and check data to identify fraud. Sadly, these are yet to be introduced.

We are entering the 4th Industrial Revolution, a new era of what our tech entrepreneur CEO and UK Productivity ambassador, Jurga Zilinskiene MBE calls the Age of Wild Experimentation. This is where AI and ambitious new inventions will finally transform business and make people safer, happier and more productive and break through language barriers.

Like honest professionals, honest AI is a force for good. Talking movies didn’t kill movies, it created wonderful new opportunities. Making the online world a safer place after COVID-19 will be a lovely thing to emerge after the horrible darkness of the Pandemic.

David Clarke
Guildhawk
+44 20 7397 2772
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