Bank of America hires Citi exec Diane Daley for AI governance role - Business Insider

Bank of America just hired Diane Daley, a former Citigroup executive, to lead its enterprise data governance function, Business Insider has learned. Daley spent over two decades at Citigroup, eventually serving as a managing director and the head of finance and risk infrastructure. At Bank of America, Daley will focus on data and AI policies, standards, and oversight, according to a person familiar with the matter. Cathy Bessant, Bank of America's chief operations and technology officer, has long been outspoken about the need for responsible use of AI. Click here for more BI Prime stories.

Bank of America has hired a Citigroup executive to lead the bank's efforts around proper oversight and standards regarding the use of artificial intelligence, Business Insider has learned.Diane Daley, who has spent over two decades at Citigroup where she eventually served as a managing director and the head of finance and risk infrastructure, was tapped to lead Bank of America's enterprise data governance group.The newly-created role will be tasked with focusing on data and artificial-intelligence policies, standards and oversight, according to a person familiar with the matter. Daley, who served as an MD at Citi since 2003, also worked on the bank's global risk oversight and strategic regulatory initiatives.

“Responsible AI” has long been a point of focus for Bank of America, spearheaded by Cathy Bessant, the bank's chief operations and technology officer. The bank was the founding donor of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government's Council on the Responsible Use of Artificial Intelligence in 2018. The goal of the group is to bring together leaders in business, academics, and government to better understand the appropriate usage of AI. Daley's role speaks to exactly that. In February, Bessant spoke to Fast Company about the idea of governance around AI and the responsibility of that type of role at the bank.“In our organization that person will report in my shop, but we'll work closely with our chief risk officer to model governance,” Bessant told Fast Company. Everything we think of as AI that involves a model, and we'll go through our model risk management process and our AI process.

In speaking about the ideal candidate for the job, Bessant told Fast Company that the person would need to have courage. A key part of the job is willing to stand up to motivated executives and salespeople to ask whether the use of AI is actually effective and if it should be done at all, she added.Bessant also said in the interview having governance in place around AI usage would go a long way for regulators. “Because whether they're requiring it today or not, regulators will really start to pull for this,” Bessant said. “Another reason to be thinking about AI governance now is to make it contemporary with the way we use the tools instead of behind, but also to make sure that we're in advance of our regulators who expect us to be well-run and disciplined.”In August, Business Insider reported that some of Wall Street's largest banks, including Citi and Morgan Stanley, were in the early stages of forming a working group geared toward understanding the risks associated with using artificial intelligence.