Three technologies that could drive insurance’s ‘Blockbuster moment’

It’s not the first time the insurance industry has been forewarned of a “Blockbuster moment” that slows down the tracks, but this time it’s not competitive businesses like insurtechs that are holding back a chief executive. to change overnight, rather the rapid pace of technological change. .

Speaking at an event last week, George Beattie, CFC’s head of innovation, warned of emerging technologies and a ballooning protection gap that could put the entire sector on the back foot.

“We stand at the starting line of a new industrial revolution, one that is not defined by one technology, but by many,” Beattie told broker attendees at the 2023 CFC Summit in Chicago. “It’s a really interesting time to be alive, it’s going to be increasingly difficult for companies in our sector and the sectors we serve to avoid a Blockbuster moment – the moment where the products and services of a companies are no longer good enough to serve their target demographic and they are being replaced by more agile players.

Beattie highlighted three technologies that could be set to disrupt the insurance landscape:

• Generative artificial intelligence (AI)
• Innovations in gene editing, including Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats (CRISPR)
• Brain-machine interfaces

The CFC innovation head outlines two areas that must emerge in the face of rapid developments: products and infrastructure. “Innovation is about relevance,” said Beattie, as he addressed concerns that the industry is not doing enough to target this gap in the protection of tomorrow’s technology.

Generative AI – friend or foe?

‘The face of generative AI’, left produced by DALL-E-2, right produced by Stable Diffusion

While brokers are probably most familiar with ChatGPT — from its ability to write social media posts to insurance love poems — the technology is still evolving and a pocket of rivals has debuted as well as their equivalents, from Google’s Bard to Microsoft’s Bing AI chat function. Silicon Valley and beyond are engaged in what is widely described as an “AI gold rush”. Closer to home, insurance industry players, including Chubb, have come out to confirm that they are looking at how to use the technology. Many have been experimenting with machine learning for some time. CFC representatives shared at their event in Chicago that they began using large-scale language models to test broker emails.

Other widely shared use cases include AI art generators such as MidJourney, Stable Diffusion, and DALL-E. The technology is also being used to create videos, with mixed results. Coca-Cola’s partially AI-generated gallery advert was met with confidence; Other attempts, such as an ad for a fake pizza place, were hailed as a big step forward but also exposed where AI is still lacking.

Some people on Reddit created a pizza ad with AI and now you have to watch it too. (Credit: https://t.co/lJVET6WrkI) pic.twitter.com/1gsM4DIt8I

— Lance Carter (@LanceJCarter) April 25, 2023

Have you seen the latest commercial from Coca-Cola?

They use a combination of film, 3d, and stable diffusion (AI) 🔥 pic.twitter.com/qCEfGnpCJi

– Adam Fard (@AdamFard_) March 12, 2023

Meanwhile, AI generators face copyright cases and source material trained on models. Litigation has been seen from Getty Images against Stable Diffusion, as well as through class actions brought by artists and coders.

After ChatGPT burst onto the scene late last year, dragging generative AI into the public consciousness in a way never seen before (just two months from launch ChatGPT has 100 million strong user base, according to the oft-quoted UBS figures), the Future of Life Institute has published an explosive open letter calling for an immediate halt to the training of increasingly powerful AI systems than GPT-4. Since the letter was published on March 22, it has gained more than 27,500 signatories, including Tesla CEO and Twitter owner Elon Musk, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, and Stability AI CEO Emad Mostaque. For now, the work continues apace.

When Geoffrey Hinton, often called the ‘Godfather of AI’, came out of Google in May, he did so with a warning shared by the New York Times: “Right now, what we’re seeing are things like GPT -4 that eclipses a person in the amount of general knowledge it has and it covers them in a long way. In terms of reasoning, it is not that good, but it has already done simple reasoning.

“And because of the rate of development, we expect things to be much faster. So we have to worry about that.”

Hinton also warned of the potential for “bad actors” to exploit the technology; it’s a concern echoed by Beattie, who predicts that an AI insurance market is on the horizon.

“Like the beginning of the cyber market, I think these risks will come out of their own market,” Beattie said.

Gene editing and biohacking; CRISPR – hero or villain?

Left mouse image created by Dall-E-2, right image created by Stable Diffusion

The insurance industry has been battling the threat of cyber hackers and it took many years to start stabilizing the market. Given the ability of generative AI to pump out code at the command of a few keyboard strokes, this could prompt real concerns about bad actors. But another type of hacking has also sparked fears: biohacking, with CRISPR in particular, raised as a potential issue.

However, the use of gene editing has ethical concerns, including how the technology can be used in reproductive science. In 2018, Chinese scientist Dr He claimed to have used CRISPR to make two embryos HIV-resistant; he was later sentenced to three years in prison.

“It’s going to change the nature of health insurance, it’s going to change the nature of what it means to be human,” Beattie said. “Health risks will change because what it means to be human will no longer be defined within a linear number of genes.”

Brain-machine interfaces – a hand or a headache?

Left ‘The Thinker’ monkey image created with DALL-E-2, right TV monkey image created with Stable Diffusion

Not all biohackers look to CRISPR or genetic editing; others try to use wearable technology to bring efficiencies or improvements to their daily lives. A 2018 BBC report on a group of biohackers included Rich Lee, whose body modifications included magnets and near-field communication chips in his fingers that enabled him to open doors. in the car or linking websites. Some scientists and technologists believe it could go even further, with brain-machine interfaces that can be implanted or placed next to the brain to interpret and act on its signals.

“In the medium term, interfaces will enable people to interact with hardware and other people in ways we’ve never seen before – think telepathy, think human-to-human communication, just by of the power of thought,” Beattie said. “For a long time, we may see brain-to-brain hacking… Think about what it means to manipulate, free will; if state actors are able to integrate this technology within their soldiers to eliminate fear, so that soldiers act in a certain way: what does that mean for us?

One hope is that the technology can be used to help people with Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s disease, another is that it can improve productivity. In an example of how far the technology has come, attendees at the CFC event were shown a video of a monkey with an implant playing Pong using Neuralink.

Last week, Neuralink reported receiving FDA approval for its first human clinical study. This is not a development without controversy; Reuters reported in December that Neuralink is facing a federal investigation and employee backlash amid claims records show nearly 1,500 animals have been “killed” by the company since 2018.

We are excited to share that we have received FDA approval to launch our first-in-human clinical study!

This is the result of the incredible work of the Neuralink team in close collaboration with the FDA and represents an important first step that will one day allow our…

— Neuralink (@neuralink) May 25, 2023

Inquiry technology

These technologies are still developing, with their full potential likely yet to be seen amid billions of dollars of investment. Meanwhile, regulation plays out.

For Beattie, these potential on-the-horizon developments offer a warning shot to the insurance industry. Understanding these problems is a “big challenge”, he warns. “This is something we need to think about ASAP, we need to do it together; the protection gap is growing every day.”

Will these new technologies change insurance, or is it all just hype? Share your views in the comments.