Commonwealth Bank of Australia has used an AI ethics framework being developed by the country's government to help design a service that tells customers when their bill payments are due.
CBA is one of six organisations that has been working with the government since 2019 on an AI ethics pilot that applies eight principles to the use of the technology.
The bank used the framework for its recently launched Bill Sense feature, which uses AI to help CBA app users see how much money they need to cover their bills each month. Machine learning is used to understand the patterns of customers' regular payments and then predict when future bill will arrive and how much they will be.
Setting out the ethical considerations, CBA says that no information is shared with or obtained from billers, ensuring privacy protection and security.
In addition, Bill Sense is accessible to all users and operates the same way regardless of individual personal or financial characteristics. The app uses information the same way for all users, which reduces the likelihood of bias or unfair discrimination.
The bank also has an ethical AI service to investigate its models for any disparities, such as behaving undesirably for different groups of customers. CBA modellers and AI practitioners use it to extract explanations of outcomes so they can evaluate disparities in decisions.
The service also follows other AI ethics principles: transparency and explainability, contestability, and accountability, says the bank.
Dan Jermyn, chief decision scientist, CBA, says: "We see the government’s AI ethics framework as being essential when developing complex AI systems to help ensure AI is being used responsibly to improve financial wellbeing of customers and communities."