Coffee Break Session: Augmented Intelligence vs. Artificial Intelligence in Treasury

Jonathan Jeffery  00:02

Welcome to the Treasury Update Podcast Coffee Break Sessions presented by Strategic Treasurer, the show where we cover foundational topics and core treasury issues in about the same amount of time it takes you to drink your cup of coffee. I’ll be your host, Jonathan, media production specialist here at Strategic Treasurer. So sit back, relax and enjoy the show. Today we are going to talk about the difference between augmented intelligence and artificial intelligence. Before I get into that, you might be wondering what happened to our other host Jason Campbell. Where is he? But, he’s had way too much coffee, so he handed it over to me.

Craig Jeffery  00:43

Buh dum bump, boom.

Jonathan Jeffery  00:45

I have with me today Craig Jeffery, managing partner here at Strategic Treasurer. Welcome to the show, Craig.

Craig Jeffery  00:51

It’s good to be here.

Jonathan Jeffery  00:52

Alright, so Craig, let’s start off with, can you tell us what is augmented intelligence?

Craig Jeffery  00:58

That’s a good question. I thought it was gonna be an easy questions considering we’re recording on a Friday. But you know, augmented intelligence is a term a phrase that’s used to describe how humans and artificial intelligence can be used to support typically decision making. So how can you support your own intelligence with augmenting or supporting with additional intelligence, usually artificial intelligence or additional data that helps you now this can be done in different ways it could be used for you’re in a shopping cart, they, they make suggestions about other purchases you might need to use they do that all the time? Well, that’s calling information. And it’s providing additional intelligence using AI to bring that forward to help people make decisions, instead of forgetting something is brought forward. could include other things in the finance area, like related to investments.

Jonathan Jeffery  01:53

Okay. So is that different than artificial intelligence? What is artificial intelligence?

Craig Jeffery  01:59

Artificial Intelligence is using machines to think like to go through data and to provide thought that that mirrors or mimics human intelligence, the ability to synthesize and analyze data to as closely mirror it is as can be done. So augmented intelligence is serving up information, patterns, commonalities to support a decision process. And artificial intelligence, is detecting patterns trying to provide different types of thought there’s different levels of artificial intelligence from here’s patterns, here’s something that’s anomalous, or out of sorts, or here’s something that humans need to look at, because there’s a significant variance as well as expand that to include things like generative AI, artificial intelligence that makes deeper connections between things, analyzes things, synthesizes different elements and data points together and comes up with new new insights, whether it’s in written form, like most generative AI that people are using today, or some of the AI that I know you like to use to create pictures from all kinds of, you know, ideas and words that are put down.

Jonathan Jeffery  03:12

Oh, yeah, AI is coming out everywhere, every work environment is going to be using it in some way or some shape. So how is treasury going to be using these?

Craig Jeffery  03:21

If we think about artificial intelligence, or we think about augmented intelligence, we’ve all long wanted dashboards and Treasury dashboards and current information has been quite popular. You think back to the time when some of these workstations display stations would show markets that are trading whether it’s Bloomberg, Reuters, these different terminals would share up to date current information, FX rates, Bond offerings, changes in risk ratings. This gave very current information which current intelligence current information allows people to make better decisions, more informed decisions. So that continued process of more information about what’s happening, but also information that might be more predictive. When you think about artificial intelligence, it was detecting patterns changes in rates on the investment side, or detecting areas that could identify potential fraud, or potential risk or increasing risk those all factor into what Treasury cares about protecting the organization’s assets, has a lot to do with risk and control, preventing fraud and optimizing our earnings. And so that’s a that’s certainly an area that treasury will do more of, and this is a just a continuation of what’s been occurring for multiple decades. The tech makes it easier, it makes the process faster.

Jonathan Jeffery  04:49

Okay, so to sum it up, if you were to say in in one simple sentence, or maybe two.

Craig Jeffery  04:55

You’re asking the wrong person for one sentence or two. That’s somebody else.

Jonathan Jeffery  05:00

Okay, in the least amount of words you can say, what what would be the main difference between the two augmented intelligence and artificial intelligence? What are the big differentiator?

Craig Jeffery  05:11

Artificial Intelligence is the machine thinking and providing the data providing that type of thought that could be acted upon.  Augmented intelligence is much more integrated and part of the collaboration process, part of the decision making process. It’s, it’s there.

Jonathan Jeffery  05:29

Okay, that’s interesting. Anything else want to share on this?

Craig Jeffery  05:32

Well, the only thing is not really augmented intelligence and artificial intelligence by itself. It’s spending some time you know, whether you’re in treasury and other financing and finance, or you just love this podcast, working with artificial intelligence, things like ChatGPT and other tools, I think we can be so distracted, not just working with those type of tools. But we can spend too much time not have a disciplined mind with things like what I was called the video shorts, all these things that are designed, we’re using artificial intelligence in so many ways to distract people and get them just watching nonsense. And so we have to take control of our lives in our minds, we have to have discipline in the mind and our time. And that’s, that’s really crucial. The other is, we have to think about how we can leverage this as a tool not to waste time, but as a tool to optimize what we do in Treasury. And I’ll give you just one example. What’s an area or topic that people in Treasury spend the most time on? would spend more time on? Have management talking about? This is forecasting, people would would do more and would spend more in there. And so how do we how do we use that? So we have to spend more time thinking about that, and doing it well. But we have to have a call it augmented intelligence or artificial intelligence as well. To help us do better there. Those are a couple areas, I think, are vital for treasury professionals to discipline their minds and time to use tools properly, and not let tools run us into the ditch.

Jonathan Jeffery  07:07

So using AI to free up your time to do things that are more important, not just other things, and then using AI to create things on the creation side that are better, not just more things, not just use it to create more.

Craig Jeffery  07:22

Yeah, that was said far more succinctly than I was. But yeah, that’s, that’s good. That’s the two or three sentences.

Jonathan Jeffery  07:29

Alright, well, thank you so much for joining me for this episode of the Coffee Break Sessions. To our listeners, remember to tune back in every first Thursday and every third Thursday of the month and we’ll have a new episode for you. Thank you and have a good rest of your day.

Craig Jeffery  07:42

Cheers.

Announcer  07:48

This podcast is provided for informational purposes only, and statements made by Strategic Treasurer LLC on this podcast are not intended as legal, business, consulting, or tax advice. For more information, visit and bookmark strategictreasurer.com.