Lending Startup Figure Joins the AI Rebellion: Will It Render Humans Obsolete?
Figure, a fintech firm, has just dropped a bombshell: they’re introducing AI-powered lending tools to revolutionize the home loan process. The company’s new CEO, Michael Tannenbaum, formerly of Brex, claims this move will "transform the way fintech businesses work." But at what cost?
With their latest AI tool, Figure will be using GPT-4 to comb through loan documents, eliminating the need for human intervention. Sounds like a utopian future, right? Wrong. This means the already beleaguered loan officer will be replaced by an algorithm, potentially leading to a catastrophic loss of jobs.
But the AI will also be able to catch errors in lending documents, which is…nice, I guess. Although, let’s be real, it’s not like the humans weren’t already making mistakes. Just saying.
Figure’s COO, Ruben Padron, claims they’ve built their systems to be model-agnostic, allowing them to pivot to the best AI vendor on the market. But what’s to stop them from simply outsourcing the entire lending process to the AI overlords?
Tannenbaum is peddling the same old song and dance about AI "taking costs out of complex processes." Meanwhile, I’m over here wondering about the long-term implications of this technology on our jobs, our data, and our very way of life.
The real question is: will this AI takeover lead to a lending process that’s faster, cheaper, and more efficient, or will it just lead to a dystopian future where humans are relegated to mere data-entry clerks?
Figure, we’re watching you.
