Futurum Group’s chair on AI being a net job creator and how a CFO will be judged on ‘the integrity of what you construct’
Good morning. AI was a hot topic in Texas on Wednesday night.
The Fortune CFO Collaborative dinner, held in collaboration with our partner Workday and sponsor Deloitte, took place at March restaurant in Houston, bringing together a group of prominent CFOs from the city and beyond.
Guest speaker Niccolo de Masi, chairman of the Futurum Group, said that generative AI, which he refers to as an extension of machine learning, will increase employment when it comes to finance functions.
“The predictions I will give this room: It’s going to be a net job creator for the function, it’s going to increase the power of this function,” he said. “It's going to increase the importance and criticality of everyone who's in the profession being kind of the systems integrator of all things, from data to supply chain to compliance."
“I've been on the correct side of history on this one for the past decade,” de Masi added. He recalled back in 2015 sitting in Stanford with a group of professors who were “really demoralized about how a million truckers could be out of work within two or three years.”
“I doubt it,” he remembers telling them. “AI will grow the economy, which means you'll have more customers and more services. And today, truckers get paid more and have better benefits than ever.”
A seasoned technology CEO leading multiple companies, de Masi’s roles have included CEO of dMY Technologies and former chairman and CEO of Glu Mobile. He said the same way that Excel has been embraced to boost productivity, so, too, will generative AI.
“It’s a vast productivity improver, but not a panacea,” de Masi said. “And my prediction is that by the end of this year, people will include this in part of their vending conversations.”
But CFOs, in particular, have a vital role at “the center of data information integrity,” he said. That includes everything from hiring practices to supply chains to forecasting. “The integrity of what you construct will become the mark, I think, of the best CFOs.”
A 'grand error' in cybersecurity
Regarding data, Fortune Senior Editor-at-Large Geoff Colvin brought up the issue of cybersecurity, referring to the recent incident where a finance worker at a multinational firm remitted a total of $200 million Hong Kong dollars, about $25.6 million, to fraudsters who used deepfake technology.
de Masi told the audience of CFOs that about eight years ago, when he was running Glu Mobile, a developer and publisher of mobile games, cybercriminals hacked the firm and held it hostage.
“We paid ransom,” he said. “It was with the higher-integrity cybercriminals that release the data after you pay them." Glu Mobile also suffered a phishing incident.
“A bad actor sent emails into my organization, and the head of payroll got one that appeared to be sent from me, and it said: ‘I'm just doing some research from the comp committee, please upload all of the W-2s for our U.S. employees to this Dropbox folder.’”
In general, companies may bring in cybersecurity consultants or do phishing training, but it dawned on de Masi that one of the “grand errors” when it comes to cybersecurity governance is not ensuring everyone in the finance organization has the proper training.
“What matters is the five to 10 people in your function having a hundred to a thousand times more training than everybody else,” de Masi said. “They’re the ones who could actually upload the W-2s.”
Have a good weekend.
Sheryl Estrada
sheryl.estrada@fortune.com
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
