Tech platforms must do more to stop scams – Daniele Tonella

Speaking on the growing threat of deep fakes, Daniele said last year an ING employee received instructions in a voicemail impersonating ING chief executive officer, Steven van Rijswijk.

Describing the incident as a “a good learning moment” Daniele argued that intermediaries in these scenarios should take more action, referring to the tech firms, such as video call platforms, where scams can originate.

“I imagine that these providers have more information about who is trying to reach out to whom. But today, I don’t have the impression that this is really very actively taken care of. All of these communication intermediaries probably need to evolve,” said Daniele.

The reality of AI

Commenting on the use of AI, Daniele said the reality of AI must be separated from ‘bombastic’ marketing claims.

While acknowledging that huge value and impact can be derived from AI, “it’s not as big as it seems when you hear the declarations,” said Daniele.

ING’s CTO said generative AI’s pitfalls were clear during a recent incident whereby an AI co-pilot designed to intercept bugs in ING’s code failed to notice the bug, likely because the deployment of the code was in multiple files that went into production at the same time.

“At that moment, the co-pilot did not see it. So, these types of experiences are where the marketing of AI hits reality. We don’t see yet a fleet of AI agents taking over end-to-end, unsupervised by humans. We just don’t see it, at least not in engineering,” said Daniele.

Cloud or fog

Daniele also commented on the geopolitical risks associated with public cloud services and satellite internet, saying the Trump administration had created some “uncertainty” about the stability of the supply of cloud services.

“It’s not that we can’t have this product or the service provider, but it’s more about how we protect our data, and how do we protect our agility and ability to move around,” he said.

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