A small tech startup whose engineers designed a computer that could defeat an expert in Japanese chess said that it now hopes that the computer program will determine if customers can make payments on a new mortgage.
In 1997, Deep Blue became the first computer to beat a top chess player; however, because the Japanese form of chess is more complicated than the conventional form, it took 16 additional years before a computer program was able to master the game. Heroz Inc.’s computer program defeated active shogi (Japanese chess) professional Shinichi Sato in 2013.
Heroz Inc., now is using this savvy to develop applications for the financial industry, after learning how to recreate human judgment. Heroz Chief Financial Officer Daisuke Asahara said that this same knowledge can be applied to determining whether customers are creditworthy.
The firm is working with Nomura Holdings Inc. to research whether the technology can be applied to financial-market forecasting, he said.
“There are times that computers can see as correct what humans perceive to be wrong,” Asahara, a former investment banker with Goldman Sachs Group Inc., said of the program, according to an article by Bloomberg.
In fact, Asahara said that the new computers are able to successfully crunch the significant amount of data on consumers’ deposit and withdrawal information, and from social networks, to help banks make their lending decisions.
Although Asahara refused to reveal the names of the banks the company is working with in analyzing consumer credit data, Japan’s Financial Services Agency is trying to get banks to become more active in the field, and said that it will recommend legal changes to streamline the use of advanced technology in finance.
Ho-fung Leung, a professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong specializing in artificial intelligence, said that advanced computers such as the Heroz model are able to apply a machine-learning process based on program and past data to apply its judgment quickly and effectively.
“The approach they’re taking is very different from the conventional tree-of-possibilities approach to computer chess,” Leung said.