Banks should factor in the time spent by humans checking invented facts, writes Dr Gleb Tsipursky
Your report (Lloyds Bank to cut £2bn in costs as part of AI-powered strategy, 30 July) raises a question that financial targets alone cannot answer: who absorbs the work when automation fails?
Banks often count the minutes saved by the employee who uses an AI tool. They should also count the time colleagues spend checking invented facts, repairing customer messages, explaining rejected applications and escalating errors. A system can make one team look more productive while moving risk and effort elsewhere.
Lloyds should publish a simple scorecard for each consequential AI workflow: total time saved across the process, error and rework rates, customer complaints, successful human interventions and changes to entry-level roles. It should also name the executive with authority to pause a system when the evidence turns negative.
The bank’s relationship managers and customers need a clear route to challenge automated recommendations. Staff must be able to report weak outputs without being branded resistant to innovation.
AI may shorten mortgage decisions and improve advice. Those gains will deserve trust only when Lloyds measures the whole workflow and shows that £2bn in savings did not become hidden costs for workers and customers.
Dr Gleb Tsipursky
Behavioural scientist, Columbus, Ohio, US
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