Welcome to Breaking Banks, the number one global fintech radio show and podcast. I’m Brett King. And I’m Jason Henricks.

Every week since 2013, we explore the personalities, startups, innovators, and industry players driving disruption in financial services. From incumbents to unicorns and from cutting edge technology to the people using it to help create a more innovative, inclusive, and healthy financial future. I’m J.P. Nichols, and this is Breaking Banks.

Welcome back to Breaking Banks, and it’s great to have a regular guest that we’ve had on the show. In fact, he’s probably been on the show, I don’t know, probably 20 times. He’s co-hosted the show with us, and he’s got a brand new book out.

He’s also known as The Financer, and Chris Skinner. Welcome back to Breaking Banks. Great to join you, Brett, and you and I have talked so much about everything that’s going on in the future over the years, most of which I got right and you got almost right.

Glad to be on the show. We could debate this in some detail, but of course, I think directionally we’re both correct. I will admit that my prediction that checks would be phased out in the UK and the US was probably a little ambitious, but at the same time, you will recall in Bank 2.0, I predicted that mobile wallets would overtake plastic, and everyone thought that was crazy.

It’s all about timing. A lot of these things are very obvious, like biometric recognition for payments was predicted in the 1980s, but it took the smartphone to get there. Absolutely.

As we go forward, someone said to me the other day, what’s your prediction for the future of payments? I said, well, we won’t have a mobile or a wallet or a card or cash, it’s just going to be smiling and winking. Yeah, I mean, I think certainly when we start thinking about smart glasses and the role that they will play in payments in the future, there are some good proxies for sort of thinking about how, I call them super wallets, these AI-based bank accounts and wallets that do more than just manage your money, that act as an agent on your behalf to manage your finances. Have you brought the Apple Vision Pro? I haven’t as yet.

I am thinking about it, but right now… But if you think about that, that’s exactly what we’re saying, which is the augmented reality, virtual reality, we’re moving into a stage where the whole financial structure will be within a virtual world. Yes, it has to be cloud-based, right? So your bank account, if it is being operated by your artificial intelligence, your agent that is sending payments or, for example, paying bills on your behalf or doing things like that, it’s got to have access to the wallet. It’s not going to be on your phone necessarily, there’ll be an instance of it on your phone, but it’s going to have to be in the cloud because it’s going to have to integrate into payments rails and things like that.

I think that’s fairly obvious. And also, if you want to have secure payments in the future, you’re also going to have to be on the cloud because of things like quantum computers and AI methodologies in terms of doing smart contracts and so forth. All of that is going to require the API hooks and all of that.

But then there’s the question of beyond cloud, which is when you decentralize everything like Tim Berners-Lee’s vision of a decentralized internet future, that the cloud isn’t a centralized structure. It’s actually my personalized structure of my own identity. And it’s going to be really interesting where that concept leads to.

But we’re jumping ahead. Let’s explore that. But first of all, tell us about the book you’ve got coming out so we can sort of at least talk about that and frame the conversation around some of the research you’ve been doing recently in respect to this topic, actually.

Well, it builds on those themes. The book’s coming out in the summer and it’s called Intelligent Money, when money thinks for you so you don’t have to think about money. And the original concept was starting with exactly what we started off with just now, which is the friction between centralized versus decentralized structures, whether it be the Internet or government and or money and banks, you know, because originally where I was coming from was the friction between cryptocurrencies and central bank digital currencies and stable coins, because there’s like a whole discussion around that space.

And in the middle of that, chat GPT came out with open AI and then Gemini from Google and all the other artificial intelligence systems and platforms. And I suddenly realized that if you have embedded invisible, intelligent financial services and payments, what does that world look like? And that became the theme of the book. And my result of that is basically that it’s in the hands of the individual.

It’s nothing to do anymore with governments and the state, although the governments and state wanted to be in their hands. It’s to do with the individual controls, how they live their lives using technology. I think that’s an admirable position, but, you know, when it comes to things like identity and medical data, for example, you know, your your genome and so forth, there’s got to be an element of some centralized verification of your information.

I don’t think you can have fully self-sovereign. But the question is how that’s done, because you and I know a lot of other people who have people like Dave Birch and others who are in this space. So it’s about what central verification data is required and how is it delivered? And if you can give a persona that’s encrypted, that’s partial data, not your full identity for medical and government verifications, does that do the job? Good question.

Let’s talk about, let’s jump straight into the future and let’s sort of look 10 years in the future and tell me how you expect this to work. Like, what does the infrastructure look like? You know, where does this information sit? Who are the who are the counterparties that are involved in identity or in terms of this? You know, like, for example, today, when you go to a bank and you want to open a bank account, banks collect all of this identity information from you. And you go through the same process every single time, you know, for a new banking relationship, which is a hassle.

Now, there is account switching in the UK. But of course, if we take this sort of a more broader approach, you’re going to have a range of government services that you have to access digitally that you’re going to need a digital identity for things like health care and transportation, you know, digital passports, as an example, you know, so you are you are going to have some formality in the system for what is your identity, you know, your biometrics and so forth, even though you can sort of store that that locally, there seems to be but just take us talk us through how you think that would operate, you know, in an average day, if you have to go to, you know, a medical provider, or you’re making a payment in a store, what does that look like in terms of that interaction? I think embedded and visible finances, the way we’re going, and that’s almost there today, when we look at wallets or biometric recognition of payments or services, and from a medical or financial view, you get to the point where you don’t think about how that works, it just happens automatically. And then the question is, what are the parameters around that to alert you to what needs to happen? In fact, I said 20 years ago, that I was spit on my bank and that recognised my DNA.

But equally within that, they would alert my doctor to whether my DNA shows that I’ve got medical problems. You know, that’s quite extreme. It’s actually British humour, but we’re not far away from that situation.

And the other thing through personal experience, but with cryptocurrencies, decentralised currencies, and banking per se, is that there has to be some control structure. And so even when we look at 10, 20, 100 years, there has to be a control structure. And the question is, is that control structure the network of the people or the state? And this is the big friction which I was referring to between cryptocurrencies and central bank fiat currencies, which is, is it controlled by the state or the people? Well, I mean, I think that there’s an argument for retail currencies, which are controlled by the market or by people.

But when you’re doing cross-border trade, you know, and you need international standards… Yeah, but you just said cross-border. That’s a last century term, because the network doesn’t recognise borders. The network of the network that we have today of the internet and mobile is global.

There are no borders. No, I understand that, but from a trading perspective, there are. There are trade agreements and other things like that.

No, there aren’t. But there are no borders. OK, all right, interesting.

So you think, you know, like geopolitically, how does this work when you have something like China’s CBDC and they say, all right, if you want to trade with China, you’ve got to, you know, you want to buy or sell goods to China. You’ve got to use a Chinese mobile wallet with a, you know, E1 CBDC. How do you how do you avoid that type of market maker response? It depends what situation you’re in.

And the only borders that exist are physical borders. So it’s like that cash in cash out discussion around cryptocurrencies. If you cash out a cryptocurrency into a domestic account, then, yes, there are borders because you can question where did that money come from? What are the sources and how did you make that investment? And where’s the tax? If you do everything digitally, then there are no borders.

I had this argument on discussion again 20 years ago because a friend of mine was living his life in PayPal. These days, you can live your life in any global wallet and get away with whatever you want to get away with. If it’s purely digital, it’s that question of digital and physical, which is something you and I talk about a lot.

Some people talk about digital, which I really hate because it sounds like some disease. It’s like, you know, yeah, I’ve got digital diagnosis. I really hate that term.

But the physical versus digital is the, you know, the moment we’re at right now. And the result of that, when you say in 10 years, is that it probably will be more digitality. Yes, you know, it’s evolving and progressing nonstop.

And we’re not going to stop that. And the more that we become digital, the more that governments struggle and borders struggle. Yeah, I mean, it’s interesting.

I’ve been thinking about this lately with, you know, the debates that we have. You know, we’ve seen these debates in Europe recently and we see these debates in the U.S. with the migrant crisis, as it’s called in the U.S. with the across the southern border. But the reality is, if you go back just over 100 years, you know, so just prior to the First World War, there was no concept of border control.

There was no concept of passports. You know, this didn’t really emerge. Passports, as we think of them today, didn’t really emerge until after the Second World War.

So but there was some border controls that started to come in after the First World War with some papers, identity papers and so forth required. But for 99.9 percent of human history, we’ve been a migratory people and there’s been no such concept of border control. So in the current environment.

You know, we’re about to see a step change in terms of migration because of climate change, food scarcity and all of those sorts of things that makes border control impossible anyway, with the volume of potential migrants that could be moving around. So you really do need to start thinking about the fact that, you know, you need to be able to identify people. You need to be able to provide them with basic services.

And increasingly, they’re going to be digital. And you can’t guarantee that they have, you know, that they’ve always been a resident of your country, you know, particularly if there’s sort of mass migration from climate impact. It gets pretty interesting.

You know, how do you deal with a billion or two billion people that are displaced, you know, and they’re stateless effectively? You know, on the converse of that, you know, when you look at people who are migratory and I get quite. Angry and irritated about this area, because, you know, when we talk about people who are expatriates versus migrants and immigrants, you know, those terms, particularly the latter two, I think are quite defamatory. Isn’t everyone an expatriate? But when you say that’s for professionals, the people who are just coming in because of war.

I’m an immigrant. You know, I’ve been an immigrant half my life. You know, I’ve spent half my life moving around the world.

I’ve always thought you were sort of back in the system, my friend. But no, I mean, I mean, I do it. I try and do it.

Yeah, I obviously do it legally. What’s the difference between an expat and an immigrant? I don’t know. I think they’re, you know, it’s well, I think, you know, I just don’t like the terminology.

No, you’re right. I mean, I agree. You know, I agree.

The people come from Syria and and from Yemen and other places. You know, when you say that they’re a migrant or an immigrant, it sounds defamatory to me because it says that they’re lesser than thou. When you say expatriates, then you say migrant is a word that is thrown out like that today.

But the reality is, if we look at the economics of both the United States and the EU, this is an interesting conversation. I would not have guessed we would have got into migration today. But, you know, you have 50 countries in the world competing for digital nomads and, you know, skilled immigrants today, such as Dubai with the gold visa program.

You know, Saudi is reportedly introducing something similar. You have Portugal, Spain, Italy now offering tax free for people that move to Italy. You know, Thailand has a number of, you know, where I’m based, has a number of, you know, you know, next generation visa structures for people to relocate here.

So there are, you know, Indonesia, et cetera. You know, there’s there’s lots of… But when you mention those countries, what you’re saying. So there’s kind of a class divide.

So Dubai and Saudi and others right now are competing for the one percent high net worth individuals who have the ability to buy a million dollar plus houses, et cetera, and property and bring all their assets into the country and get a gold visa. In fact, it’s interesting because Dubai in particular has reduced the status levels over the years regularly to encourage those high net worth individuals to move or rather not move, invest in their economy. Whereas when we talk about migrants and immigrants, I’m talking much more about the people on the boats coming into the UK who are drowning or desperate.

But at the same time, quite often very intelligent, professional people, you know, there may be lawyers or doctors. And the thing that for me is the most phantasmagorical when we look at technology is that all of these people, whether they be someone falling off a boat or getting a gold status in Dubai, is they have a mobile phone. They have access to the network.

They can trade and transact and become digital nomads. And, you know, the fact is that an awful lot of people, including yourself. But there’s so many other stories of people who’ve moved and been displaced, who have become millionaires and billionaires because they have entrepreneurship that that’s been unleashed today by the network.

It’s just a case of can and do people understand that opportunity and can they leverage it if they have that access? Yeah, no, I mean, I think there is obviously different options for people. And when we talk about these programs, we know we have these economies trying to attract talent, but they’re also trying to attract consumption. You know, and the reality is, if you look historically at people movement, it actually doesn’t matter whether you’re a skilled immigrant or not.

You bring economic benefit to to each economy you move into. So, for example, the argument over, you know, so-called illegals in the United States, the the the economic evidence is very clear that that those immigrants have have created enormous economic value to the US economy. There’s evidence that, you know, without the, you know, these migrants that have come into the EU over the last 20 or 30 years, that the EU’s GDP would be something like, you know, 15 to 30 percent lower than it is today without the migration that’s been enabled there.

So we’re kind of moving around the houses, but we’ll come back to focus shortly. But you know that I live in Poland because I live with a lady who’s Polish, who I married a few years ago, and luckily I have two little boys and we’re just outside Warsaw. And living here is just like living anywhere in the rest of the world.

You live in Thailand a lot of the time. And the fact is, because we have digital technology means I can sit here, I can I should probably shouldn’t say it, but with a VPN, which most of us news use, you know, I can watch British news and British TV series and programs. So I could just as easily be in my home in England.

And so when we talk about digital nomads, what we’re really saying is that if you’re clever enough and you have the technology savvy to understand this stuff, I could live on the moon or Mars. I could live anywhere. It doesn’t really matter.

Well, you have latency problems on Mars, but Elon Musk will solve it. We have to bring in Elon Musk somewhere, don’t we? Quantum tunneling. Quantum entangled communication is probably a few years off.

But anyway, all right, so let’s get back to this is what happens when you get two futurists together, of course. But let’s let’s get back to. Is the cat dead or alive? Well, Schrodinger’s, yeah.

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Learn more at AlloyLabs.com. Alloy Labs, banking unbound. In this world of the future, with AI becoming involved in payments, how does that reshape economics? How does that reshape the the functional elements of the banking system as we know it? Because don’t banks just become algorithms in the future? Sets of algorithms? Well, they kind of are already. But having said that.

It’s banking is very different, so I’ve disagreed with you quite often about the role of branch, for example, and that’s I think where we’re moving is that you’re going to love my new book then. Well, the financial function is psychologically rather different to other functions. It’s not just a transactional service.

It’s particularly when it’s deposit based, a trust service. And that’s where the difference occurs. Yeah, but people trust Alipay and WeChat Pay and PayPal more than they trust banks these days.

No, because what you just mentioned are transactional services, whereas if I’m leaving $100,000 in an account and that disappears overnight and I want it back, who do I call? How do I get it back? Equally, if I want to, you know, think about a million dollar inheritance and where to put it, I want to knock on the door and actually look someone in the eye and say, show me the money so that I can trust you. You know, it really came home to me with a digital first bank in Italy. And you probably remember Roberto Ferrari, who led Cervanca.

And they were opening branches as a digital bank, a digital first bank. And I said, why the hell are you opening branches? And he said, because where we have a physical presence, we have three times more assets deposited than where we don’t. So but then I said, so what’s the point of having the physical assets? And he said, it’s my investment in marketing.

And that was purely the view, which is the branch exists for marketing. It’s not for service or advice. It’s for marketing and trust.

And that goes back to this point of trust, which goes back to if I have money and assets and I put them somewhere, let’s say into Google Pay or something and it goes wrong, who do I call? What’s Google’s phone number? Have you got have you got Google’s phone number? I got Larry Page’s number. No, I’m just kidding. I’m not Serge.

Yeah, no, no. I think, well, he’s gone like hasn’t he become like a recluse or something? I don’t know. Just a bit.

Yeah. But, you know, I mean, I get that, but I’m still going to debate that with you because all of the fastest growing financial institutions in the world today don’t have branches. Right.

Including players like WeBank and NewBank. And, you know, I know WeBank technically has one branch, you know, but but, you know, if you if you look at it, it doesn’t stop people investing their money in these organizations today. Now, granted, they’re not investing big AUM, but they are getting their salaries paid into these banks and so forth.

I think you can establish trust as a bank that executes on the utility of banking without needing branches. I think that that argument is essentially, you know, over because otherwise, you know, WeBank and NewBank would not have been successful as they are. You can argue that in the future, maybe they will need to consider branches for certain types of product activity like, you know, wealth management and so forth.

But even there, you know, I think there’s a I think there’s a generational shift to to that behavior as well. Well, that’s kind of here’s the question. Do you are you going to need to see, you know, in 20 years time, are you going to need to see a physical doctor to get a trusted diagnosis, a diagnosis you can trust? Are you going to need to be in a doctor’s surgery or speak to a physical doctor? Or will I be able to do that job as trustworthy as a human? You don’t even need to do that in 20 years.

You can not see a physical doctor today and get a pretty good answer and that I’ve got a number of different issues I’m facing and I’ve answered them using chat, GPT and other services. So I’m not saying you have to have a physical structure, except what I am saying is there’s an interesting debate around physical and digital. So I actually just wrote something about this because there’s an article in one of the UK media saying that the challenger banks in Britain are not challenging anymore.

And talking about Tesco being shut down, Tesco Bank, this is a grocery retail bank and Barclays taking over one of the other grocery banks, supermarket. Well, who just who just announced they’re buying or tying up with Virgin Money? That was a. Virgin Money is shutting down and being acquired. I can’t remember exactly who’s acquiring who, but, you know, the traditional banks are taking over the challenger banks.

But the challenger banks that were cited in the article are all from the 1990s based on a physical distribution model. So there was Tesco Bank, Sainsbury Bank, Virgin Money. Yeah.

Nationwide is a metro bank nationwide. Yeah. Yeah.

Which is a mutual taking over one of the 1990s challenger banks. They weren’t challenging banks because their model was based around. Right.

Physicality. And then we’ve got Monzo and Revolut and Starling and N26 and Chime and New Bank. And they’re all digital platform banks.

And the difference is because of cloud, going back to what you were saying earlier and platforms and ecosystems. And so it’s the physical banks that were challenging 30 years ago that are disappearing and it’s the digital banks that are exploding. But are they challenging the JP Morgan Chases or the Emirates banks of this world? Well, or Commercial Bank of Dubai, you know.

Well, you know, here’s my here’s my position on that. There is plenty of consolidation going on in the banking sector. We just talked about Kbanker, which was acquired and wrapped up.

But in the US, there’s a lot of consolidation going on. In the United States, we’ve essentially halved the number of banks, you know, that exist there in the space of, you know, the last 40 years or so. There’s consolidation happening in the UK markets.

And it is clear that the new challenges that you just mentioned are taking market share from the majors in the UK market. It’s not necessarily happening in the US yet, but I would argue that’s a regulatory posture thing rather than a market thing. Because look at, you know, Newbank as an example.

Newbank is the largest bank in Latin America by number of customers, right, by a long margin. Now, it’s not even close. You know, the second largest bank, which is Itao, has what? 55, 60 million customers.

Newbank has 90 million. Right. And the fact that they’ve acquired those in such a short time signals a very different approach to acquisition of customer assets, you know, acquisition of deposits.

But there’s two or three things about Newbank. One is appealing to people who didn’t have access to banking. And the second is a little bit like Monzo in the UK being a cool bank.

And the third is their interest rate structure is decimating the traditional players because. And they’re they’re better at managing credit risk and a bunch of other things. Their acquisition costs are much cheaper.

But is that due to technology or is that due to the leadership? Both. Right. I would say that, you know, they’ve got very good referral mechanics.

But, you know, I mean, Revolut, I think, does it harder. And they pay more for acquisition than Newbank does, as an example, because their referral rates aren’t as strong, probably, arguably. But at the same time, you can’t argue any more that you need branches for deposit taking.

In fact, the Reserve Bank of India just came out with a report recently a couple of years ago now, end of 2022, early 2023, that said if you invest a million dollars in a branch in India or you invest a million dollars in digital deposit acquisition, you’ll be 300 times more effective on digital than you would with a branch. And that’s what’s your vision of the single. What’s your vision of the Main Street in 10 years? Well, I mean, functionally, you just don’t need to go to a branch anymore.

And and I mean, you may. If I were if I were down the main street of New York or right, there’s still branches everywhere there. Yeah, there’s still empty branches all over New York.

No, in 10 years. Well, I think you will be anyone on Main Street. I think they’ll still be.

But I think they’ll be half what it is today. Is it just restaurants and coffee bars? Well, you know, this is a really good question. Look at the commercial, the whole commercial real estate question now with working from home is a trend and things like that.

You know, there’s a there’s a strong argument that. Well, there’ll be offices where people will be going. There’s going to be there’s going to be multi use locations that have co-working spaces that have dedicated offices.

Some brands will continue to bring people together in the workplace. But, you know, I think, you know, there’s there’s a lot of companies today. A lot of the new companies that are starting up are all virtual in terms of their operation, which says that you’re not going to have as much reliance on commercial property.

So you’re going to have neighborhoods become mixed use, which is, you know, you’re not going to have just commercial properties anymore. You’re going to have residential mix, co-working spaces, some dedicated commercial spaces. Here’s my vision of the main street in twenty thirty four, which is I walk down the road and there’ll be lots of restaurants and coffee bars and places to network.

There will still be multi use locations as offices, but much smaller. We won’t necessarily necessarily need so many so skyscrapers and the skyscrapers will have been turned into residential properties because the population is exploding. So we need places for people to live.

But there will still be a bank branch. And you know the reason why? And I know you’ll disagree with me. Yeah.

The reason why is because show me the money somewhere I can go and I can look someone in the eyes and say, I can trust you to look after my money. You’re such a boomer, Chris. OK, boomer.

OK, boomer. Yeah. Look, you know, I I mean, I don’t think I think that’s I think that’s generational thinking.

I think our kids aren’t just I’m not going to think like that. I don’t think they’ll. So do you think kids will be happy with never ever seeing any physical form of finance? Yeah, like just as happy as they are of not having to tune in.

I remember you presenting the story of their favorite show. No, but I remember you presenting the story about the check and saying, what the hell? You put a check in the post and it takes three days. My daughter.

Yes, I tell that story about my daughter. And I can accept that. But what I what I don’t accept and maybe is generational thinking is the idea that if I lose, you know, a million dollars on Mt.

Gox, which I did, that there’s no way to get it back digitally or physically. And I need to take someone to court. I need to sue someone.

And, you know, will the law and the courtroom become digital? Yeah, purely digital. I think those problems have to be solved. Right.

Those problems have to be solved. And AI is obviously the way to solve them. Right.

When you can talk with an AI agent that can act on your behalf, that is as good as or better than a human, then I think you can get the same resolution of those sorts of issues as you would today by seeing a human. What you’re arguing for is you’ve got you’ve got a person of last resort that you can go and meet with if things go wrong. OK, so we’ve got a few minutes left.

What job will be left for a human if AI solves everything? Well, I mean, I’ve talked about this in my books repeatedly. And the answer is, you’ll be able to do something far more meaningful as a human than just a job that puts food on the table and a roof over your head. You’ll be able to, you know, even just with the UBI trials that we’ve seen globally, the people involved in those trials start their own businesses at three times the higher rate of the three times the rate of the general population.

And they get involved in community based activities, 75 percent higher rate than the general population. So that’s what people do when they don’t have to work to put food on the table. They do jobs that they think are more meaningful, that can add more to society.

So you’re saying it’s a future where people don’t need to work? Well, AI’s intent has always been to remove humans from the workforce. That’s ultimately what the market’s position on artificial intelligence is. So you’re saying AI means that people don’t have to work and the state has to give them the income to survive.

Well, but that’s the only way you can keep the capitalist system going. If you, you know, the AI is going to create a better world. This is your techno-socialism, isn’t it? Well, this is the debate, right? This is the debate.

Are you a bit extreme, you know, a bit left of center? No, no, come on. Let’s get into the conversation, you know. And we’re going to extend this chat because we can’t just finish this on a cliffhanger like this.

But let me give you my argument. And I think you’ll come around eventually to this for various obvious reasons. But the market is pushing AI.

That much is clear. And we know that if AI is successful at creating the level of productivity and automation that we expect it will do, that it’s going to fundamentally change the relationship of supply and demand to two elements, capital and labor, right? Because the most productive corporation you can have is one that doesn’t need humans, right? You know, and the market’s going to love that, right? But if you want to keep the capitalist system going, you need people buying their Apple Vision Pros and their widgets and things like that. You need consumption.

So how do you keep consumption going in an environment where you can’t work and get paid? You have to pay something like a universal basic income. And that presumably is paid for by the immense wealth that’s created by artificial intelligence. But ultimately, what you realize when you go down that thought exercise is that if AI is successful, ultimately the capitalist system that we have can’t survive because wealth distribution won’t occur efficiently.

And you create two macro classes, the asset owners, the AI owners, and those on basic income that can’t be involved in that asset ownership. And that’s a problem that requires us redesigning or rethinking the role of money in society. So let me throw that back at you.

You’re talking about CBDCs and cryptocurrencies and things like that. But what is the fundamental change of how money works in our society in the future? Well, they’ve tried universal basic income experiments in Finland and Norway and a lot of the Nordic countries. And it doesn’t work because people just some function and some become dysfunctional.

I would say, you know, you can only provide. But I just gave you some evidence that that’s not the case. Right.

And that comes from those same studies, like the argument that people will become couch potatoes. We can argue the toss. The idea of universal basic income is interesting, but you only get that by taxing the capitalist system of AI dominators.

OK, so you so the only alternative is you have to ban artificial intelligence from taking human jobs. No, no, no, no, no. You just need to recognise there are different new jobs.

Who is creating artificial intelligence? Who is training it? Who is maintaining it? How do you make sure it works properly? How do you make sure it’s not abusing the human, for example? You have to have regulation of AI, which at the moment is very embryonic. It’s such early days and the end of days, not literally, but, you know, we’re going to see people, in my view, becoming much more relationship focused. And that changes the whole school system.

It changes the whole financial system. No, I do think I do think that we are going to emphasise the human experience because that’s the way we will differentiate from machines. And there is opportunities for humans to carve out new roles in that.

But I just think that anything that’s process driven. Anything that’s repetitive in nature. And initially, if it’s if it’s, you know, it can be automated, it will.

So factory workers, all of that sort of stuff. And that and the software is eating the world. Right.

And the argument from capitalists is that in every new, you know, every technological advancement we’ve had, like the industrial age, like computing, like the Internet, that we do destroy jobs. But on a net basis, we create new jobs. But we’ve never had a technology.

OK, Boomer, so I can also add to that that I’m a Luddite. No, I don’t think you’re a Luddite. The Luddites were right.

It’s been proven by other research. The Luddites got it right. Destroy some of these technological innovations because it’s not doing the right thing.

It’s centralising power and ownership. And that’s my biggest worry about it. OK, so this comes, we come back to the decentralisation thing.

Well, this is. Yes, this is. I mean, this is part of the debate.

Part of the debate is, you know. What are the value systems that this this creates for us in this this environment? And, you know, the argument for decentralisation, I think, you know, I think that’s clear. But and maybe it’s going to take.

Rapid change where AI is deployed and rapid technology based unemployment for people to say. All right, this function of the market is enough. And and not just because of AI’s disruption, but climate as well.

So what what are the values in the world that emerge out of that? And one of the strongest messages that appears to be coming is this message of anti-growth. Right. That from an economics perspective, that it is that focus on GDP growth and economic growth, which is it is at the heart of the problem, because that’s why we committed, you know, fossil fuels, you know, committed to the whole fossil fuel industry when we knew that burning hydrocarbons in the atmosphere would create health problems for pollution and things like that.

Let’s not get into that, because that’s my last 400 page book. OK. Digital for good.

Just to shame this bloke. Right. No, but that’s it.

I mean, you know, we need to start figuring out how do we create, you know, systems that are regenerative, you know, that are sustainable and that are more community based. Ultimately, I think this is the real question is what is the economy for if it’s not to provide for the basic needs of citizens? And this is something that in, you know, pure capitalist societies, I think we’ve lost touch with that. You know, it’s it’s there to create, you know, for the share price to go, for dividends to come.

And, you know, for market return and growth to come. But ultimately, if the economy isn’t providing a better quality of life for citizens, then I think that you’ve got a functional problem. As someone said to me the other day, and I know we’re wrapping up, but they said to me the other day, aren’t we here to create wealth and profit? Or are we here to look after community and the people? And I said, well, let’s just go back and check out Robin Hood.

Not Robin Hood, the fintech, but Robin Hood, the married man in disguise in the forest. But that’s, I mean, I think part of that generational shift we’re going to see is our kids saying, what did capitalism really do for us? It created climate change, it created all these problems. We need a better system.

So there is, you know, and it’s not necessarily that I’m not arguing necessarily for socialism or communism either. I think we need a new system, something that we call it something different. Right.

But I think we are coming to the natural conclusion. I think we need to get to an equilateral system. And by that, I mean everyone is equal, everyone’s included.

And it’s very much the vision that Gene Roddenberry had in Star Trek, who I’m a huge fan of, and his vision of the future is money doesn’t exist. It’s about reputation. Yeah, yeah, well, of course, you can watch Watch Black Mirror and see how the reputation economy could play out as well.

But so tell us, Chris, just to wrap up, tell people about your new book and when it comes out and where they can go for pre-order. Yeah, the new book’s coming out in the summer. It’s called Intelligent Money.

There’s a website called Money Thinks 4U and the 4U is the number four and the letter U dot com. And it’s all about everything we’ve just discussed, really, where everything is going in intelligence built in to the financial system, generally finance, AI and transactions. And will you have a relationship with your AI based wallet in the future? I already do.

It tells me that I have to go and buy my wife some jewellery. Very good. And you know where that’s coming from, because you do know my wife.

Yes, yes, of course. Well, it’s been a pleasure to have you back on on the show and certainly a very interesting conversation. It didn’t go any way the way I thought it would, actually.

I didn’t think we would be getting into this debate. So that’s a good, nice surprise. So and how do people follow up on what you’re doing generally? I know we’ve got the book URL, MoneyThinks4U.com, Intelligent Money.

But how do people follow you, Chris Skinner? Well, you know that I blog every day at thefinancer.com and equally, Chris underscore Skinner at X. Equally, you can find me pretty easily. Just pop my name into any Google machine. Hopefully I’ll come up first.

Awesome. Well, Chris Skinner, thanks for joining us on the show and stay well, brother. Thanks, Brandon.

That’s it for the show this week. Thanks for joining us. Great to have a detailed conversation with Chris.

We don’t get to do this very often. We should do it more often. But be sure to check out his new book, Intelligent Money and get involved in this debate.

Tell us what you think. Do you think UBI is going to work? Do you think not? How would we salvage something from this in highly autonomous societies where AI is pushed by the market? Tell us what you think on social media and share your thoughts with us. We’d love to have that.

But that’s it for this week. We’ll see you again next week with more Breaking Banks. Before we finish out this week’s show, I wanted to draw your attention to a new podcast that we’ve recently been involved in.

It’s called Beyond Banking by CBD Talks. It’s a collaborative effort from the Commercial Bank of Dubai and the team at Breaking Banks, for which I’m honoured to play the hosting role. There are currently 10 episodes available.

We welcome some phenomenal guests, including some unicorns, some founders of the fintech sector and some notable seniors from the banking industry from all around the world. We’ve delved into a variety of interesting topics relevant for all, from climate and sustainability, AI’s impact on business, generative AI generally, the role of regtech, the future of banking, the future of money, the impact of bank actions on the economy. And we’ve also had the opportunity to spotlight leaders shaping the industry.

From the UAE specifically, we spoke to Her Excellency Raja Al-Mazuri, who was the founder of the fintech initiative at DIFC. We also spoke to Frank Bisignano, the CEO of Fiserv and got into how Fiserv is adapting to these changes around digital. We’ve really covered it all.

Stay tuned for more of those episodes and please don’t hesitate to let us know if there’s something you would like us to focus on of the next season of Beyond Banking or indeed for Breaking Banks. It’s a really interesting series. I’ve enjoyed being involved in it.

To stay current or learn about what’s happening in Dubai and the UAE, and of course other regions around the world, download an episode today and listen to Beyond Banking by CBD Talks. It’s available on Amazon, on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, on Google Play or the Commercial Bank of Dubai website. Beyond Banking by CBD Talks.

That’s it for another week of the world’s number one fintech podcast and radio show, Breaking Banks. This episode was produced by our U.S.-based production team, including producer Lisbeth Severance, audio engineer Kevin Hirsham, with social media support from Carlo Navarra and Sylvie Johnson. If you like this episode, don’t forget to tweet it out or post it on your favorite social media or leave us a five-star review on iTunes, Google Podcasts, Facebook or wherever it is that you listen to our show.

Those actions help other people find our podcast and in return, that helps us build an audience that can be supported by sponsorship so we can continue to provide you with our award-winning content every week. Thanks again for joining us. We’ll see you on Breaking Banks next week.