Octavio Laos to speak at PrivSec & GRC Connect Chicago

Taking place April 16 and 17 at Crowne Plaza Chicago West Loop, PrivSec & GRC Connect Chicago provides a platform for organizations to address the cumulative nature of risk.

PrivSec & GRC Connect Chicago’s comprehensive agenda is led by subject matter experts, business chiefs and industry leaders, giving attendees a deep-dive into challenges and solutions on the rapidly evolving GRC landscape.

Event speaker, Octavio Laos is Director of AI at Armanino LLP. The lab focuses on practical AI applications, such as improving customer interactions with chatbots, enhancing efficiency through process automation, and providing actionable foresight with predictive analytics.

Octavio will be attending PrivSec & GRC Connect Chicago to discuss the AI issues that need to take priority in the Boardroom in 2024.

Learn more about Octavio and his discussion topic in the exclusive Q&A below:

Could you outline your career so far?

I’m an attorney, originally from California, who started working at a small software company in an IP management role.

From there I joined my current firm, Armanino LLP – a tax, audit and consulting firm. I managed product development as we had several software tools that we licensed to clients for use in financial software applications. We started the AI Lab five years ago, to specifically focus on clients’ needs to experiment and better understand AI.

Today, as the Director of AI at the firm, I head up both external educational efforts – aimed at empowering business leaders to leverage AI as well as internal projects and innovation – overseeing development of tools that we within our own practice.

Armanino aims to be the most entrepreneurial and innovative firm of our peers, and we continue to push that envelope – with anything from custom agent chatbots to anomaly and fraud detection of financial datasets.

What issues need to lead Boardroom discussions on AI in 2024?

The no.1 issue concerns whether or not Boardrooms are considering future impacts and not limiting conversations regarding how AI is being used today. It’s easy to focus on generative AI, and specifically the use of chatbots, as the primary AI use-case, but truly it’s just a building block to larger systems.

Further, most AI projects aren’t “AI” projects per se, but examples where AI is already being infused into existing software and methodologies and not stand alone. Given the inevitability of encountering these tools, risk tolerance and policy need to be explicit.

It’s not enough to say you are ready to embrace AI, but there must be a clear guide in place for how you want to go forward.

Are there structural and cultural adjustments that organisations should be making in order to implement AI strategies in ways that drive value while mitigating risk?

Two key principles come to mind when thinking about how to spur innovation and roll out AI strategy:

• Conway’s Law, which states that the organization of a team’s communication structure will mirror the designs of that team. This means that cross-functional communication is critical to creating great use-cases. The way we design our groups will dictate what comes out – and it’s important to think about the different channels you have when trying to create something new. Exposure is critical and allows for greater flexibility and growth.
• Modern Agile – I’m a big believer in applying Modern Agile to nearly any business. The four main components are: Make people awesome; Make safety a prerequisite; Experiment and Learn Rapidly, and Deliver value continuously.

While it’s easy to think we need to build an AI committee or group for the sake of AI, the goal should always come back to those four pillars. Focus on what is truly important (making your employees and customers feel awesome), and develop a path to create that (safety, experiment) while focusing on delivering rather than on a final output (deliver value continuously).