Norges Bank Investment Management (NBIM) is aiming to use artificial intelligence (AI) to halve the manual processes involved in its management of Norway’s sovereign wealth fund, but also stresses the new technologies will not replace its staff.
The Oslo-based manager of the NOK21.3trn (€1.78trn) Government Pension Fund Global (GPFG) has outlined in its new multi-year strategy document, published last week, how it plans to capitalise on the power of AI across its organisation.
NBIM said in Strategy 28: “We are all-in on AI, while recognising that success depends on teamwork, not technology alone. Technology will augment our judgment, not replace it.”
The new strategy plan is peppered with mention of AI, contrasting with the previous plan, Strategy 25 – published at the end of 2022 just as ChatGPT was publicly released – which contained no references to the technologies.
Subsequent annual status updates to Strategy 25 increasingly referred to how AI was being put to work in the organisation, however.
In the section on technology, NBIM said in Strategy 28 that it would be at the forefront of applying responsible AI in asset management.
“Our target is to cut manual processes in half so our people can focus on what matters most – generating returns,” it said.
NBIM said it would “establish digital colleagues” for routine tasks and advance towards AI solutions that executed complex, analytical tasks and provided insights to enhance decision-making.
“We will continue automation of our real asset investment processes and use AI tools to reduce manual burdens, speed up operations, and reduce the risk of potential errors,” the central bank department said in the document.
“Our target is to cut manual processes in half so our people can focus on what matters most”
Asked by IPE how the organisation’s strategy regarding AI had changed since the last strategy plan, a spokeswoman for NBIM said: “We have worked strategically with AI and machine learning for a long time.”
“In Strategy 28, we are strengthening this work by moving from adoption to industrialisation, making AI use cases that already work more robust and accessible across the organisation,” she noted.
In response to the question of whether the use of AI would lead to fewer jobs at NBIM, which employs around 700 people, she said that it would not.
“We expect our headcount to remain broadly stable, as AI acts as a force multiplier for our employees rather than a replacement,” the spokeswoman told IPE.
“We will continue to use AI to strengthen our investment processes and leverage our competitive advantages,” she said.
Explaining what was meant by responsible AI, she said NBIM used AI responsibly, “focusing on transparency, human oversight and clear governance”.
In the new strategy, the Oslo-based investment manager says data is one of its core assets, and that it aims to make its data platform “more user and AI friendly”.
As an example of this, it says it will work to store all relevant knowledge as data in a structured manner and develop capabilities to find patterns that human analysis cannot detect.
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