Norges Bank Investment Management (NBIM) aims to use artificial intelligence (AI) to halve the manual processes involved in managing Norwegian sovereign wealth funds, but stressed that the new technology will not replace staff.
The administrator of the Oslo-based NOK 21.3 trillion (€1.78 trillion) Global Government Pension Fund (GPFG) has outlined how it plans to harness the power of AI across the organization in a new multi-year strategy document published last week.
NBIM states in Strategy 28: “We are committed to AI, knowing that success depends not just on technology but on teamwork. Technology augments our judgment, not replaces it.”
The new strategic plan is littered with references to AI and contained no references to the technology, in contrast to the previous plan, Strategy 25, published in late 2022, the same year ChatGPT was made publicly available.
However, subsequent annual status updates of Strategy 25 have increasingly addressed how AI is being leveraged within organizations.
In the section on technology, NBIM states in Strategy 28 that it will be at the forefront of the responsible application of AI in asset management.
“Our goal is to cut manual processes in half and allow our employees to focus on what matters most: generating profits,” the company said.
NBIM said it will move forward with AI solutions that will “establish a digital colleague” in charge of day-to-day tasks, perform complex analytical tasks, and provide insights to enhance decision-making.
“We will continue to automate the real asset investment process and leverage AI tools to reduce manual burden, speed up operations and reduce the risk of potential errors,” the central bank's arm said in a statement.
“Our goal is to cut manual processes in half and free our employees to focus on what matters most.”
Asked by IPE how the organization's strategy for AI has changed since its last strategic plan, an NBIM spokesperson said: “We have been strategically approaching AI and machine learning for a long time.”
“Strategy 28 strengthens this effort by moving from adoption to industrialization, making already working AI use cases more robust and accessible across the organization,” she said.
Asked if NBIM, which employs about 700 people, would lose jobs due to the use of AI, she said no.
“We expect the number of employees to remain largely stable as AI serves as an augmentation to, rather than a replacement for, employees,” a spokesperson told IPE.
“We will continue to leverage AI to enhance our investment processes and leverage our competitive advantage,” she said.
Explaining what responsible AI means, NBIM said it uses AI responsibly, with a “focus on transparency, human oversight, and clear governance.”
In its new strategy, the Oslo-based investment manager said data is one of its core assets and aims to make its data platform “more user- and AI-friendly.”
As an example, the company is working on developing a function that stores all relevant knowledge in a structured form as data and discovers patterns that cannot be detected by human analysis.
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