Brian Moynihan told an audience in Washington that Kyiv’s use of robotics is an example of the opportunities offered by rapid technological change, and people shouldn’t fear the growing role of AI in their daily lives.
“The capabilities that Ukraine developed, which were not known in the world until they utilized them, and how fast they built them, and how inexpensively they were able to build them” were “amazing,” he said. “Whatever we think today, it’ll be different in the future.”
Speaking on October 8 as he received a CEPA Impact award for his leadership of Bank of America’s work to support Ukraine’s economic recovery, Moynihan drew a parallel with people’s fears over the development of computing in the 1960s, and said as long as technology is properly managed, it can be a force for good.
“It’s going to affect us in ways we never thought of, but it has to be controlled, because none of you is going to be happy when I say, `Oh, you didn’t get your mortgage loan, the machine made me do it’ . . . you’re going to say `Hey, you’re the people, not this machine`,” he said. “The question is, how do we harness it? And how do those young kids harness it and understand it and drive it? And they’ll be much better at it than we are.”
Bank of America’s work in Ukraine after 2022’s full-scale invasion started with immediate aid through cash donations to World Kitchens and the Red Cross and Red Crescent, he said, and it now has advisers working to help Kyiv raise the money needed for reconstruction and development. The bank has also hosted meetings between President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and business leaders at its offices.
“We came to the conclusion that the best value we could add was our brains, and not my brains, but the brains of people who could help them think through the issues that were coming,” Moynihan said.
For two-and-a-half years, bank executive Aukse Jurkute has “worked full time for the Ukrainian government trying to solve their financing needs for them,” he said. “We put her in there, we pay her salary, and she does it.”
He said part of the bank’s job is to be a close observer of geopolitics and to examine ways to mitigate the consequences of uncertainty and upheaval so it can help support and educate its customers. He said he had shared the determination of Ukraine’s people to defend their country at forums around the world.
“I heard the representatives of Ukraine come in May of 2022 to Davos in a room like this, and stand up and say, `We will fight to the death, all we want is support,`” he told the audience in Washington. “Listening to the intensity in that dialog with those representatives, I was able, at other places in the world . . . to talk to people, not that I was going to affect the outcome, but so I could represent that this is how the people really felt.”
Thomas Penny is an editor and writer based in London. He has worked for local, national, and international news organizations, including the Mail on Sunday, the Daily Telegraph, Bloomberg News, and CEPA, and is now a freelance specializing in international relations, politics, and conflict.
Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions expressed on Europe’s Edge are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.
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