Artificial intelligence (AI) is a “fashionable” subject everyone talks about, but “very few of us actually know what it means”, Vladimir Dimitroff, Principal at Synpulse UK, told an audience of senior trust professionals at PAM Insight’s annual eprivateclient Trust Dinner held in London on 27 November 2018.

Despite this, AI is nothing new. Humans have been “trying to play god” throughout history, aiming to create something similar to them, “in their own image and likeness”. The approaches have varied across the ages, but the nearest to what we now view as AI emerged shortly before Worl...