Digital experiences

My experiences with digitalization are mixed. It has brought many positive aspects but also negative ones. I am 24 years old and I believe I was born in a good time for digitalization. I spent my youth living without a phone in my hand, but at some point, I got my hands on my first Nokia phone. Nowadays, I use an iPhone. It is concerning how children today grow up with phones in their hands. I believe this has a significant impact on social skills, for example. Digitalization has brought a lot of change to working life, and there it is positive. I work in the financial sector, where digitalization has greatly accelerated services. Previously, banks relied on paper and postal workers, while nowadays managing your banking affairs can be done from your own couch. You can even buy a home from your sofa these days. Of course, digitalization has also introduced negative aspects to the field; for instance, there are many fraudsters out there today who have managed to trick older people into giving away their online banking credentials and money. However, digitalization also allows for the construction of preventive systems to combat this. Additionally, money laundering and even bank robberies have become significantly more difficult thanks to digitalization, heheh.

Risks of open digital society

An open digital society carries many risks. It is good that regulations have been created for this purpose. Data protection risks are a significant factor in the financial sector, and we handle a substantial amount of personal information. Our systems contain individuals’ banking information, addresses, personal details, and everything possible. These are attractive data points for fraudsters. Fraudsters also approach our employees, and there have been cases where an employee has fallen victim to a scam. As a result, these fraudsters have obtained things like customers’ personal identification numbers. These are very unfortunate incidents. For this reason, we are continuously trained on data protection matters. The GDPR regulation gives customers the right to request, for instance, when changing banks, that we delete all possible information about them that we have.

ChatGPT

ChatGPT is alarmingly good. It is still a relatively recent invention, but it is quickly improving. ChatGPT is surprisingly good at answering the questions I pose, although there are certainly some things that could be corrected from time to time. But for the most part, the answers are wise. The finance industry has also started to leverage artificial intelligence, and for example, chatbots can be built for customer service with its help. This makes the work of customer service easier and can assist customers with simple and quick inquiries. I believe there is a lot of potential for good in artificial intelligence and ChatGPT. It can alleviate workload and accelerate service delivery. It is important to ensure its safety, of course.

Self evaluation

This course and assignment are interesting, and I will certainly learn a lot about digitalization through them. This is also a good way to think about the topic more deeply, considering both its positive and negative aspects. Digitalization has tremendous potential and has accelerated development, particularly in the financial sector. Services have become faster, but data privacy risks have increased. Fraud has become more common, but we also know how to respond to it today. Digitalization requires teaching and regulation. I believe that the developments in the workplace are mostly positive, but my biggest concern is the development of social skills. It is easy to provide children with games for entertainment, which reduces their use of imagination. In my youth, we used to kick stones on the way home, but nowadays people are focused on their phones. This also creates hazardous situations in traffic.

My comments for fellow students:

Hey Jarmo! Thank you for your post. Very interesting thoughts. I also work a lot from my home, but is is also nice to visit the office, to see colleagues. As you, I also rely on email and teams. It is interesting how digitalization has changed the way of working. I work myself in a bank. Before digitalization, there was very much paper and everything was much slower.

I totally agree with you on that digital society has both advantages and disadvantages. I think digitalization is mainly a good thing for companies and for working live, but digitalization prings challanges for personal lifes. I think it affects our social life very much. DIGI SOCIETY | Jarmo’s site (savonia.fi)

Hey Jari. Thank you for your post. It was very interesting. I also started with nokia’s phone and nowdays i mainly use iphones. I totally agree on that the evolution of digitalization has been very fast and the journey continues. OpenAI totally changes the game. I also struggle with the new technologies. I havent used OpenAi for example that much, and don’t even start with crypto currency.

You had a good point, when u said that digitalization makes many things easier. Sometimes it is a good thing, but not always. What I have used OpenAI, I have the same experiences as you. It is very easy to use and it is super fast. The evolution on that will continue. As a bank employee, I can agree with you, when you said that people doesn’t come physically to bank anymore. Digitalization makes it so easy to handle your banking business online and remotely.DIGI SOCIETY | Jari´s site (savonia.fi)