CBA sets up ‘Gen AI Network’ community – Emerging Tech

CBA is building an internal community around its adoption of generative AI, overseen by a former NAB leader that ran that bank’s cloud skills and training program.

The ‘GenAI Network’, as CBA’s community is called, is run out of the chief analytics and data office, and “will enable the bank to uplift its [GenAI] knowledge and skills across the group”, GenAI domain lead Martin Granell told Digital Nation.

It will do this by “fostering a community of employees who work together to innovate, solve problems and share learnings, ultimately delivering more personalised and enhanced experiences for our customers and our employees,” Granell said.

“Our people, within the GenAI Network and more broadly across the bank, will continue to work alongside partners like Anthropic, AWS and Microsoft to ensure we are continually expanding our knowledge and capabilities, aligning with our strategy to maintain a world-class data and AI capability.”

The GenAI Network lead is Matt Cobby, who once ran NAB’s cloud guild effort in that bank’s early days of cloud adoption, as a way to upskill staff in AWS.

The cloud guild trained over 2000 employees in cloud back in 2018.

By 2021, Cobby said the NAB had trained more than 7000 staff to help them build cloud skills and over 1300 individuals had reached AWS certification.

Cobby wrote on LinkedIn that his new role at CBA has a similar intent and focus: “To foster collaboration and innovation around cutting edge GenAI solutions and scaling adoption of our platforms.”

“We are forging new ways of working and learning every single day with every new deployment,” Cobby wrote.

In his post, Cobby said the team comprises of “highly skilled, driven set of people with many diverse backgrounds and experiences that creates something special”.