Waves in the Finoverse · 2026-05-28 · 1h 44m
Maxim Afanasyev has been coding large language models for over 20 years, long before the AI boom. He's an applied AI expert who's worked at McKinsey building AI transformations and now leads AI strategy at Alphabet. Maxim and Anthony discuss why 95% of AI applications don't deliver bottom-line impact, the global shortage of applied AI experts (only 200 mature professionals worldwide), and why banks are solving yesterday's problems instead of tomorrow's value propositions. They cover why LLMs became persuasion machines by learning human biases, how customers are now smarter than banks because of AI agents, and why agentic payments will force financial institutions to rethink their entire business model. Maxim also explains why cutting 20% of your workforce signals that your CEO failed at transformation.
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