Vibe Banking

I feel I am more fortunate than an average person to find issues and bugs in IT systems. Basically whatever I touch, there are problems. Some fairly benign like the United Airlines app losing all my flights (the flights could be accessed through a desktop browser via booking codes stored in email confirmations). And some looking more serious.

On the lost flights the comment I got from one of my colleagues was "what do you expect - it is AI vibe coding". Fair enough. Release cycles spinning faster (that is what everybody wants: faster, faster, faster, right?). AI tools enabling this spin acceleration, but then the automated CI / test systems not coping with the changes. Code review also done by AI. And the result is the code spinning (pun intended) out of control of protein / carbon - based engineers.

Apps get released, more features faster, KPIs improved. Users find bugs, but have no one to report them to, other than AI-based automated support systems. The bugs get eventually fixed but new (more?) are introduced in the next cycle. This may improve in future as AIs get smarter but may also not, as AIs will drown in their own slop. Hard to say - the discussion resembles the one about our universe being open or closed. 

Things can get pretty embarrassing though. For example when a bank struggles with some basic arithmetic. I had an issue with monthly credit card statements from Revolut (which BTW is probably the most successfully growing fintech startup on Earth). The PDF statements they email at the end of each month differ from the statements shown a few days later in the Revolut app. The Revolut AI support agent advises to ignore the official statements they email as they indeed may change. And use the App-based statements a couple of days later as the numbers are more "settled" there. SO why email the PDFs at all then???

My savings bank has a different problem now - it is unable (both the phone app and the web interface) to display the transaction history. There is an AI bot though, and the bot can be asked to provide the history. And it shows things like:

  • Previous balance:  8347.93
  • Debit / withdrawal: 415.38
  • Balance after the transaction: 7701.75
So the 415.38 withdrawal changes the balance by 646.18. And that is in the official bank's app. Welcome to the Vibe Banking era.

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