Coworking: Martin Markiewicz bets AI can tackle financial crime

Coworking is a weekly segment where we spotlight Tech Brew readers who work with emerging technologies. Click here if you’d like a chance to be featured.

How would you describe your job to someone who doesn’t work in tech?

As CEO and co-founder of Silent Eight, my job is to build technology using AI and machine learning that helps banks comply with sanctions and anti-money-laundering statutes. But it’s certainly not a solo job: Silent Eight partners with some of the largest financial institutions in the world, which are able to deploy our technology in these high-risk use cases to catch financial criminals and help fight terrorism and human trafficking.

Essentially, I have to think about three aspects of the company: ensuring that we’re building the most effective technology, bringing it to the market for testing, and implementing it in these real-world use cases to ensure that it is successful for these purposes.

What’s the most compelling tech project you’ve worked on, and why?

The most interesting and monumental project we worked on was actually one of our first partnerships in 2018 with Standard Chartered, because it felt like a make-or-break moment for actually bringing our vision to life.

Our goals were very ambitious, resulting in a tremendous amount of pressure on the team. We had built the first version of the software product, a giant leap on this path to leveraging AI to be as fast and effective as possible in combating financial crime. The project was a success, and this year we continued to expand our partnerships, most recently with Emirates and HSBC.

What technologies are you most optimistic about? Least? And why?

When we launched Silent Eight in 2013, we bet from Day One that generative AI would be something very significant in our daily lives within the next two decades, but it was never going to happen on its own. There was a need for companies to research AI and apply the technology to everyday use cases, and we were instrumental in that push forward.

Today, we’re continuously optimistic about AI technology given the developments we’ve seen over the past decade across companies. Of course, we’ve also seen technologies pop up that make people excited in spikes, like blockchain and crypto, but we believe that in the long term, AI will be much more prominent, and we’re not distracted by anything else. We’re just pushing forward in this direction.

What’s the best tech-related media you read/watch/listen to?

I listen to This Week in Startups with Jason Calacanis on a daily basis.

What’s something about you we can’t guess from your LinkedIn profile?

I’m a huge fan of mixed martial arts (MMA) and follow the sport very closely. Looking at the fight card, I could tell you some of the players’ past fights and what they looked like.

What do you think about when you’re not thinking about tech?

Mostly MMA, but I love to consume all different types of podcasts when I’m out and about and walking my dog. Podcasts are just a great format to explore other industries beyond tech. There really is a podcast for everything.