Finance seminars

This panel examines how biodiversity science can inform decisions in business, finance and government. It assesses what is known about biodiversity status and trends in marine and terrestrial systems, which dimensions matter for decisions, and how to navigate financial-disclosure frameworks, science-based targets, national indicators and biodiversity credits. The discussion considers emerging methods including genomics, AI-based monitoring, functional traits, multiple knowledge systems and global indices. It asks how these approaches can support ecological recovery without reinforcing extractive measurement or governance, and how metrics can respect Indigenous rights, knowledge and decision-making. The panel also recognises that better measurement is only one component of changing business impacts on nature.

Recent advances in artificial intelligence have led to new forms of misinformation, including highly realistic “deepfake” synthetic media. We conduct three experiments to investigate how and why retail investors react to deepfake financial news. Results from the first two experiments provide evidence that investors use a “realism heuristic,” responding more intensely to audio and video deepfakes as their perceptual realism increases. In the third experiment, we introduce an intervention to prompt analytical thinking, varying whether participants make analytical judgments about credibility or intuitive investment judgments. When making intuitive investment judgments, investors are strongly influenced by both more and less realistic deepfakes. When making analytical credibility judgments, investors are able to discern the non-credibility of less realistic deepfakes but struggle with more realistic deepfakes. Thus, while analytical thinking can reduce the impact of less realistic deepfakes, highly realistic deepfakes are able to overcome this analytical scrutiny. Our results suggest that deepfake financial news poses novel threats to investors.