Episode Summary

AI and ChatGPT are red hot topics, with questions surrounding their effect on many industries, including finance. Mary Beth and Neela explore the current state of AI, how it is revolutionizing the business world and bringing automation and efficiency to financial planning. They weigh the pros and cons of these tools and touch upon the visible impact of AI – particularly in the education industry, where ChatGPT is already a valuable resource for students and educators alike. They highlight the significance of AI in content creation and the challenges it poses in the changing landscape of essay creation and research. Finally, they shed light on how AI’s automation of human processes can inadvertently perpetuate the same biases and mistakes it was meant to address, highlighting the need for conscious efforts to involve more diverse perspectives in the creation and use of AI. Tune in today!

What You’ll Learn in this Episode:

• How AI and ChatGPT are impacting businesses, the education industry, and content creation across multiple industries
• The impact of AI on a lack of diversity in the global job market
• The industries AI and ChatGPT are affecting the most
• What AI and ChatGPT can provide in your financial education and what it lacks
• Some pros and cons using ChatGPT
• What to be aware of when using ChatGPT for content creation
• The negative side of using ChatGPT and how to correctly use it
• What more is needed during this time of technological transition

Resources Mentioned on the Show:

• First US law over AI bias in hiring tools takes effect by Abigail Rubenstein
• Women, AI, and What’s at Stake by Sallie Krawcheck
• Future of Jobs 2023: These are the fastest growing and fastest declining jobs by Johnny Wood

Stay Connected:

• Join the Abacus community by connecting with us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and on LinkedIn
• Connect with Mary Beth on Twitter, Instagram, and on LinkedIn
• Connect with Neela on Twitter, Instagram, and on LinkedIn

Transcript of the Episode

Mary Beth [00:00:14]:

Hey there. Welcome to the If Money were Easy podcast, the show where we teach you how to expand what’s possible with your money. We’re your hosts Mary Beth Storjohann – 

Neela [00:00:23]:

And Neela Hummel – 

Mary Beth [00:00:24]:

Certified financial planners and Co-CEOs of Abacus Wealth Partners. Today on the show, we’re going to talk about AI, ChatGPT, and your financial future. But before we jump in, a brief disclosure from our compliance department. This podcast is for educational purposes and is not intended as investment, legal, or tax advice. Any opinion shared is not an opinion of Abacus Wealth Partners. 

Neela [00:00:51]:

Let’s dive in. 

Mary Beth [00:00:52]:

Hello, Neela. 

Neela [00:00:53]:

Hello, Mary Beth.

Mary Beth [00:00:54]:

It’s good to see you. 

Neela [00:00:56]:

Likewise. So this is a super topical and very trendy conversation. It’s one that I know we’ve gotten lots of questions on as financial planners and there’s lots of information out there about what is AI, what is ChatGPT. But today let’s hit about how it’s really relevant for our listeners and their financial future. So when we look at the landscape and how AI is affecting women, how AI is affecting the career landscape, how AI is affecting financial planning in general, where do we begin?

Mary Beth [00:01:33]:

So I think we start with AI ChatGPT and where it’s at right now. So, for you and I, Co-CEOs of a wealth management firm, this is popping up in our news networks on LinkedIn. For us, we’re having conversations with other CEOs about it. I know some of our team members have brought up ChatGPT and how we can use AI and what’s happening in the industry. And so just from our world, AI and the automation and the efficiencies that these tools can bring to our lives from a business perspective and potentially to our clients from a financial perspective, are very interesting and there’s pros and cons to it. So I think the biggest thing is understanding where we’re at. It’s on our minds from the business world. So for our clients, depending on the jobs that you’re in, it might not be on your radar or it might be, but I do know in my circle, in terms of just professional contacts, ChatGPT is a big one. So from a marketing standpoint, for businesses, ChatGPT is huge. A lot of people are leaning on that right now in terms of content creation. So they’re looking to that tool. I know it’s also coming up in the world of educators. So for students, for example, they’re heavily leaning on ChatGPT for essay creation and research. And educators are having to almost shift the landscape from high school to college and up in terms of what their expectations are for essay creation. This isn’t just crawling the webs like Google. ChatGPT can actually – I don’t actually know how it works – but it has been fed data from previously published – I think it goes up to September 2021. It takes data that’s been fed to it and it consolidates it and it basically spits it back out at you. So I’m not searching Google for “tell me about the latest economic crisis” and then Google sends me a bunch of articles. ChatGPT basically writes the summary in the article for you and then people are taking that to then repurpose and edit to their own personalized content. So ChatGPT spits out a great framework for any type of content or educational lesson that you’re looking for. That’s the biggest thing, is depending on where you are in your business and career and life and your finances, this may or may not impact you. But you probably have seen articles about ChatGPT and AI online in terms of where it’s at and the risks that can be associated with it. And so I guess starting there. 

Neela [00:03:46]:

You point out that it’s hit a couple of industries in a very visible way. You can’t ignore the impact it’s had on the education industry and oh my God, just kudos to all you teachers out there because I don’t know how you’re going to navigate it. 

Mary Beth [00:03:59]:

Oh my gosh. 

Neela [00:03:59]:

But I think what we would hit is, from a business standpoint, is even if you personally haven’t interacted with it, it may have interacted with you. 

Mary Beth [00:04:07]:

Yes. 

Neela [00:04:07]:

From a hiring standpoint, from the content that you receive, from a company that you invest in, that you work with, it’s there and it’s not something that should be ignored. 

Mary Beth [00:04:17]:

Exactly. So tell me a little bit then, from a hiring standpoint, what are some of the risks there? You’re right, I might be applying for a job and I may have interacted with this, or AI might be screening my resume. What does that mean for me? What does that do? What’s the pros and cons behind that?

Neela [00:04:32]:

Yeah, so big loaded one. And that’s actually, I think in addition to education, the hiring and the HR landscape is very heavily leaning into AI. They did a survey last year by the Society for Human Resource Management and found that one in four companies are already using AI in their hiring process. And so what that means is that resumes, cover letters, et cetera, are being used by AI and screened and filtered. And so the natural issue with that is that we already know there’s a ton of bias when it comes to hiring. Everything down to people discriminating based on a candidate’s name, based on their age, based on looking at all aspects of their resume and discriminating against them. And then you look at the fact that, hey, AI ain’t perfect, and AI isn’t necessarily concerned about the most equitable and inclusive hiring practices. And so that is going to hit you from a hiring standpoint. And let’s talk about jobs in AI. 

Mary Beth [00:05:32]:

Yeah. So women today hold less than 30% of all global AI roles. So this goes back to – we’ve had this before in terms of just tech creation. And I know we have this a lot in the United States. The lack of diversity in companies that are developing the products that we use. I mean, look at Meta, Apple, these things that are coming up and the issues that come across the board. So less than 30% of women holding global AI roles, people of color, we don’t have those stats, but we know they’re not great as well. And so when there’s a lack of diversity behind the creation of these platforms, that bias seeps through into the utilization of it. So if women aren’t helping to shape AI, if people of color aren’t helping to shape AI, but AI is then being used to screen resumes, there is very likely that bias and that discrimination is seeping through into that platform that’s being leveraged. So one of the first laws actually recently passed in New York City, notify job candidates if AI is being used, and to let them request info on what data is being collected. So cities and governments have to be now proactive in terms of moderating AI and making sure these biases aren’t seeping through. And a little bit of undoing. The work that we have been doing, we’ve built in our own infrastructures to make sure that we’re trying to eliminate bias. And then to leverage this technology unknowingly, you can basically let that bias right back in just through the use of technology. 

Neela [00:06:53]:

It’s funny, it’s like you would think, “Oh, great, you can fix some of the human issues that we have with hiring in all of these racial and gender biases.” And they’re like, “Good news, we’re going to automate it, but we’re going to make all the same mistakes you guys are making.” 

Mary Beth [00:07:04]:

Exactly. It’s mind boggling when you think about it, though. You think that the tech is going to fix it. But when you start to dig into the tech that you’re using and who is creating it, who has a seat at the tables in these businesses that are creating these products, and who has been invited to share their opinions and feedback, it takes a lot more work to take those additional steps. That’s what’s necessary and important to ensure, that AI does get to the point it has continuous improvement and is able to eliminate these biases totally from a racist and sexist standpoint. 

Neela [00:07:34]:

You know, and then we didn’t even hit on the fact that the two main professions that we’ve talked about, education and human resources, are two professional fields that are highly dominated by women. 

Mary Beth [00:07:45]:

Yes. 

Neela [00:07:45]:

And so when you think about what’s going to happen, are there going to be roles that are going to be replaced by AI in the future? And are they going after roles that are already dominated by women? There’s a whole other gender lens there, too. 

Mary Beth [00:07:58]:

Exactly. So that’s where just thinking about ChatGPT and some of the tools and resources that ChatGPT is one where you can actually just create content. There are other versions where you can actually type in. Give me a picture of a city with a moonlit background and it pixelates and pulls in basically photographs to you, a customized AI generated photograph for you to use for your content. And so there’s a lot of copyright issues going along. There’s going to be a lot of lawsuits going through a court that are already opening up in terms of authors requesting that their content isn’t basically pulled for ChatGPT usage without compensation. I know artists are already pushing back in terms of this as well because their stuff is being utilized and basically broken down into micro pieces and then pieced together with others to create this new photographic image. But again, it’s basically copying and repeating. And so what we’re doing for copyright issues, you think you’re going to hear if you actually start to look for it, you’re going to see a lot of issues in court about it.

Neela [00:08:52]:

Totally. And as we’re hitting on, this is a really nascent industry. And so we are literally just getting started here, right? And there’s going to be guidelines, there’s going to be changes that come up that allow AI to better adapt and better adjust and something we kind of hit on earlier. At its best, AI can be an incredible tool. It can make us a lot more productive, it can make us a lot more efficient. You and I have explored using it in different ways. I mean, you’ve used it personally for travel also from a business standpoint, sometimes you’re just kind of stuck and you can put something in ChatGPT and it can help unstick you. You’re obviously not going to use that exact content because that’s, well, wrong, but it can help get you through some mental blocks and it can be a really phenomenal tool in that sense. 

Mary Beth [00:09:38]:

Yes. I will say I’ve experimented with ChatGPT quite a bit. And so even Neela and I, we recently had to give an award acceptance speech. You can either write a speech from scratch or you can actually go into ChatGPT and you can give it some really clearly defined parameters of ‘award acceptance speech for pro bono award and the benefit of financial literacy and making financial planning accessible,’ for example, is what I typed in and it gave me a solid outline that was very robotic and choppy, but it gave me a framework to build off of that. Then I could go ahead and personalize it, but just from an idea generation for myself personally, I’m looking to revamp our mergers and acquisition storytelling. And so one of the things that always happens in mergers and acquisitions, for some reason, maybe that just happened here, but this idea of getting married and I’m like, can we do a story of mergers and acquisitions or we’re not getting married? And so I actually went to ChatGPT, I’m like, “Please tell me a different way to tell this story.” And it gave me four or five different ways to think about it, from taking a trip to building a puzzle, planning a surprise party. But in terms of getting some ideas flowing, it was really nice to have the computer to bounce back and forth with. And I could give it feedback of, like, “Something a little different or shorten it to 500 words.” So from an efficiency standpoint, it’s really helpful. And I know a lot of people are using it for content creation in a variety of ways, and I think it’s going to be helpful in that way. I think it’s going to be risky, like changing the landscape in terms of students and the work they’re going to need to do. So I think that’s one side. But from a business perspective, the content side is going to be really interesting. And there’s also industries at risk. So one of the things that I’ve heard is voiceovers, right? Especially with these AI voices. So I have a friend, for example, who is the voice of Barbie on many Mattel toys. That’s her voice, she goes into sound production. They have a whole studio team, and that’s what her job is, is doing the singing Barbie on a variety of toys. But now there’s AI, and AI is these voices. And so how does that impact her industry and her career? And that’s why we have writers and actors striking right now, because they’re coming up against these risks. Those industries are really being impacted and at risk right now in terms of job phase out, job elimination. Elimination. Replacement.  

Neela [00:11:41]:

Where you’re able to take somebody one time and then you’re able to replicate them in a very non-human way. 

Mary Beth [00:11:47]:

Yeah. 

Neela [00:11:47]:

And it’s interesting because there is good and then there’s a shadow side. And I think because it’s such a new industry, everybody’s kind of figuring it out and looking a couple steps down the line. And you mentioned the writers and the actors strike. They’re saying,”Well, what happens with residuals? What happens with my likeness? You can’t just go and use that in another feature, make a whole bunch of money on it, and I don’t get any credit.” And so everyone’s kind of starting to look through that. We went through this with the music industry as soon as digital music came on. And anytime you have a major disruption, there’s going to be winners and losers. 

Mary Beth [00:12:20]:

Yep. 

Neela [00:12:21]:

I think the World Economic Forum posted a list of the Top 10 fastest growing and the Top 10 fastest declining jobs. And if you look at the top ten growing fields, you’re looking at a lot of analysts, you’re looking at a lot of specialists, you’re looking at engineers, you’re looking at some very probably highly paid and highly specialized areas that are growing rapidly. And if you look at the declining jobs, you see the first four are all clerks, bank tellers, postal clerks, cashiers and ticket clerks, data entry clerks. And so there’s this shift to more higher educated and kind of higher specialty focused fields with a decline of jobs that could increasingly be automated. 

Mary Beth [00:13:03]:

Yeah. Five out of ten of these fastest growing jobs have analyst or engineer in them. So that’s very interesting. 

Neela [00:13:09]:

That’s a lot.

Mary Beth [00:13:10]:

Oh, wait, six sorry. Six out of 10 of these have analyst or engineer in them. Wow.

Neela [00:13:15]:

And seven of the Top 10 fastest declining jobs have clerk in them. 

Mary Beth [00:13:20]:

Wow. That’s big.

Neela [00:13:23]:

That’s really big. 

Mary Beth [00:13:24]:

So we’re talking about the greater landscape here and there’s so much more to come. This industry is in its infancy and it’s taking off, but there’s a lot of buzz around it. But what does this mean Nee for the world of financial services and our clients and what they’re looking at in terms of their money? What are the benefits and risks involved with AI? 

Neela [00:13:42]:

So I think there’s – again, it’s mixed. We can certainly say it depends in general. From the playing around that I’ve done with it and what I’ve seen and just what I’ve been reading and just what’s happening, really, in our industry, is for generic financial advice. It can be really great, just best practices, things like, “How do I begin paying off debt? Should I save for retirement?” These big umbrella questions, it does really well at those. It can give you some really good, helpful frameworks. I’ve also seen a shadow side where I’ve asked it questions and I’ve seen it straight up lie to me. And I’m like, that’s actually wrong. That’s just not factual. You’re like, “Citation needed.” They’re like, “We can’t do that.” I bet you can’t. So I think it’s the hardest thing that we’re going to be bumping up against, is it’s all really good advice until it’s not good advice. And it’s helpful if you can tell the difference. But if you can’t tell the difference, I worry about people kind of going down a tricky path. 

Mary Beth [00:14:42]:

Right. The idea is in terms of generic advice, in terms of using AI for your personal financial situation – if we’re not looking at the industry, we’re looking at just for you as a personal finance education tool – what are you looking to do with it? One of the great things I’ve done is “explain public market investing to me three different ways: a junior hire, MBA graduate, and an engineer.” And it’s really interesting, it breaks it down. So depending on your education level and how basic you want it to go, it’s a great tool for just breaking down those basic concepts in terms that you want to dig more into. However, when it comes to the personalized advice, if you’re looking to see if you need to put money into your 401(k) or your child’s 529 account or get that HELOC for your house, it’s not going to be able to piece together all of the pieces of your financial picture and spit out advice to you. It can give you ‘yes or no’ answers maybe in terms of the general concepts of what’s out there, but it’s not going to be able to help you to prioritize items one, two, three, four, and five that you’re looking to accomplish with your life. And if it does attempt to, I would highly encourage you to get a second set of opinions, back to what Neela said about it does lie to you and it doesn’t know because it’s combing through information and past resources that have been fed to it to basically consolidate that into a recommendation for you. It’s not totally personalized.

Neela [00:16:02]:

Yeah. And I also think it’s when Robo Advisors came up, there was this idea of, “Oh, is this good or bad for the industry?” And I think you and I both believe we’re like, “Well, this is actually really good because if more people can get better financial advice, great.” Because the financial services industry, it excludes a lot of people who would otherwise really need some good advice. And so if you have that same framework when you think about AI, it’s that you’re creating a safe space for a curious consumer to start asking some questions and maybe start building up their educational baseline. Because we’ve talked a lot about how there’s so much shame around money. If that’s the first step that someone can take, great. Now if you’re trying to go all Wall Street bets and go all in on a certain meme stock, please be careful. 

Mary Beth [00:16:47]:

Please be careful, please be careful. It’s a very kind way of putting that, please be careful. So I think we skipped over the idea, or maybe I just brought us right there, of what this means for the industry and AI. There’s pros and cons we talked about, there’s job replacement coming into effect in a variety of roles. But for the industry as a whole, just as you mentioned Robo Advisors, AI is actually very likely going to be a great thing in terms of the efficiency it brings to businesses and the accessibility that it brings to businesses. So for businesses like ours, we are built and structured in such a way where we need to make a certain amount of money in working with our clients in order to keep the business going. And so in terms of the efficiencies and scalability of that, we can only go so far from a human standpoint. We have to leverage technology. And so what AI brings into play, it takes it up a whole other level and it adds another level of efficiency in there for us. And so it gives us greater access to consumers and it really helps the impact of education and getting out there into communities that maybe financial services companies or banks are not able to be in right now, but it will bring them there and it helps again to spread the knowledge and to lift everybody up. Rising tide raises all ships. Did I say that correctly? 

Neela [00:17:54]:

Absolutely. 

Mary Beth [00:17:54]:

So that’s the goal around AI, is to lift everybody up in terms of accessibility. However, again, hand-in-hand with those biases that we’re saying are built in, are the right people at the table in terms of creating these technologies to make sure that it’s being approached properly? But I think there will be some wins here as businesses lean into AI to streamline and build automation in other client service areas or paperwork areas or operational compliance areas to really free up time to get into different consumer groups. 

Neela [00:18:25]:

Absolutely. Totally agree. It’s this idea you hit on. It’s this idea of leverage. How do we leverage people to do more of what they’re uniquely qualified to do? This will allow us to provide an even better level of service to our clients. Because if we can take all of the administrative pieces that honestly not a human needs to do, if we can rely on technology to get things done, we’re basically maximizing our people to do what people are good at, things that AI is never going to be able to really replace. AI is never going to be able to replace the situational awareness that comes from sitting across from a couple that is disagreeing about something. 

Mary Beth [00:19:01]:

Exactly. 

Neela [00:19:02]:

You want to watch, like, an AI brain explode, put them in that situation and be, “Hmm, explain these nuances of our individual differences here.” 

Mary Beth [00:19:11]:

Telling ChatGPT to have empathy. And watching the robotic response that comes out. And there’s no way it can replace that. And if you haven’t used it yourself, you can go to openai.com and sign up for an account. But the risks are there with it, right? So understanding, if you tinker with it, you start to understand how it works and you realize where you feel about it. There’s really a lot of excitement that comes with it, of the potential. And then you’re also like, “Oh yeah, no way this is going to sit in front of a client and be able to give them a hug or hand them a tissue.” So how do you replace those personal human connections? 

Neela [00:19:44]:

Totally. Yeah, and then if it’s really from a business standpoint, how do we use it as a tool and leverage it to make us more effective? That, I think, is the goal. I think that’s the real promise, and I think that’s what’s really exciting to me. 

Mary Beth [00:19:58]:

Right. Even for our listeners. Talking in your peer groups about it with your colleagues and understanding, have they tested it out? Where are they using it in their lives, either on a personal standpoint or from a professional standpoint? We’ve had conversations, Neela and I talk about it, but it’s been really fun at Abacus to hear the interest levels of some of our employees and what it looks like and the potential. And some are really into it. I’m like, “Okay, you two need to go talk to each other in a corner about the potential here and how it’s changing the world and others.” We’re testing it out in some of the different departments for different areas and then there’s potential again for the operations standpoint. So I think it’s interesting from the business standpoint. It’s interesting from the personal standpoint in terms of efficiency. So Neela mentioned I’ve used it for travel. One of the things that you can do is, for an example, I said, “Plan a trip to Denver, a romantic vacation to Denver in a four star hotel with a budget of $3,000 or something, and with restaurant recommendations and activity recommendations and put it in a chart” and ChatGPT will do that for you, basically. So the travel agent, right, ChatGPT planned out a whole however many days with the itinerary. And then I asked it, “Okay, give me other options.” It gave me two different itineraries to choose from. So then obviously I have to go through and book it myself. But it lays out everything for you and it saves you how much time on research in terms of those that are spit out for you. So again, time is money. So personal side, that, and then business side of how your colleagues are using it. I think there’s a lot of cocktail hour conversation. 

Neela [00:21:22]:

Conversation, a lot of power, a lot of power. And we have to hit on there are some areas, there’s a lot of industries that are going to be disrupted by this, whether they want to or know. It’s definitely coming for financial services, it’s definitely coming for legal. You mentioned travel industry. I think the New York Times did a great comparison of a ChatGPT travel itinerary compared to a travel agent itinerary, both have pros and cons, and so it’s just another tool for consumers. But I think if we were to summarize where we would land it’s very early, it is a tool that has a ton of power. We are just getting started. Is it going to challenge some human jobs? You bet. In the same way that we don’t really have phone operators anymore because that whole industry was fully disrupted. And so there are going to be some jobs that lose out and what are we doing to adapt? Because pretending that it doesn’t exist is not going to be helpful. 

Mary Beth [00:22:21]:

Agreed. And I think the closing thing I’d say on this is that at the end of the day, this is technology and so there’s a lot of automations involved here. So the empathy that comes with the transitions and the shifts that are happening because of this, it’s going to require some bold leadership and also just some human-centered leadership. So digging in your Brene Brown-esque leadership styles here and making sure that you are adapting and making strategic business decisions, but also holding empathy for the employees or the industries that are getting changed and shifted. There’s going to be a delicate balance there, and the ones that come out on top are going to be the leaders that are holding balance with both in terms of taking some of that risk, but also holding empathy for those that are going through some transformations. 

Neela [00:23:10]:

I love that, thinking about it, this isn’t something that’s going to just completely upend your business overnight. You’re not going to let go of half of your workforce. I think there was actually a CEO who just got blasted for doing that. 

Mary Beth [00:23:22]:

There’s multiple ones in the Zoom era. 

Neela [00:23:26]:

Don’t be that guy. 

Mary Beth [00:23:27]:

Don’t be that guy. 

Neela [00:23:29]:

I love how you ended that. Really, because it’s going to be how do we use it in a respectful, leveraged way while also recognizing that we are in businesses that are designed around people. And if you can’t bring that empathy to your business plan with a new technology, you’re going to run up against some tough barriers. 

Mary Beth [00:23:51]:

Yes. Culture impact, for sure. You bet. All right. That is our hot take on AI, your finances, and what the future holds. So proceed with caution, but proceed with an open mind. You bet. 

Neela [00:24:07]:

Thanks for listening.

Mary Beth [00:24:08]:

Thanks all. Financial knowledge is for everyone. If you enjoyed today’s episode of If Money Were Easy and you’re looking for more tools and resources to expand what’s possible with your money, head to www.learnwithabacus.com, Abacus Wealth Partners’ e-learning platform, offering a variety of courses to empower you in your financial life.