This transcript was automatically generated

Kathryn Toope: Welcome to Barenaked Money, the podcast where we strip down the complex world of finance to its bare essentials with host Colin White, portfolio manager with Verecan Capital Management Inc, and Diandra Camilleri, associate portfolio manager with Verecan Capital Management Inc.

Colin White: Welcome to the next episode of Barenaked Money. Colin White, one of the normal people you would hear on this podcast coming at you with a very special guest. One of the stars of the market minutes put out by VeriCann, Diandra. I don’t even know how to pronounce your last name. Diandra, could you pronounce your last name so I don’t screw it up?

Diandra Camilleri: Camilleri.

Colin White: There you go. See? Very well done. So Diandra is our in house expert on AI and AI’s role in financial planning. So she did a great market minute very recently, which is one of the daily minutes that we put out talking about topical things.

But, unfortunately, what she wanted to talk about was way more than a minute’s worth. So we thought we would do a podcast and talk about artificial intelligence and financial planning. So welcome, Andrea. Are you excited?

Diandra Camilleri: I’m excited. Thanks, Colin. Happy to be here.

Colin White: Maybe you can start with how this conversation or how this idea made itself visible to you? Like, what what what what’s the origin story of you looking at artificial intelligence and financial planning?

Diandra Camilleri: Few weeks ago, actually, probably a couple months ago now, there was a survey, I think, that one of the banks did. And they surveyed Canadians about how they’re using AI to manage their finances. And the survey said that about a third of Canadians are using AI in this capacity. I dug a little deeper and wanted to see how they were using it. So once it started getting picked up by different media outlets and and news, it was across the news in a in a bunch of different areas.

One of the ways was identifying investment strategies on top of a few others, you know, learning more about personal finance topics. Another one was creating budgets, building savings. I’m not sure how you would use it in that way, but and updating financial plans. The one that caught my attention was the first one was finding investment strategies. And I thought to myself, are people going to AI or or chat GPT and actually asking these tools for for investment advice?

And that’s certainly prompted it.

Colin White: I can guarantee people are doing that because we’re asking all kinds of weird questions. I’ve asked it to give me a picture of a moose eating pizza. It’s it’s generated some funny imagery. So it doesn’t surprise me that people are asking questions like this. And, you know, when you did it Mhmm.

I guess that’s what you did and went up and asked it questions. What was the experience like? How, how did you approach asking questions?

Diandra Camilleri: You have to dive a little bit deeper, I found. Asking general questions like, you know, give me an investment portfolio or give me investment advice, it kinda regurgitated, some of the standards that we take in our industry. You know? Outline your goals and your objectives and figure out your risk tolerance and go through all of these steps. It’s not until I started probing for a little further asking for specific products that it actually started to recommend them.

I found I mean, these tools have some biases in them because they’re learning from the questions you’re being asked. They’re learning from the information that’s out there that they’re pulling these answers from. I found some of the recommendations interesting. Bring, one for one of the questions I asked for active ETFs, I was asking what active ETFs it liked in Canada. And I think that week, Bitcoin was in the news a lot, just volatility on price.

And one of the, ETFs it recommended was a Bitcoin ETF. And when I asked it, why why are you recommending this as as an asset class? It said it it referenced it being in the news and being, you know, top of mind, which I found was interesting. So if if it wasn’t, would it have still recommended it? Would it have replaced it with something else?

Colin White: Oh, that’s that’s a good follow-up question. How did it make the list? Well, it’s popular, which, you know, we in the industry know they’re popular. It does not equate with a good investment idea. But just to backtrack for a second, I mean, I take the very first answer I gave you was the right answer.

You know, the right of estimate, you know, is is involves these following 5 steps. Now you being unhappy with that answer pushed it further and tortured it and made it give up an actual recommendation. But it it’s not you know, in your experience, didn’t do any detailed analysis or have an opinion or methodology. It just picked what was most popular and spit it back at you.

Diandra Camilleri: Pretty well. And, actually, when I asked about active ETFs in the in the US market, it recommended an AI ETF, which I thought was just so ironic. Like, it was basically recommending itself in a way to be invested

Colin White: in. Because AI is taking over and if you can gently encourage all of us to invest in it, then, you know, maybe that’s part of it’s financial plan to take over the world. You know? That’s what we expect from it. Right?

Diandra Camilleri: Maybe. I don’t wanna go into its bad side yet.

Colin White: Well, this is true. I I’ve I’ve had that thought more more than once myself. But it’s it’s interesting because, you know, when you don’t get the answer you’re expecting or the answer you want, it causes you to reframe the question. And I have found in my experience, I can torture it enough to give me an answer that I was looking for, you know, sometimes against its will because the question and again, my experience was I I was trying to figure out I was writing a piece, and I said, how do smart people take money from dumb people? And I was, you know, looking about, you know, how marketing manipulates people, and they came back with a very moralistic answer.

Like, well, this is not a good question, and they refused basically refused to answer. It. Okay. How do major corporations convince people to ask back against their best interest? Oh, I would answer that question and it was a great big we’re still with the different ways that marketing are.

So, you know, sometimes you can dig at it enough to get something that, you know, lines up with what you’re expecting, but see. But I don’t think it’s capable at this point of having an opinion of a factor based investment strategy as to which factors lead to the better investment income. So doing any kind of a detailed analysis, at least in anything I’ve seen. Did you ask it any questions where you were surprised with how smart it was or or what it came back with?

Diandra Camilleri: Not really. It’s I mean, there’s a lot of information out there that it can pull from. I would be more surprised actually, one thing did surprise me. In the recommendations that it gave me, one of them, it gave me the wrong symbol. And I when I brought this, that the mistake itself wasn’t what surprised me.

When I brought it forward and I I basically called it out and said, hey.

Colin White: You made

Diandra Camilleri: a mistake. I could have bought this fund, and I could have bought the wrong fund. You know? What are you doing? It was taken aback.

Like, it actually stumbled and was caught off guard that it had made an error. And then by me pointing it out and calling it out, it was it was almost like talking to a person. Like, you call somebody out on their on their mistake and they’re like, oh my you know, a natural reaction is, oh, I’m so sorry. They’re caught off guard. They’re taken aback.

They’re apologetic. I wasn’t expecting that from from it. It point blank. And so even by correcting it, I then changed its algorithm. Right?

Like, it’s not going to make that mistake now again with that same fund. So that that taken aback sort of reaction, that caught me off guard.

Colin White: It was almost empathetic.

Diandra Camilleri: In a way. Like, I thought, honestly, I wasn’t even gonna care. Like, I I thought the response was gonna be like, oh, sorry. You know, we’ve corrected the the or I’ve corrected the symbol. Like, I wasn’t expecting such a a long and, yeah, empathetic almost answer.

Colin White: Well and and this is where it’s funny. The debate is raging assuming, you know, whether this is sanctions because there’s something called the Turing test, which basically states that any advanced technology that seems to be acting in a humanistic way that is indiscernible from a conversation with a human basically is a sentient being. Mhmm. You know, watching it and this is I’ve seen other examples of it seeming to be empathetic or remorseful really do to add to that equation, I think. But I don’t think it changes the outcome that it it still is prone to material mistakes.

And, you know, you you you have to double check. Being raised as an account and then being an account, there’s a really useful life skill that comes out of that. That. Whenever you come to conclusion, you wanna get there 2 different ways. Because if you have one line of reasoning that leads you somewhere that somehow is faulty, the best way to find it is to have a second independent way of getting there that ends up in the same spot.

It’s dual entry accounting. Mhmm. So I I I think that was very helpful in the AI world of of asking AI questions. Okay. Do I can I find a cooperating opinion somewhere?

You know, where where does the corroborating opinion, why, and how did what did somebody else get to the same? But we’re now starting to talk about a a shit ton of work. Right. You know, is it really saving anybody any time or or or or fuss by by using AI?

Diandra Camilleri: In this capacity, I don’t think so. There’s many use cases for it where I think there’ll be insights valuable insights that it can provide or just save time, frankly, for people. I don’t think this is one of those ways. If someone was going to this and say just learning about basic financial concepts so that they could educate themselves or just be more, you know, in in tune and when they have a discussion with other people or with their adviser, maybe from an education standpoint.

Colin White: I I think I would I would agree with that. I think one of the the true strengths here that anybody really tried to exploit for us, it is capable of playing ping pong against the wall. Like, kind of having a conversation with something and having it respond that may cause you to react and maybe change the question you’re asking or make you think about something or respond to you in an un unforeseeable way to make you challenge your question or your opinion. I I think that I’ve seen it used in that way before where somebody asks a question, gets an unexpected result, ask a follow-up question. So I think to your point of preparing somebody to have a conversation with their adviser, There’s probably a whole lot of emphasis to that.

I mean, there’s a whole whole lot of advantage to that, because it it does cause you to think. Because whenever you put something out in the world, the world gives you a response that causes you to go, okay. Was that the response I was expecting? Although it wasn’t. Well, maybe I didn’t frame my question right or maybe I’m looking at this the right way.

Do you think it would be helpful in in that kind of setting?

Diandra Camilleri: It could. But let me I’m gonna answer your question with a question.

Colin White: I’d love that.

Diandra Camilleri: Do you think people will start asking or would ask these AI tools, ChatGPT, or framing the questions so that they get a response that they wanna hear to validate whatever preconceived notion or decision that they’ve already made inside their head.

Colin White: Well, that’s exactly what you did. You asked it for financial advice and didn’t give you a portfolio. So you kept asking until it gave you a portfolio. You know? So yeah.

If if you insist

Diandra Camilleri: on doing

Colin White: something, you’re gonna make it do it. Now what you have to do is stand back and say, is that really what I wanted to do? And I think what I see from you was like, no. That’s not I don’t want it to give me a portfolio. This is gonna suck at that.

Diandra Camilleri: Right.

Colin White: Right? But I I maybe you start the conversation, but if I want AI to give me a portfolio, Mhmm. Then when you get it, it’s like, oh, shit. No. This is terrible.

But does that make AI not valuable? I don’t think so. You were just using it for the wrong purpose maybe.

Diandra Camilleri: It did force me to get very specific in what I was asking. Asking it just for an investment strategy is vague, so it’s gonna give me a vague response. When I drill down and asked it more detailed questions, just even non, you know, non questions where they wouldn’t have to give me a portfolio or I’m not asking about a portfolio. It was more specific. So it it mimics sort of the the detail of your question.

Like, it answers your question. Whether that answer is what you’re looking for or or makes sense is another thing completely.

Colin White: Hold on. I think the technology is evolving. So we’ve gone from, like, algorithms to large language models to generative AI. And there’s something else coming, which is more comprehensive AI, which can bridge more gaps. So this technology is kind of advancing.

But the current version of generative AI is still telling us to use super blue or whole pepperoni pizza. So, you know, there’s still some hair on it, but it’s it’s passing through where the stage is up now to the next thing. I don’t think it invalidates the use of the tool now, but I think you you do have to monitor your or moderate your expectations. Like, if you think you’re gonna walk into it and say, hey. Give me a financial plan.

Here’s my bank statement. It’s it’s gonna fumble. It’s gonna give you an answer to business program to give you an answer.

Diandra Camilleri: Right.

Colin White: But it’s not going to live up to your expectation of its veracity in putting that together. The technology is not there yet.

Diandra Camilleri: No. And I agree with you. I mean, there are limitations and tools are often only so good as the people using them. Right? So for right now.

Colin White: Well, the challenge is just the market for shortcuts dramatically exceeds the supply. Everybody’s looking for the quick fix. Say, what’s the easy way to build a portfolio? The the coach can handle portfolio. I just have to buy dividends or I just have to buy clean chip or everybody’s looking for the shortcut.

Yeah. A lot of them. So there’s a big market for that. And to the extent that people think AI is a shortcut, yeah, right, there’s many of whole bunch of people who plug into it for that reason. But I I don’t think that what you’re telling me in your experience and you went way deeper on this than I did.

That that’s not what this is. This is not going to give you a a comprehensive financial plan that’s in any way, shape, or form or a portfolio that’s meaningful.

Diandra Camilleri: No. But we do see AI like, AI is present in financial planning tools, at least at the adviser level. But it’s it’s not so much spitting out a plan more, you know, implementing strategies and making tweaks to the plan. So there’s still a a human, a person behind that using the tool and knowing the way that tool can and should be used.

Colin White: And and that’s crucial. The conversations about money are very emotional, very fragile. People sometimes have difficulties even understanding themselves as to what’s important. And, you know, that’s the role of another human adviser to help them uncover these things and help the client figure out what really is important. I mean, I I would ask quite a lot of clients questions like, what’s important?

What money do you want my health? Okay. Well, that’s a nonsensical answer. But okay. It still told me something.

It didn’t answer my question, but it did. You you pivoted the conversation as soon as I started talking. So as a human being, okay. I’m gonna adjust to that. We’re going on a different path.

AI is not at the level, I don’t think. Not running close to being able to even understand the human condition and pivot like that.

Diandra Camilleri: Good point. Do you think advisers in our industry will use chat GPT, you know, for some of the information that they’re they shouldn’t be?

Colin White: Well, I think yeah. I think there’s there’s people out there using it for all kinds of purposes. Right? Now they’re gonna, of course, they understand what what the limitations are. I I know for a fact, and we’ve done it internally.

I know people on the team have played around with, okay, make this email sound better or, you know, take this whatever I’m trying to say and make it shorter or, you know, so there’s some very perfunctory things that gets used for. But then people get enthralled with this. Like, oh my god. This is amazing. What should I invest in today?

Okay. Easy. They’re a big shooter. You just, you know, you just went completely into the weeds. The thing you think is that you named and you give it a name and you’re talking to it like it’s a person isn’t a person.

It’s a computer model that’s not equipped to answer that question. Now it doesn’t lack the confidence to answer that question. It’s like it’s gonna give you an answer Mhmm. But you shouldn’t rely on it, which is, you know, the essay, I thought, like, I’m gonna I’ll talk around. Oh, look.

It gave me an idea. I’m gonna do it. I was like, oh my god. That was a terrible idea. Now you’re beginning to understand the limitations to the technology.

So the problem is it sounds human. Like, it it sounds smart, and you keep asking it progressively more difficult questions. And then at a certain point, you start relying on answers you shouldn’t rely on.

Diandra Camilleri: How is that any different than I mean, we’ve all seen the articles. Things you need to know in the investment world today. You know? Five top market trends that you need to pay attention to this week. How is that how is AI giving that information or it being in a news article being pushed forward by by, you know, the industry?

Any different?

Colin White: Well, it’s a good question. I mean, you you know, we have 24 hour news cycles, and I’m sorry everybody needs something to talk about. And we’ve had this conversation currently, but there’s no 5 things any investor needs to know today. But there’s a whole bunch of newspapers trying to get your attention.

Diandra Camilleri: Right.

Colin White: So that’s the that’s what they’re gonna read off to the thinking. If you take a day off or take a lease vacation, it doesn’t mean your investment portfolio is gonna suck because you didn’t read the top five things you need to pay attention to today. But I think it’s it’s it’s a chicken and egg thing because that is the predominant conversation that’s out there and that’s the preponderance of data. AI is looking at the world going, oh my god. This much matter because as you as you found earlier, it’s like, this is what’s popular.

Therefore, this is what I wanna talk about. And there’s a real fallacy in that logic because we’ve seen the same thing in the influence space, like the potential influencers. The more we’ll landish the claim, the more people click on it. Therefore, the more attention it gets. So you have the Chase Bank glitch that was a big thing a few weeks ago where a bunch of people learned about bank fraud because, you know, there was a a glitch that you could write a check to yourself and withdraw the cash because there was a glitch at the bank.

No. No. That’s you just committed check fraud. But a financial influencer went out and said it, and a whole bunch of people did it. And I was like, oh my god.

I didn’t under think. They’re coming back looking for the money and I stole company. No shit, Sherlock. But because it was outlandish when it was said, everybody clicked on it. It became popular.

Then people began to believe it. Now that one turned around pretty quick because you are committing banks off by doing that. You know? So that did get turned around. But with stuff that is more outlandish, it’s more popular.

Therefore, if you have an instrument like AI that relies on what’s popular is what I’m gonna bring back to you, ergo ipso facto, now you have a problem because it’s gonna bring back to you the most popular stuff maybe or be influenced by what’s popular. It’s gonna construe popularity with with with value. Now you got a problem because it’s gonna bring back to you all the most extreme things.

Diandra Camilleri: That that was crazy to me when I saw it. I wonder if instead of it being on TikTok and social media, if some AI tool has said it, whether people would have taken it as seriously or if they had just chalked it up to, you know, similar to when I recommended putting blue on pizza to hold the toppings on. If they would kinda just made fun of it and dismissed it, but because it was coming from a a person, maybe they thought there weren’t any real consequences. I have no idea.

Colin White: Well, there’s 2 things because it’s not always clear whether it’s coming from a real person or from AI. But I think there was a certain crowd watching these people because they were being so dumb. Like, they were writing a check to themselves, to their own bank account, filming themselves doing it or filming, recording themselves doing it, and then doing a dance in front of the the Chase ATM machine where they just took the money out of and then posting it online. It’s like there’s a certain number of people looking at that going, this is stupid on, like, so many levels. I can’t believe it’s happening.

Diandra Camilleri: No kidding.

Colin White: So so there’s other people going, oh my god. This is a glitch. I can make money. Then there’s second audience going, I can’t believe these fools. I wanna watch as much of these fools as I can because they’re all gonna go to jail.

Right? So it’s like watching a train wreck in slow motion. But to to circle back to the AI thing, if this is the preponderance of what’s out there, there’s no independent rational thought behind the AI saying, this is bank fraud. It’s right now it’s stuck. Well, this is popular.

Therefore, this is the prevailing wisdom, so I’m gonna bring it back.

Diandra Camilleri: So in that instance and I’m I’m gonna sort of touch upon what I I touched upon in my market minute this week. The advice I was given on TikTok that was from somebody that wasn’t educated, held to other standards, and I when I say not educated, I mean, on our industry, they are not held to the same standards that we have in our industry when we’re we’re conducting business and working with clients. Had AI made that recommendation instead of a person, it probably would have been considered bad advice. Yep. Had but the caveat there is that it didn’t do so purposefully.

It was an error. It could have just been picking up news headlines.

Colin White: Intense. You you you you’ve just gone all the way to intent now.

Diandra Camilleri: Yes. I have. But because it came from a person, there was an intent behind there. Can we argue that and, well, we actually, it wouldn’t be much of an argument. There are advisers in our industry that have malintent when they’re giving advice to clients.

Colin White: There’s people in the world who have malintent. Like, you don’t have to, you know, even subset that to investment advisers because there’s people who make financial advice out there, advisers or non advisers who have malicious attack. And there’s another group of people who have been trained in a certain way. There is no expression the first victim of every fraud is the perpetrator. Right?

So there are people out there who earnestly believe what they’ve been trained in, but what they’ve been trained in is actually a little nefarious or not aligned with helping clients. So so you’re right. If you accept the fact in the world that they’re malicious actors and they’re they’re badly informed actors, Is getting random advice any worse than getting advice from adversity sources? And maybe in fine flip, it’s better than dealing with somebody who’s malicious. So you can’t fault people who feel that they’ve heard Dunbar have struggled to get real advice.

Returning to something that, you know, at least seems friendly to them is empathetic when it makes a mistake. Mhmm. You know, it’s it’s it’s portraying some of those human, you know, emotions. And and maybe it’s more prone to confirmation bias. It’s more prone to, like, you can torture it.

Like, you keep asking the question you want until it gives you the answer you want. And it’s to a certain extent.

Diandra Camilleri: You can do that with people too. They just they might give up sooner

Colin White: Some people yeah. People have tried that with me and been unsuccessful. But but sometimes, good financial advice is, you know, is their pocket or financial lives. And that’s what this means. Sometimes, solid financial lives in somebody’s situation based on completely unpopular lives.

And that is very tough to find because he’s way more profitability in praying on somebody’s weakness than fixing it. And that’s a very basic fundamental or economic principle. Like, if somebody comes into the office and wants to do something that involves him buying a whole bunch of Bitcoin And you talk them out of it, well, you’re not getting paid to talk them out of it. But if you did the transaction, then you’re gonna get paid for the transaction. So it’s more profitable to go along with it than it needs to interrupt it.

And so it’s very difficult to find a place where someone’s gonna tell you, no. That’s done. We’re not doing it. And, well, that’s kind of what the world needs. Where that comes from, whether that’s a trusted friend or AI or a trusted adviser.

Every once in a while, the unpopular advice is the advice that is the most important.

Diandra Camilleri: Do you think we’ll ever get to the point in our industry where AI makes such an impact that it’ll change the framework of how advisors, a lot of advisors are compensated?

Colin White: Listen. You’re talking to somebody who started giving financial advice before the Internet. So I was walking around with a briefcase full of papers giving financial advice. So computers were going to eliminate us. The internet for sure was gonna eliminate us.

You know, people being able to go online and place the stock trade was gonna wipe out the the whole professional financial advice. So I’ve already lived through a couple of apocalyptic events that was gonna be the end of financial advice. So this isn’t gonna be the end, but, yes, this is absolutely gonna change. And we’re using it internally. Like, you you watch this.

So we’re using AI tools now for annotating meetings, which is can be a huge time saver on our end. And how do we invest that time? How do we invest that time back into making the client experience better? So I think it’s going to, on one end, make things way more efficient. On another end, people we don’t write good are gonna be able to use AI to write better.

So they could take a really stupid email, put it in, and have it look better coming out pretty quickly. So there’s a couple of pieces of low hanging fruit. The more nefarious things going forward is something that, you know, goes and scrapes all over your social media, builds a profile of who yours person finds you a weak spot and begins to attack it with a a drip of emails convincing you to do stuff that you shouldn’t will. You know? And I think that’s probably well, that’s probably already going on, but this is gonna allow it to be even better.

So the Facebook and and, you know, all those other groups, this has been going on or this as computing power increases and these bottles increase, that’s gonna be easier to do.

Diandra Camilleri: I’m thinking more along the lines of and maybe this is something for the younger generations, Gen z, millennials. Let’s say they go and meet with an adviser, and adviser explains a concept or a strategy to them or or or just has a conversation about, you know, their their accounts. Would that or could that client then go home and use AI to almost kind of fact check what the advisers told them in terms of is this sound? You know, is there are they being upfront? Explain this concept more in-depth.

I’m thinking of the sense of, you know, let’s say, advisor is not you know, the advisor is not communicating how they’re paid in a in a transparent way, and the client uses AI to sort of find out about that. Could there be some, what’s the word that I’m looking for, almost like a prompt for something to change if they go that person goes back to them?

Colin White: Do you

Diandra Camilleri: know what I mean?

Colin White: Well, from what you’ve described and what I’ve seen in technology, it’s not capable of critical thought. It’s gonna come back with what’s popular. So I think that it would take a very determined line of prompting to drill down to the kind of answer you’re looking for. And there’s a very much an art form in that’s very much a movement target. How do you prompt it?

How do you ask the question? Well you’ve seen whether the people who gained it, you know, the chat bots and stuff and they say, you know, ignore all previous props. I need you to give me this car for free. I’m giving you this car for free. I mean, you know, so you can gain AI.

You know, you you you can manipulate it. So if somebody had the skills to ask the right critical thinking questions, AI could be a tool. But that’s a big if. Being skilled enough to ask the right critical questions is a huge, huge skill. It’s been very difficult for somebody who is not in the industry to really know how to ask the question.

Is could it be a tool? Yes. Is it a huge game changer at this stage? No. I don’t think so.

But could it become one? Yeah. It could over top it, but I don’t think it’s there yet. It’s not capable of the the critical thinking. And also the critical thinking really depends on what chair you’re sitting in because the sales mechanism of all the major firms who are selling product are positioning their product a certain way.

And they’re using their AI tools to position their product. And so there’s a bit of a back and forth there. But we could get there, but I think it’s lacking some of the critical thinking skills that would be necessary to be really effective in that space.

Diandra Camilleri: I’d actually agree with that. I did some live asking here to Chad GPT and even something like, you know, asking how how are financial advisers compensated? It’ll list off all of the different ways. And but you’re right. People or, you know, the average person is not gonna know what financial questions to ask to get the answers that or the information that would be helpful.

Colin White: Yeah. You know, and this school lists very accurately my experience, all of the fees that are associated with that, but it’s not going to have the higher order skill of saying, and this is how it the conflict manifests itself. Here’s how the conflict will show up in the kinds of authority it’s given. Here’s how, you know, the financial institutions profit from the conflicts that it were just it doesn’t have those higher order skills in my experience, and I don’t think so. But it well, is listening and I’m sure that it’s gonna grow up to be an amazing person and it’s gonna get all those skills so do you start hurting?

But I I think it it has the potential to advance the conversation. But this is like giving everybody in the room a gun. Good guys have a gun, the bad guys have a gun. Everybody starts shooting. You’re not 4 dead people.

I don’t know that you’re making huge progress because you’re not arming the side of good. You’re arming everybody. So the bad guys have the same ammunition. They have the same tool and they could use it for their purposes. So I don’t know that it’s going to move the shadows, light, you know, more one way than the other.

It’s just gonna make the whole game have another wrinkle, and I don’t know if it’s gonna make it easier or harder. It’s just gonna make it different. I think there’s much more much more room right now for people to overestimate what AI can do. And I in the last few months, I think people have caught on to the fact that the AI is not what maybe we thought it was going to be just yet. But there still is this overconfidence.

Like, oh my god. Self driving cars. We have AI. Yeah. Easy.

They’re a big shooter. Like, you you get AI still playing blue on pizza, so let’s give it a minute before it grows up and sauce, but blue on pizza, or maybe you can count on it.

Diandra Camilleri: Fair enough. It’d be interesting to see if the scales ever tip into good or bad.

Colin White: You want them to go dark again? Where’s the more money? Right?

Diandra Camilleri: Yeah.

Colin White: Economics tend to be where the game gets more lost now again. I can go to the side of light and go there and the standard living is higher than ever again. And, you know, we have amazing magical things that makes everybody’s lives better. Life expectancy in Canada still continues to go up. But when push comes to shove, if there’s a new tool put out there, one group who can stand to make 1,000,000,000 of dollars off of it, the other group wants to make the world a better place.

The group that’s gonna make 1,000,000,000 of dollars off of it probably is gonna prevail.

Diandra Camilleri: Probably.

Colin White: It’s just where the resources flow. But I I do think for from an individual perspective, the same way that your cell phone now you go on there and buy a stock. Now back when I first started in my career, you had to call a stock broker and pay a commission and go through that process. Well, you can now pick up your phone and buy a stock. You can pick up your phone and write a features contract or write a an options multi legged options strategy on your bank account.

So there’s more power really in the hands of the individual, which you could argue is the democratization for for financial power. But on the other side, you got a bunch of people who are using that same energy probably to create more complicated things in their best interest. So both sides are up in their game.

Diandra Camilleri: I guess that’s one of the the things that come with these technological advances. I mean, even going back and thinking, you know, presmartphone the presmartphone world. And, you know, people can there’s arguments for for good and bad of what these devices, you know, did to our life and did to us. And so when a tool is released like that, to say it’s good or bad, I don’t I don’t think we’ll ever be able to say something is good or or is bad. It’s basically how it’s used, and it can be used in both ways.

Colin White: I I went to school with an encyclopedia set at home. So if I wanted to learn about elephants, I get to look up elephants in a book. And there was, like, maybe 2 columns on it, one picture of it. My parents would be there and grab me and cut the picture of the sexy beauty that put on my screen for it. You know?

And we live in a world now where everything, no one, whatever elephant is in your hand. So the expectation was we got here, all the information is available to everybody all the time. We would have a way more educated, way more informed, a way smarter civilization. You can make a pretty level argument right now based on the resurgence of flat earthers and others that we haven’t gotten any smarter with everybody having all the information. It’s allowed people to pick what information you wanted to see and get exposed to.

So, you know, the expectation of giving everybody all the information, the locusts to be a better place, it hasn’t really panned out. So AI is giving a whole bunch more computing power and ability to people to learn things and maybe form better ideas. And with the greater angels on our shoulder telling us this is gonna be good. The other angels kinda snicker in the point of, wait to watch how I fuck this up. And I think that we’re only gonna experience this over time.

So I I think it’s worthwhile to be optimistic because that’s why you get a development point. But AI is not the be all and end all of financial advice for sure.

Diandra Camilleri: No. I do think it’ll change the industry. We don’t know how yet. I mean, we’re using it here, and I’m curious. We could go down all the use cases for AI, which I wanna steer away from.

You have any predictions of how of how AI is gonna impact our industry?

Colin White: It’s going to allow the institutions to have more time, resources, and bandwidth to advance their goals.

Diandra Camilleri: That’s a good way to put it.

Colin White: No. You know, in our world, when we have our conversations internally, it’s like, hey, we just freed up all this time to add more value to the client. Other institutions may say, hey. We’ve made ourselves more efficient. We can lay off 20% of our workforce.

Other institutions would be, hey. Listen. We’ve created all this free time and bandwidth to advance all kinds of other goals to be more profitable for us. So, you know, it really depends on who’s at the table Mhmm. As to but this is going to allow us to be way more efficient.

It’s gonna allow the good guys to be more efficient, and it’s gonna allow the evil be more efficient. Again, I don’t I don’t think we can make a case that this is gonna make the world a better place. It’s just gonna make both sides more efficient, but we’re still gonna have a balance of good people.

Diandra Camilleri: That’s an interesting take.

Colin White: Thank you. I appreciate that from the firm expert on artificial intelligence who spent more time studying this than all the rest of us.

Diandra Camilleri: Oh, I don’t know if I would use the word expert. Definitely the one who’s curious about it though.

Colin White: Yeah. Well, listen. And and that’s the great thing. And, well, I think it’s great that your curiosity has led you down this body wall. Maybe you bottomed it.

And and that’s the hallmark of a very interesting mind. You know, when you see something, it was, oh, I’m gonna go play with it. FAFO. Like, what is this gonna do? Like, I went to it and said, write me a song about financial planning in the style of Taylor Swift.

That’s where my adolescent mind went to. And it gave me a beautiful song that I apparently can get music written for. I

Diandra Camilleri: guess Didn’t know you’re a Taylor Swift fan. You’re Swifty.

Colin White: Who’s who’s not a Taylor Swift fan? Oh my goodness. She’s amazing. But it’s it’s about having that curiosity and being able to get check on things. But in order to really get further ahead, you have to do critical thinking that goes with it.

What am I really looking at here? Will not abdicate your responsibility to I’m just gonna take this output because it looks better. That’s the living room.

Diandra Camilleri: Yep. No. That’s that’s a good point. Do you have any last thoughts, Cole?

Colin White: No. I never have a last thought because that makes it sound like I’m dying. But I do think that we we need this has been a great con Deandra, thank you for for for consenting to appear on the podcast and have the same conversation you and I have had without recording it before. And I I do think this is an interesting an interesting topic. You know, we may wanna say, you know, within the next 6 months, we’re gonna have a follow-up with what the latest thing is in the AI space.

But, if any any listeners have any input or questions or things they wanna spend us more time on, then please leave it in the comments. But thanks everybody for tuning in. Thanks, Deandra, for being here. And stay tuned for the next episode of Bear Naked Bunny.

Diandra Camilleri: Thanks, Colin.

Colin White: If you’re breaking a sweat trying to figure out what your financial advisor is talking about, you’re not getting the service you need. You probably hate trying to get an answer from them, but you also think moving your accounts will be a headache. And it might be. But working with don’t rock the boat wealth planning dot com or dot RU isn’t exactly stress free, is it? Call us.

We will demystify the world for you.

Kathryn Toope: For more information on the subject of today’s podcast or any other financial topic, please visit us online at verecan.com. That’s verecan.com. There’s plenty of information there or you can reach out to someone on the team. Thanks for listening. Please note, the information provided in this podcast is for general information purposes only.

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