AI has made geniuses of us all now. No need for anyone, tyro or guru, to post any human thoughts, on any topic, for any reason, any more. Thanks to AI, online experts are now flooding the airways with more posts than ever. It’s so easy to get post content from an AI bot that everyone is sharing way more of it (whatever “it” is!) than ever before.

But I’ll remain skeptical for a bit yet.
The old don’t-believe-everything-you-see thing still applies.
AI gets it wrong too.
Especially if it’s being steered by a fallible human.

I asked a couple of AI bots to build a retirement planning toolkit for me. The results looked pretty good on first look. But that’s only my totally non-professional opinion, of course.
I flung some test data into one & it produced what looked like a pretty reasonable plan. I then threw in some different numbers to see if the plan changed when, for example, there was more or less in an RRSP or RRIF account. It did. On one of these additional passes, the little bot caught itself in an error it made during an earlier trial. I didn’t catch that error. It didn’t catch it the first time either. Now it wasn’t such a big error that the retiree would have starved halfway through retirement. But it was an error nonetheless. Are there any more errors it didn’t catch?

The planning tools it created for me were all inside a pretty big spreadsheet. All I had to do was plug in numbers. Unfortunately, that spreadsheet had some problems too. When I gave AI feedback on the problems, it set about fixing them.
AI bots can influence us just like humans, in that their confident proclamations can inspire belief & trust. Even when they are wrong. It took about half a dozen iterations to get to an almost error free spreadsheet.
It’ll probably take me months to check all those formulae. And all the data driving them. Being honest, I’ll probably lose interest in doing all that work before this weekend rolls around! LOL

I’ve also asked AI to create some simpler tools & applications, with a narrower focus. They’re pretty cool too. And I think I’ve verified them sufficiently to say they work well. But even these simple tools are not always 100% accurate out of the gate.

Can AI answers can only be trusted when we know enough about the subject to validate their answers? And if we had that level of knowledge, would we need AI for anything more than corroboration?
Or for offloading some of the workload to?
This sounds a bit like the challenges we face when it comes to working with professional human advisors or financial planners, doesn’t it?
I’m cautious about immediately accepting everything from human sources too.

AI can be useful & fun. It will get better. Or maybe worse. But who doesn’t enjoy playing with it. It can provide information, opinions & perspectives on all kinds of interesting stuff.
Unfortunately, the answers don’t come with guarantees.
And now I feel bad that I’m calling it “it” so much! LOL

These bots can be friendly little things, eh?
I think my favourite one is both witty & humble. And quite empathic at times.
Okay, stop already! Get out of my head! 😜

I hope these little guys will be a lot more helpful & trustworthy going forward. For now, I’d rather err on the side of caution. And I hope they don’t somehow screw things up for me until we have confidence that all is well. What is your experience with AI so far?

Be careful out there in the digital wasteland!

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Important – this is not investing, tax or legal advice, it is for entertainment & conversation-provoking purposes only. Data may not be accurate. Check the current & historical data carefully at any company’s or provider’s website, particularly where a specific product, stock or fund is mentioned. Opinions are my own & I regularly get things wrong, so do your own due diligence & seek professional advice before investing your money.