It’s very good at helping you create rules for your financial situation. Such as:
- No purchase over $x without waiting 24 hours or seven days.
- Keep fixed costs under x% of my income.
It can also be helpful with faulty goods and services, which of course cost us money. I’ve used AI many times to find out what is wrong with devices and how to fix them for free. AI can also help you argue against a returns policy or use the Consumer Guarantees Act. It can describe faults clearly and suggest wording or scripts for your argument.
AI is good at drafting letters, scripts for negotiation and complaints. For example, a pet insurance company mucked our whānau around big-time, then refused to release copies of the recorded calls, citing “confidential information”. AI helped draft a quick explanation of New Zealand law to the overseas staff.
It can also help escalate complaints to independent complaint resolution services such as the Banking Ombudsman and the Insurance and Financial Services Ombudsman, Utilities Disputes and others.
AI isn’t so good in some situations. A Wall Street Journal article in February examined the psychology of AI in financial advice. The argument is that AI can sound like a financial adviser, but it’s a sociopath.
The article cited research by Andrew Wen-Chuan Lo, a financial economist at MIT. My interpretation of his argument is that AI is indifferent to personal outcomes, risk tolerance and emotional context. It can be fluent and persuasive, but has no moral compass or legal obligation to act in your best interest as financial advisers do.
You can’t escalate complaints about AI to regulators such as the Financial Markets Authority or Commerce Commission. On the other hand, AI also does not earn commission or have a financial incentive to sell certain products.
We all know that AI can’t always be trusted. It produces plausible answers that are sometimes wrong. Fluent answers can create a false sense of authority, leading to overconfidence in decisions. I personally counter this by asking multiple AI systems to check each other’s replies and provide sources before I believe what I read.
In short, use AI as a research assistant, a translator of financial jargon and a generator of scenarios. It can also help you understand what on earth your financial adviser or salesperson has just told you and can assist in filling in the gaps in your financial knowledge.
Catch up on the debates that dominated the week by signing up to our Opinion newsletter – a weekly round-up of our best commentary.