AI and I: The Future of Work

Image Credit: ChatGPT

Advances in AI technology lead me to contemplate the future of work, as I'm sure you have done also.  Which professions does AI threaten and which ones remain safe?  AI has disrupted computer programming already, and the future looks iffy for many service professionals.  Meanwhile, hairdressers appear safe, at least for now, and I think psychologists do too.  Would you confide your deepest, most personal issues to an AI chatbot, and then wonder where that data went who used it to train their "Large Language Models"?  No?  I thought not.

For sure, someone will now send me a link to a robo-therapist already in business.  I can picture the marketing taglines: "One hour is a real hour"  and "Open 24/7.  Call or text at any time."  Nevertheless, I think that sympathetic therapists with a private office, a code of confidentiality, and a couch will still find demand for their services.

Into the category of still safe professions, I tentatively add investment advisors.  You may see this as wishful thinking on my part, but hear me out.

Since the dawn of computing, Man has tried to build computer models which could choose good investments.  All of those efforts have resulted in one of two outcomes.  Either A) the models don't work - nowhere close, or B) the models do work, in which case the modelers, such as Jim Simons of Renaissance Technologies, keep the models for themselves and use it to become billionaires.  If it's a public model, available for sale to you and me, at any reasonable price, you may feel confident that it falls into Category A.

Also, markets don't just crunch numbers.  They are dynamic, adaptive systems which continuously incorporate and adapt to new information.  No investment model works for long.  If ChatGPT entered the marketplace and started to buy stocks, based on a model which it had developed, then the prices of those stocks would climb, and quickly, to a point at which the original investment rationale no longer applied.  ChatGPT would need a new model.  This same problem bedevils human stockpickers.  Their models only work for a little while.

So I think that humans have a fighting chance against AI in the quest for long term stock market returns.  We can't process as much information as the robots can.  But the markets will frustrate robots just as they frustrate us, and for identical reasons.

Meanwhile, we humans can rely on the tried and true methods of diversification and a sane portfolio balance to keep up with the markets.  I think that robots will ultimately do the same, no more, no less.  You may think I'm fooling myself.  Maybe.  However, I also have a code of confidentiality, and I have a couch.