Some Investors Turning to ChatGPT for Money Advice

NEW YORK (AP) — With more than 100 million users, the world has been struck by a kind of artificial intelligence (AI) meteor in recent months – ChatGPT.

The platform sent shockwaves rippling through every corner of the information economy while knowledge workers everywhere grapple with how generative AI may impact their professional lives.

The platform hit the ground running, breaking records within days of its release in late November last year. It took Netflix three and a half years to reach one million users, Twitter two years, and Instagram two months. ChatGPT reached the coveted milestone in five days.

According to Google Trends, search queries for “ChatGPT” peaked in late March, reaching a score of 100 – the highest peak popularity. Traffic analytics research shows that same month, it became the fastest-growing site of the top 50 most visited sites on the planet, and by May, it was clocking roughly 1.8 billion visits per month.

This meteoric rise of the world’s leading generative AI platform has been breathtaking in its scale and disruptive in its impact. While there is consternation about the technology’s potential for replacing workers, many are excited about its potential to automate tasks, potentially lightening workloads or assisting with financial affairs.

Based on a recent Yahoo Finance/Ipsos survey, 19% of young investors have used ChatGPT for advice on personal financial matters.

Like Wildfire

Not only is ChatGPT dominating headlines, but its responses can become the main content of entire news articles.

There have been a plethora of news stories that simply show off what ChatGPT can do, with journalists copying and pasting in the bot’s response to various prompts. These include ChatGPT writing protest songs, designing a diet regimen, planning a vacation, predicting the outcomes of Indian elections, and even inventing its own artificial emotions.

With the news media’s fascination with the bot, most people have gotten wind of the super bot, but not everyone is actually using it.

While 68% of U.S. adults have heard of ChatGPT, relatively few have tried leveraging the technology for productivity, according to a March Pew Research Center survey. However, most ChatGPT users said it has been at least somewhat useful to them.

Show Me the Money

While Pew found relatively few Americans have used ChatGPT for entertainment, learning, or work, other studies show it has proved more popular for investment advice.

According to a later survey conducted by Motley Fool in April, 47% of Americans have asked ChatGPT for stock recommendations. The findings show Millennials, Gen Z, and high-income Americans were the most likely to seek out ChatGPT’s investing advice.

“High-income earners are often more financially secure and can more comfortably allocate risk capital to newer, if riskier, stock selection strategies and technologies like ChatGPT,” explains Asit Sharma, a senior analyst, of the findings.

ChatGPT’s abilities extend beyond portfolio building, though. It can be used to assist with all kinds of personal finance issues.

It can provide guidance on how to budget for immediate and long-term goals, such as retirement or a down payment on a house. Personal finance expert Jacob Wade outlined prompts that led ChatGPT to create highly-customizable debt repayment plans.

According to the University of Illinois’ Tax School, ChatGPT can assist users in preparing for specific tax scenarios and hypothetical situations too. It can assess an individual’s historical tax data and provide tips on potential tax-saving opportunities. These could include making suggestions on deductions so an individual can optimize their federal income tax bracket or offering better strategies to reduce taxes for high-income earners.

ChatGPT is increasingly becoming the tool solopreneurs use to get inspiration for their next lucrative project.

YouTube is teeming with videos showing off how to jumpstart new online hustles with new AI. These run the gamut from writing e-books, identifying niche e-commerce markets, generating sales copy, designing online courses, and many other tasks that help entrepreneurs generate even more residual income.

Real Limitations

Yet as with all new technologies, the hype can reach a feverish pitch. It can be easy to get carried away and overestimate the platform’s abilities.

Meta’s AI chief, Yann LeCun, recently threw cold water on the buzz, saying ChatGPT is “missing something really big” to reach human-level intelligence and is still not as bright as a dog.

Similarly, AI expert Rodney Brooks argues that although ChatGPT is brilliant at correlating language, it has yet to have an underlying model of the real world. This means ChatGPT can only give you “…what an answer should sound like, which is different from what an answer should be.”

ChatGPT certainly has significant shortcomings, yet this is only the beginning of the AI revolution. The platform has stunned the world with its innovation and prompted people to consider what will come next and plan for the future.

Used correctly, individuals can gain a wealth of insights and strategies from this remarkable tool, improving their confidence to navigate the complex world of personal finance. ChatGPT will likely continue to improve, opening the door to greater gains for those who are ready to take their financial well-being to the next level.

This post was produced by Top Dollar Investor and syndicated by Wealth of Geeks.