Should I Hire a Robot or a Human?

I was recently sitting in the airport catching up on emails and received a response from a woman who was applying for a position at our company. I had reached out requesting that she share her availability for an introductory call. Her response began with the following:

“Here’s a polished and professional version of your reply:”

For those of you who are not well versed, she clearly asked AI to write her an email. And to her credit it was polished and professional. But it was two sentences long and the fact that she forgot to omit part of her conversation with the AI chatbot put her on the same level as the guy who listed “Lifting with the boys” on his resume.

If you have never used any of the large language learning or generative AI models, I would encourage you to do so. If you can Google something, you can use AI and achieve far better results. And using a tool like ChatGPT to help construct or refine professional writing is a wonderful use case, however humans still have a role.

People tend to focus on the negative outcomes of innovative technologies at the expense of the positive ones. Yes, this is what gets clicks, but the other reason people focus on the negatives is because what will be lost is clearer than what will be created. For example, it was clear people were not going to carry newspapers or CD players forever. But no one could imagine what would become of the iPhone and its millions of apps. This should not lead people to believe technology is going to put us on the streets, because that has never been the case. Instead, technological advancements have aided in the growth of societies and made people’s lives better.

To answer the question of whether to hire a robot or a human, the answer is yes. Businesses should be spending capital on both. The best organizations will implement these new technological tools and utilize humans to augment them. Both technology and humans have shortcomings. Robots will be better at automated tasks or data entry. And humans will be better at human interactions and intuition. Finding cohesion between the two will lead to the best results.

When recently discussing finances with a friend, he shared his approach to self-managing his finances. In between talking about private equity deals, he mentioned using a robo-advisor. If you’re not familiar with a robo-advisor, it is an online platform that uses algorithms to provide financial planning and portfolio management with minimal human intervention. Knowing that he is an entrepreneur, I went on to ask if he contributes to a SEP IRA or Solo 401k. He had no idea what I was talking about. And here is the problem.

You don’t know what you don’t know. This is a shortcoming of humans but can also be a shortcoming with AI and robo-advisors. Yes, they are powerful tools, but if you’re misusing them, it doesn’t matter how powerful they are. For example, if you are withholding information from AI or asking the wrong questions, you’re going to get incomplete feedback. In the instance of my friend; he was neglecting the most important thing he could be doing with his personal finance, which was maxing out his tax deferred contributions by creating a company plan. All it would have taken was a conversation with a human advisor to uncover that.

AT THOR Wealth Management we aim to provide a comprehensive approach to personal finance. We also understand that technology plays an important role and are exploring different AI solutions that may help improve our service. If you have questions and would like to talk with us further, please call us at 513-271-6777. For more THOR reading, click here to go to the Blogs and Market Updates section on our website. Follow us on social media: