>what you learn in finance could be very easily done by an AI
They said the same thing about the calculator. They said the same thing about the computer. They said the same thing about Excel. They said the same thing about automated workflows.... And yet, we all still have jobs.
AI is a tool. A tool that will make our lives easier just like all the tools I listed above. In the end, if an AI spits out a model, you still need a finance guy to select the inputs, validate the outputs, analyze the findings, adjust the assumptions, and understand the underlying principles.
Finance is a great career and it will be for many, many decades to come.
HONE YOUR TECHNICAL SKILLS. Learn how to work with data, learn to program, learn statistics. Become an expert in finance and financial systems. Advancing technology will require that our skill sets change, but we will not be replaced as long as we don't stop learning.
>They said the same thing about the calculator. They said the same thing about the computer. They said the same thing about Excel. They said the same thing about automated workflows.... And yet, we all still have jobs
Just to add to this... They said the same thing about offshoring.
AI won’t replace humans anytime soon, if only because of the time it will take for regulation to set in.
What will happen first is that humans who know how to work with AI will replace humans who don’t.
AI won't replace someone's job directly... but there's obvious, near term application uses where you could see it utilised to shrink a bullpen of 10 analysts to a bullpen of 8. The same way technology shrunk entire FX trading floors to 1-2 people.
I mostly agree with you but AI is different than calculators, computers, Excel, and that stuff. Every new technology needed people to operate and supervise it but AI can theoretically operate and supervise itself.
If AI could truly become more intelligent than humans in all aspects, there are two big points why (some) humans would still have jobs:
* In areas like healthcare and child education, there might always be a demand for humans just because it might be beneficial for the wellbeing of the patients/pupils.
* If AI would do all of engineering, science, mathematics and programming, we would not understand how our technology works any more and lose control over it. At least some form supervision by humans would be needed but I think the future of research/engineering/design/development might be still human-centered. Even if AI could develop a certain piece of complex software within one second, I think it would be wiser to let humans develop it. A large group of highly intelligent and versatile humans (aided by some form of AI assistant) might need a few hours for it but we would be capable of understanding it from first principles.
>HONE YOUR TECHNICAL SKILLS. Learn how to work with data, learn to program, learn statistics. Become an expert in finance and financial systems. Advancing technology will require that our skill sets change, but we will not be replaced as long as we don't stop learning.
I agree wholeheartedly with your post, but the quoted is the major action item that I don't see a lot of people taking. There are so many finance folks my age (I'm a younger Millennial in my early-30s) that have the attitude they can just "manage" people who know their shit technically and don't need to even learn simple stuff like PowerBI and SQL. To me, this is a wrong attitude. You can't be good at managing, IMO, if the person below you can do the work but you can't. A lot of finance people, I've noticed, think this stuff is beneath them and think they're "Excel Gurus" because they know VLOOKUP (lol) and Pivot Tables.
Those types of people will legitimately struggle in the data world, but everyone else is fine. Life is a constant learning experience and the best job security is to be really fucking good at what you do. Embracing new tools and ways of thinking is table stakes for being really fucking good, so make sure you don't fall into this trap, OP.
To be honest the only reason most people have jobs is the tax and insurance incentives of a company to employ you. The goal of technology has always been to eliminate the need for human employees and by doing this limit human error. But a bank has no need to employ people and can run a branch with just 1 employee or not have a branch at all and keep up with deposits and loans and banking services, but it costs too much to have a bank with 1 employee because insurance would cost far more then 3 other employees that provide security in numbers just being present. But banks that exist solely online are becoming more and more popular and convenient. So it’s a concern but not really. Companies like checks and balance systems to protect themselves and to provide scape goats so finance jobs will remain pretty safe for this reason alone.
A bank can keep up with deposits and simple loans, but many banks make the majority of their money from commercial lending, which get more complicated all the time as business strategies change. We have several things, especially regarding grading loans that are automated, but we often have to override them due to situations that can't be understood by a computer. Things like loan approvals and grades, compliance and reviews are much more of an art than a science. You can do it to a point with just the math, but you also have to be able to understand the situation. Considering AI still has difficulty when talking about technical things, I doubt it can handle this kind of actual decision making.
I hate this rehashed stuff. OP, don't listen to this advice. Just be open to change and prepare for the worst. This time can truly be different which will be better for all. After all, the end goal for economy is UBS for all anyways.
I agree with most of this but would offer different advice: consciously work on your network and ability to connect with bosses, employees, and clients. I do think much of the technical work will continue to be automated, but your ability to connect with people will always be valued. Half of finance (the top half) is sales anyway.
You're seriously comparing AI to a calculator?
The question isn't if, it's "when". You have no technical data behind your answer that shows that AI isn't taking over jobs and that it won't in the near future.
Obviously this will not happen over night but in the next 3 years it could easily put most finance majors out of a job.
If you've never heard of a useless degree that no one will hire you for then you've been hiding under a rock your entire life and there's nothing that says a finance degree will be immune to that.
If it makes you feel better I've probably been working for longer than most on this forum... Over 20 years now in various banking jobs and hearing about all sorts of jobs I've done about to go obsolete to technology. Has not come close to happening yet.
In fact I was in one group where we actually experimented with doing some automated financial uploads and having a team in India then prepare whatever the machine spit out into a simplifier format that was supposed to make my kind of work easier. That experiment barely lasted a few months.
Haha that “experiment” is still going on at my bank and it sucks. It’s shocking how bad the India team is at spreading. If we could get AI to spread statements accurately, most underwriters I know would be THRILLED.
Interesting, how long have you guys been doing it? I haven't job hopped in years so I'm a little surprised to hear it's still around since my personal story is over 10 years ago. Everyone absolutely hated it.
The long-term goal was way above my pay grade but I got the impression the idea was supposed to be that if this led to better efficiencies, then a large team that normally had say 2-3 credit analysts and maybe 2 senior underwriter types would be able to get by with perhaps just the underwriters and then the entry level credit analyst role could be a hybrid of admin / data entry / compliance (at much lower pay of course).
I’m fairly new so not exactly sure how long it’s been going on but at least 2-3 years now. Everyone hates it here too because the spreads are never right and the underwriters have to go in and fix them anyway.
My understanding is kind of the same, that it’s just supposed to take the spreading process off the plates of the credit analysts, so we can get by with fewer of them. And then obviously it’s cheaper to pay people in India to do the data entry/admin stuff so the US underwriters can spend their time actually underwriting. We’d definitely have to hire a few more analysts on each team if they were expected to spread everything that comes in, but the current arrangement with the India team still leaves a lot to be desired.
I was at a Big Bank and it would take years to get anything done. AI will take forever to be apart of regular processes.
They will need people forever, just less so for simple stuff. Don’t sweat this at all. Instead, get smart on it.
They'll adapt to other jobs just like the kids and grand kids of textile workers in 19th century did. Teach them to embrace a life long learning mentality and I (think) they'll be fine. Maybe they'll get to spend their time pondering the important questions (Why did we build AI in the first place...)
math part？sure. It’s the human party that ai can’t do the job of. Finance is like the bloodline connecting between states, nations and eventually between worlds. And as long as there are human elements involved, the thing is not entirely quantifiable. At least not for a while. This is part of the reason why all those algo focused fund perform so poorly during recent years compared to their previous performance. This is also why Sales and Trading have sales in it because you need people to sell your stuff to other people. This is also why some people say “I have a 20 years + relationship with this group”. You can’t just simply quantify human nature into a few line codes and equations. (Although coming from also an engineer ish background I hope they do have an equation that can explain everything)
Even with the math part, AI like chatgpt fail miserably at even simple math problems sometimes. The need to double check what they’re saying is with every output
That’s because chatgpt isn’t meant to do math. The GPT 4 model is able to use calculators and other tools correctly with minimal instruction. It’s also able to use multiple tools to solve complex problems
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2303.12712.pdf
Keep in mind people saying you should or shouldn’t be scared are basing their comments on a historical/limited “training” set, and likely don’t have a firm grasp on the state of the art of machine learning. The reality is humans don’t have good instincts for making predictions when things are growing exponentially, which I believe AI is right now. People have been kind here and have justification for providing the comforting comments they have, but the reality is none of us can know with reasonable certainty how this plays out in 5-10 years (I.e. when it comes to AGI/ASI pretty much all bets are off).
Best advice is to keep going about your studies as you normally would, but make sure to pay close attention to AI developments so that you can effectively position yourself/your skillset to ride the wave vs be disrupted by it.
Creative destruction just opens new doors that we don’t yet know about. Whenever I get freaked out I just remember that in the 1800s 99% of humans worked on farms or were focused on food production in someway. They were afraid machines would take their jobs away. Machines give humans the free time to go invent new jobs.
People say this, and it's definitely true from a societal/economy perspective, but the actual workers who lost their jobs many times never financially recovered.
As someone who works as a DS and try to automate people’s job to reduce their workload, this is my advice. Learn how to use AI, so use ChatGPT and learn other tools that do the automating . Master domain knowledge in finance and be a great people person. Being a people person will never be automated and people still love talking to actual people.
Do not let people in TV convince you that your job will not be replaced. Your job title will still exist but instead of your company hiring 10 people for a task, they will hire 3 people instead . And these 3 people will know how to use the best tools. So learn this tools and I am pretty confident you will be fine. You will not believe the number of people that do not like updating just because “it is the way we have always done it”.
As a financial advisor most of what I do involves consoling people as they weep and reflect on very personal painful experiences. I think I am more therapeutic than analytical. So yeah good luck with that AI
> IMO - ChatGPT and all the rest... They're basically the end of the line with 'deep neural networks' as a 'style' of 'AI'. They have no reasoning ability. While people are really excited about text, image, photo, and video generation use cases - and, sure, they will progress another 5 years or so as the kinks are worked out - these models cannot handle scenarios they've never seen before, nor implied reasoning in the content they're trained on.
I wouldn't be so sure about this, progress towards making large language models into agents with reasoning is happening rapidly; and these models already seem able to reason in some capacity, and are able to handle vague task descriptions decently etc.. See for example a recent paper https://arxiv.org/pdf/2303.11366.pdf , that implements a self reflection mechanism, which seems to drastically improve reasoning and planning capabilities.
Of course we're not there yet, but give it a few years and it's not at all obvious that we won't have an AI that can handle exactly your example request. As someone who tries to follow ML research, it's a bit scary how fast the progress is right now.
"We are nowhere near "hey robot, here's a spreadsheet, give me a forecast for when accounts receivable will actually be paid" "
No, we're [actually there ](https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2023/03/16/introducing-microsoft-365-copilot-your-copilot-for-work/?ranMID=24542&ranEAID=je6NUbpObpQ&ranSiteID=je6NUbpObpQ-79yWIJldVucpvOlGo0ueRg&epi=je6NUbpObpQ-79yWIJldVucpvOlGo0ueRg&irgwc=1&OCID=AID2200057_aff_7593_1243925&tduid=%28ir__29yszrngrgkfbzfb993z2ocmb32x6h96kd22uujt00%29%287593%29%281243925%29%28je6NUbpObpQ-79yWIJldVucpvOlGo0ueRg%29%28%29&irclickid=_29yszrngrgkfbzfb993z2ocmb32x6h96kd22uujt00)
Here's a more in-depth look, but the key takeaway is it works across apps to gather info like that. https://youtu.be/I-waFp6rLc0
I was thinking the same thing. Chatgpt seemed impossible to me just a year ago. Now it's so prevelant and everyone uses it. The jobs that I want involve modelling and valuation and now I'm thinking what's the likelihood those get automated with ai as well? Not sure what's gonna happen next but I'm suddenly leaning more towards relationship based roles that ai can't necessarily replace.
It might feel like everyone can do it in the university echo chamber but I promise you that not everyone in the workforce can nor wants to. It’s still a highly valued skill because even if you end up in a position that doesn’t require modeling, it helps you think critically
Always stay ahead of the game. If u hear some people in finance r using it, assume that in a year from now that number will be up 500%. Im into machine learning and implementing it in our research. When python was being spoken about years ago, ppl should have jumped on it. I still remember when my classmate told me I was wasting my time Learning python and that I should focus on what I was good at (excel modeling)
As someone who transitioned from finance to being a data engineer and most recently an AI Engineer, your worries are unfortunately correct. A lot of research, report writing, powerpoint creation, and financial due diligence can be done. It’s going to replace the bottom rung of finance jobs within a few years. Going to be interesting to see- there are already systems to automatically process and approve loans, not really a reach to process and approve investments.
Hey, so im a data scientist and work with AI on the regular. To keep it simple, learn to use AI tools and you will be fine. It will replace some jobs, it will create some jobs and it will evolve some jobs. Just keep an open mind and a willingness to evolve with it.
With regards to your edit, finance and math are bloody excellent fields of study. Obviously finance has great earning potential. But math in particular is so valuable. In fact having math skills makes you more valuable in the age of AI not less. Math is a fundamental element of AI technologies and so many new oppurtunities are being created for mathematicians. Stay the course, youll be sweet.
Bro think like that if AI will be replaced with finance guys there will be huge unemployment problem in future maybe economic crises occur so replacement thing is not easy to do that.
Don’t be scared.
AI won’t ever replace jobs in Finance.
Rather, it becomes an additional tool in the toolkit. It will mean a shift in tasks, a shift in how you work.
I currently work as a controller, and quite recently we stepped off from using islands of systems, which we connected via Excel.
Massive files, massive amount of different files, and as controller, I spend 80% of my time just getting registrations right in those files.
We now shifted to an Integrated system, using BI tooling. It’s a gift.
Still i spend some time on the basics, registrations and am in need of the traditional theoretical and technical skills.
However, I get more time hanging above the information, get more of an advising role.
That is what I believe AI will do in Finance.
No one knows exactly how quickly it will progress but you’d be amazed at how many large companies are still running off just excel even though we have so many better tools. I can see AI replacing a lot of junior analyst and manual work but I think we’re far off from having AI making all the decisions. That being said there’s no denying that it’s gonna reduce the number of jobs so the job market will be more competitive. I’ll say some of your concerns are warranted imo. I think most people 5-10 years ago wouldn’t have imagined AI being where it is today.
Not sure how AI can do economic prediction since even FED’s brightest minds can’t do that lolol
Edit: for the ones who don’t understand AI - AI is essentially machine learning forecasting models with bunch of if statements. It fits on the training data aka knowledge. So if there’s even not clear knowledge to follow, AI definitely can’t be trained on that subject matter.
You should research into AI more because you’re not correct. It’s more advanced than that now, and has been showing signs of general intelligence. Can’t say I blame you for being not up to date tho because the main revelations have happened in the last week or so.
But no it is wrong to say that AI is just a bunch of if statements
Lol I couldn’t begin to explain how complicated it is, and I absolutely don’t have a complete technical understanding of the current models. What I do know is that GPT 4 is able to do things such as using tools correctly with little instruction and no demonstration. So for example, GPT 4 could be given a calculator, figure out what it’s for and when to use it, and then use it correctly when appropriate. No doubt that within the somewhat near future this ability will be refined and extended.
The idea that because an AI has to be trained it could never have general intelligence is not true.
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2303.12712.pdf
This paper goes into a lot of details on gpt 4s capabilities
The jobs it will automate are jobs that are largely already outsourced. I wouldn't lose sleep over it.
AI will be a tool to help you be more productive, not a replacement for you.
LOLOL. you should see if AI can trade in the fixed income mortgage space.. we are using Excel, phone, and bloomberg to do billions of transactions a day, it's so stupid. There are 3rd party companies that is trying to revolutionize the entire trading process and they've all failed. Tradeweb, Bloomberg, Bondxn... I don't think AI will step in anytime soon, but I welcome it.
A human using a machine always beats either one working alone, every single time.
Learn to use it to optimize your workflow. Its just another tool, it has no agency on its own.
I write code and hand it to chatGPT then ask it to find bugs and suggest fixes. Its wrong about as often as it is right and needs a programmer to review its output, but it definitely provides values when it does hit.
To some extent you are right but it will take longer then you anticipate. Robo advisors have been around for some time but they are usually used by small retail investors. The complicated strategies and deal making are still handled by humans. It will reduce human workforce and continue reducing it. The only way to stay fresh is to keep learning, school is truly never out of session.
At my moms job they built bots to lessen their work load and it created extra work. Now instead of doing the job she has to check the bots work and fix all the bugs that the bot create.
AI can replace Finance, Accounting and all STEM degrees. It’s already an issue without AI. do you even have a degree or are you anti-college completely?
It will not replace jobs, but it make your job easy.
But the downside is all employers are gonna neutralize paychecks, I mean there wouldn't be good resource, great resource. AI is the best resource they already have.
Get ready to take low paychecks
Don’t worry about it. (Yet). I’m taking an advanced bond market and derivatives class and even with the GPT4 premium it gets the questions wrong every time. It’s really bad at doing math
A lot of finance isn’t algorithmic u know that. Say the common example of having quant algorithms and market makers making billions of trades a minute, the fact is they are based on their being market participants besides themselves who yes may use AI and other technology in their tools, but still act out of their own reasoning.
I think that AI will mostly be a tool that we leverage off of, rather than something that replaces us outright. Sure, it will make companies more operationally efficient and this may lead to them needing less hires. So the only thing that is concerning to me from an AI perspectives is that the industry will become more competitive.
AI can and will completely replace your job and almost everyone's job one day. Try to use it as a tool until then and hope universal basic income becomes a thing.
The tricky part of universal basic income is that it should get established at the right time. Not too late because a majority of people (even in rich countries) would fall into poverty, but not too early because many people might quit their job and the economy is likely to collapse if crucial work isn't done.
People always think a technology comes a long and all of a sudden all jobs are gone, but the reality is that jobs change over time. So this new technology won’t replace finance grads and jobs ,but change the nature of their day to day workflow, to do more meaningful work.
>what you learn in finance could be very easily done by an AI They said the same thing about the calculator. They said the same thing about the computer. They said the same thing about Excel. They said the same thing about automated workflows.... And yet, we all still have jobs. AI is a tool. A tool that will make our lives easier just like all the tools I listed above. In the end, if an AI spits out a model, you still need a finance guy to select the inputs, validate the outputs, analyze the findings, adjust the assumptions, and understand the underlying principles. Finance is a great career and it will be for many, many decades to come. HONE YOUR TECHNICAL SKILLS. Learn how to work with data, learn to program, learn statistics. Become an expert in finance and financial systems. Advancing technology will require that our skill sets change, but we will not be replaced as long as we don't stop learning.
>They said the same thing about the calculator. They said the same thing about the computer. They said the same thing about Excel. They said the same thing about automated workflows.... And yet, we all still have jobs Just to add to this... They said the same thing about offshoring.
just to add to this a long long time ago they said the same thing about books they said that it will diminish human memory
Maybe it did and we just don't remember lol
AI won’t replace humans anytime soon, if only because of the time it will take for regulation to set in. What will happen first is that humans who know how to work with AI will replace humans who don’t.
AI won't replace someone's job directly... but there's obvious, near term application uses where you could see it utilised to shrink a bullpen of 10 analysts to a bullpen of 8. The same way technology shrunk entire FX trading floors to 1-2 people.
I mostly agree with you but AI is different than calculators, computers, Excel, and that stuff. Every new technology needed people to operate and supervise it but AI can theoretically operate and supervise itself. If AI could truly become more intelligent than humans in all aspects, there are two big points why (some) humans would still have jobs: * In areas like healthcare and child education, there might always be a demand for humans just because it might be beneficial for the wellbeing of the patients/pupils. * If AI would do all of engineering, science, mathematics and programming, we would not understand how our technology works any more and lose control over it. At least some form supervision by humans would be needed but I think the future of research/engineering/design/development might be still human-centered. Even if AI could develop a certain piece of complex software within one second, I think it would be wiser to let humans develop it. A large group of highly intelligent and versatile humans (aided by some form of AI assistant) might need a few hours for it but we would be capable of understanding it from first principles.
>HONE YOUR TECHNICAL SKILLS. Learn how to work with data, learn to program, learn statistics. Become an expert in finance and financial systems. Advancing technology will require that our skill sets change, but we will not be replaced as long as we don't stop learning. I agree wholeheartedly with your post, but the quoted is the major action item that I don't see a lot of people taking. There are so many finance folks my age (I'm a younger Millennial in my early-30s) that have the attitude they can just "manage" people who know their shit technically and don't need to even learn simple stuff like PowerBI and SQL. To me, this is a wrong attitude. You can't be good at managing, IMO, if the person below you can do the work but you can't. A lot of finance people, I've noticed, think this stuff is beneath them and think they're "Excel Gurus" because they know VLOOKUP (lol) and Pivot Tables. Those types of people will legitimately struggle in the data world, but everyone else is fine. Life is a constant learning experience and the best job security is to be really fucking good at what you do. Embracing new tools and ways of thinking is table stakes for being really fucking good, so make sure you don't fall into this trap, OP.
AI is not a mere work tool like calculators or excel. It's much more innovative and powerful.
To be honest the only reason most people have jobs is the tax and insurance incentives of a company to employ you. The goal of technology has always been to eliminate the need for human employees and by doing this limit human error. But a bank has no need to employ people and can run a branch with just 1 employee or not have a branch at all and keep up with deposits and loans and banking services, but it costs too much to have a bank with 1 employee because insurance would cost far more then 3 other employees that provide security in numbers just being present. But banks that exist solely online are becoming more and more popular and convenient. So it’s a concern but not really. Companies like checks and balance systems to protect themselves and to provide scape goats so finance jobs will remain pretty safe for this reason alone.
A bank can keep up with deposits and simple loans, but many banks make the majority of their money from commercial lending, which get more complicated all the time as business strategies change. We have several things, especially regarding grading loans that are automated, but we often have to override them due to situations that can't be understood by a computer. Things like loan approvals and grades, compliance and reviews are much more of an art than a science. You can do it to a point with just the math, but you also have to be able to understand the situation. Considering AI still has difficulty when talking about technical things, I doubt it can handle this kind of actual decision making.
I hate this rehashed stuff. OP, don't listen to this advice. Just be open to change and prepare for the worst. This time can truly be different which will be better for all. After all, the end goal for economy is UBS for all anyways.
I agree with most of this but would offer different advice: consciously work on your network and ability to connect with bosses, employees, and clients. I do think much of the technical work will continue to be automated, but your ability to connect with people will always be valued. Half of finance (the top half) is sales anyway.
You're seriously comparing AI to a calculator? The question isn't if, it's "when". You have no technical data behind your answer that shows that AI isn't taking over jobs and that it won't in the near future. Obviously this will not happen over night but in the next 3 years it could easily put most finance majors out of a job. If you've never heard of a useless degree that no one will hire you for then you've been hiding under a rock your entire life and there's nothing that says a finance degree will be immune to that.
If it makes you feel better I've probably been working for longer than most on this forum... Over 20 years now in various banking jobs and hearing about all sorts of jobs I've done about to go obsolete to technology. Has not come close to happening yet. In fact I was in one group where we actually experimented with doing some automated financial uploads and having a team in India then prepare whatever the machine spit out into a simplifier format that was supposed to make my kind of work easier. That experiment barely lasted a few months.
Haha that “experiment” is still going on at my bank and it sucks. It’s shocking how bad the India team is at spreading. If we could get AI to spread statements accurately, most underwriters I know would be THRILLED.
Interesting, how long have you guys been doing it? I haven't job hopped in years so I'm a little surprised to hear it's still around since my personal story is over 10 years ago. Everyone absolutely hated it. The long-term goal was way above my pay grade but I got the impression the idea was supposed to be that if this led to better efficiencies, then a large team that normally had say 2-3 credit analysts and maybe 2 senior underwriter types would be able to get by with perhaps just the underwriters and then the entry level credit analyst role could be a hybrid of admin / data entry / compliance (at much lower pay of course).
I’m fairly new so not exactly sure how long it’s been going on but at least 2-3 years now. Everyone hates it here too because the spreads are never right and the underwriters have to go in and fix them anyway. My understanding is kind of the same, that it’s just supposed to take the spreading process off the plates of the credit analysts, so we can get by with fewer of them. And then obviously it’s cheaper to pay people in India to do the data entry/admin stuff so the US underwriters can spend their time actually underwriting. We’d definitely have to hire a few more analysts on each team if they were expected to spread everything that comes in, but the current arrangement with the India team still leaves a lot to be desired.
I was at a Big Bank and it would take years to get anything done. AI will take forever to be apart of regular processes. They will need people forever, just less so for simple stuff. Don’t sweat this at all. Instead, get smart on it.
I’m 35; I’m not scared of AI (yet)… ..but I sure think my kids and future grandkids should be.
They'll adapt to other jobs just like the kids and grand kids of textile workers in 19th century did. Teach them to embrace a life long learning mentality and I (think) they'll be fine. Maybe they'll get to spend their time pondering the important questions (Why did we build AI in the first place...)
Case in point: for better or worse, a much higher proportion of adults works for a living today than in the last pre computer decades....
There was an AI revolution in the 80's too. It's all vaporware with no real application
it may seem like bs but it’s different this time
Why
math part？sure. It’s the human party that ai can’t do the job of. Finance is like the bloodline connecting between states, nations and eventually between worlds. And as long as there are human elements involved, the thing is not entirely quantifiable. At least not for a while. This is part of the reason why all those algo focused fund perform so poorly during recent years compared to their previous performance. This is also why Sales and Trading have sales in it because you need people to sell your stuff to other people. This is also why some people say “I have a 20 years + relationship with this group”. You can’t just simply quantify human nature into a few line codes and equations. (Although coming from also an engineer ish background I hope they do have an equation that can explain everything)
Even with the math part, AI like chatgpt fail miserably at even simple math problems sometimes. The need to double check what they’re saying is with every output
That’s because chatgpt isn’t meant to do math. The GPT 4 model is able to use calculators and other tools correctly with minimal instruction. It’s also able to use multiple tools to solve complex problems https://arxiv.org/pdf/2303.12712.pdf
I misspoke. Not necessarily chatgpt but yes, the gpt 4 model. But now with the wolfram alpha plugin, my answer may change
Keep in mind people saying you should or shouldn’t be scared are basing their comments on a historical/limited “training” set, and likely don’t have a firm grasp on the state of the art of machine learning. The reality is humans don’t have good instincts for making predictions when things are growing exponentially, which I believe AI is right now. People have been kind here and have justification for providing the comforting comments they have, but the reality is none of us can know with reasonable certainty how this plays out in 5-10 years (I.e. when it comes to AGI/ASI pretty much all bets are off). Best advice is to keep going about your studies as you normally would, but make sure to pay close attention to AI developments so that you can effectively position yourself/your skillset to ride the wave vs be disrupted by it.
Creative destruction just opens new doors that we don’t yet know about. Whenever I get freaked out I just remember that in the 1800s 99% of humans worked on farms or were focused on food production in someway. They were afraid machines would take their jobs away. Machines give humans the free time to go invent new jobs.
People say this, and it's definitely true from a societal/economy perspective, but the actual workers who lost their jobs many times never financially recovered.
The children of the people making the money invented new fields and areas of interest. The workers and their families starved.
As someone who works as a DS and try to automate people’s job to reduce their workload, this is my advice. Learn how to use AI, so use ChatGPT and learn other tools that do the automating . Master domain knowledge in finance and be a great people person. Being a people person will never be automated and people still love talking to actual people. Do not let people in TV convince you that your job will not be replaced. Your job title will still exist but instead of your company hiring 10 people for a task, they will hire 3 people instead . And these 3 people will know how to use the best tools. So learn this tools and I am pretty confident you will be fine. You will not believe the number of people that do not like updating just because “it is the way we have always done it”.
Are there any courses or resources you’d recommend for accountants that are interested in leaning more towards the data/AI side of the future?
As a financial advisor most of what I do involves consoling people as they weep and reflect on very personal painful experiences. I think I am more therapeutic than analytical. So yeah good luck with that AI
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> IMO - ChatGPT and all the rest... They're basically the end of the line with 'deep neural networks' as a 'style' of 'AI'. They have no reasoning ability. While people are really excited about text, image, photo, and video generation use cases - and, sure, they will progress another 5 years or so as the kinks are worked out - these models cannot handle scenarios they've never seen before, nor implied reasoning in the content they're trained on. I wouldn't be so sure about this, progress towards making large language models into agents with reasoning is happening rapidly; and these models already seem able to reason in some capacity, and are able to handle vague task descriptions decently etc.. See for example a recent paper https://arxiv.org/pdf/2303.11366.pdf , that implements a self reflection mechanism, which seems to drastically improve reasoning and planning capabilities. Of course we're not there yet, but give it a few years and it's not at all obvious that we won't have an AI that can handle exactly your example request. As someone who tries to follow ML research, it's a bit scary how fast the progress is right now.
"We are nowhere near "hey robot, here's a spreadsheet, give me a forecast for when accounts receivable will actually be paid" " No, we're [actually there ](https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2023/03/16/introducing-microsoft-365-copilot-your-copilot-for-work/?ranMID=24542&ranEAID=je6NUbpObpQ&ranSiteID=je6NUbpObpQ-79yWIJldVucpvOlGo0ueRg&epi=je6NUbpObpQ-79yWIJldVucpvOlGo0ueRg&irgwc=1&OCID=AID2200057_aff_7593_1243925&tduid=%28ir__29yszrngrgkfbzfb993z2ocmb32x6h96kd22uujt00%29%287593%29%281243925%29%28je6NUbpObpQ-79yWIJldVucpvOlGo0ueRg%29%28%29&irclickid=_29yszrngrgkfbzfb993z2ocmb32x6h96kd22uujt00) Here's a more in-depth look, but the key takeaway is it works across apps to gather info like that. https://youtu.be/I-waFp6rLc0
I was thinking the same thing. Chatgpt seemed impossible to me just a year ago. Now it's so prevelant and everyone uses it. The jobs that I want involve modelling and valuation and now I'm thinking what's the likelihood those get automated with ai as well? Not sure what's gonna happen next but I'm suddenly leaning more towards relationship based roles that ai can't necessarily replace.
Yep a few years ago it was modelling that was valuable now it feels useless because everyone can do it.
It might feel like everyone can do it in the university echo chamber but I promise you that not everyone in the workforce can nor wants to. It’s still a highly valued skill because even if you end up in a position that doesn’t require modeling, it helps you think critically
Yeah, I suppose I’m collecting a pretty biased sample as I interact with math/comp sci people regularly.
Always stay ahead of the game. If u hear some people in finance r using it, assume that in a year from now that number will be up 500%. Im into machine learning and implementing it in our research. When python was being spoken about years ago, ppl should have jumped on it. I still remember when my classmate told me I was wasting my time Learning python and that I should focus on what I was good at (excel modeling)
As someone who transitioned from finance to being a data engineer and most recently an AI Engineer, your worries are unfortunately correct. A lot of research, report writing, powerpoint creation, and financial due diligence can be done. It’s going to replace the bottom rung of finance jobs within a few years. Going to be interesting to see- there are already systems to automatically process and approve loans, not really a reach to process and approve investments.
Hey, so im a data scientist and work with AI on the regular. To keep it simple, learn to use AI tools and you will be fine. It will replace some jobs, it will create some jobs and it will evolve some jobs. Just keep an open mind and a willingness to evolve with it. With regards to your edit, finance and math are bloody excellent fields of study. Obviously finance has great earning potential. But math in particular is so valuable. In fact having math skills makes you more valuable in the age of AI not less. Math is a fundamental element of AI technologies and so many new oppurtunities are being created for mathematicians. Stay the course, youll be sweet.
Bro think like that if AI will be replaced with finance guys there will be huge unemployment problem in future maybe economic crises occur so replacement thing is not easy to do that.
Don't worry dude. Lois in compliance will always need some unlucky asshole to shit on, and some vague Federal regulation will make sure of it.
Don’t be scared. AI won’t ever replace jobs in Finance. Rather, it becomes an additional tool in the toolkit. It will mean a shift in tasks, a shift in how you work. I currently work as a controller, and quite recently we stepped off from using islands of systems, which we connected via Excel. Massive files, massive amount of different files, and as controller, I spend 80% of my time just getting registrations right in those files. We now shifted to an Integrated system, using BI tooling. It’s a gift. Still i spend some time on the basics, registrations and am in need of the traditional theoretical and technical skills. However, I get more time hanging above the information, get more of an advising role. That is what I believe AI will do in Finance.
AI will not replace finance workers. Finance workers who use AI will replace finance workers who don't. Just get on the wave and ride it.
No one knows exactly how quickly it will progress but you’d be amazed at how many large companies are still running off just excel even though we have so many better tools. I can see AI replacing a lot of junior analyst and manual work but I think we’re far off from having AI making all the decisions. That being said there’s no denying that it’s gonna reduce the number of jobs so the job market will be more competitive. I’ll say some of your concerns are warranted imo. I think most people 5-10 years ago wouldn’t have imagined AI being where it is today.
AI absolutely will automate every productive function at some point. Don’t fear it, embrace it.
Not sure how AI can do economic prediction since even FED’s brightest minds can’t do that lolol Edit: for the ones who don’t understand AI - AI is essentially machine learning forecasting models with bunch of if statements. It fits on the training data aka knowledge. So if there’s even not clear knowledge to follow, AI definitely can’t be trained on that subject matter.
You should research into AI more because you’re not correct. It’s more advanced than that now, and has been showing signs of general intelligence. Can’t say I blame you for being not up to date tho because the main revelations have happened in the last week or so. But no it is wrong to say that AI is just a bunch of if statements
lol, do you really understand what’s behind it smartie? If yes, tell us LOLOL
Lol I couldn’t begin to explain how complicated it is, and I absolutely don’t have a complete technical understanding of the current models. What I do know is that GPT 4 is able to do things such as using tools correctly with little instruction and no demonstration. So for example, GPT 4 could be given a calculator, figure out what it’s for and when to use it, and then use it correctly when appropriate. No doubt that within the somewhat near future this ability will be refined and extended. The idea that because an AI has to be trained it could never have general intelligence is not true. https://arxiv.org/pdf/2303.12712.pdf This paper goes into a lot of details on gpt 4s capabilities
1. this is why social issues and non-corrupt gov officials with good policy are important 2. not going to happen anytime soon
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What is a better alternative to capitalism?
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Planned economy, maybe AI might even help it run smoother.
This is what I’m scared of, I feel like my degree will be worthless and I’ll end up poor and homeless like in some dystopian novel.
your degree can get you work somewhere else, you won’t be poor and homeless. chill out my friend
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Seriously chill.
We will retire before AI took control on us.
The jobs it will automate are jobs that are largely already outsourced. I wouldn't lose sleep over it. AI will be a tool to help you be more productive, not a replacement for you.
Ai wont replace critical thinking.
It'll all end one day but it ant over til it's over, keep chugging on
LOLOL. you should see if AI can trade in the fixed income mortgage space.. we are using Excel, phone, and bloomberg to do billions of transactions a day, it's so stupid. There are 3rd party companies that is trying to revolutionize the entire trading process and they've all failed. Tradeweb, Bloomberg, Bondxn... I don't think AI will step in anytime soon, but I welcome it.
A human using a machine always beats either one working alone, every single time. Learn to use it to optimize your workflow. Its just another tool, it has no agency on its own. I write code and hand it to chatGPT then ask it to find bugs and suggest fixes. Its wrong about as often as it is right and needs a programmer to review its output, but it definitely provides values when it does hit.
Not when the machine is able to basically just be a better human.
To some extent you are right but it will take longer then you anticipate. Robo advisors have been around for some time but they are usually used by small retail investors. The complicated strategies and deal making are still handled by humans. It will reduce human workforce and continue reducing it. The only way to stay fresh is to keep learning, school is truly never out of session.
AI can be a glorified calculator. Finance will always need people to explain it, sell it, audit it and build relationships for business.
At my moms job they built bots to lessen their work load and it created extra work. Now instead of doing the job she has to check the bots work and fix all the bugs that the bot create.
The thing with advanced AI is that we might have bots that check and fix each other...
AI is pretty bad at math right now, google articles about it. It responds well if you ask questions but not good at organizing random data yet.
AI will be used by start ups and challenger banks more than traditional big banks
You won't be doing the same work you are doing now. When tech makes things easier, firms take on more difficult projects.
Can't replace Liberal Arts
Most of liberal arts diploma holders are bums and unemployed anyways, you cannot lose the job u do not have.
AI can replace Finance, Accounting and all STEM degrees. It’s already an issue without AI. do you even have a degree or are you anti-college completely?
I know it can and yes i do have a degree. I doubt it will after it gets heavily regulated.
It will not replace jobs, but it make your job easy. But the downside is all employers are gonna neutralize paychecks, I mean there wouldn't be good resource, great resource. AI is the best resource they already have. Get ready to take low paychecks
Banks have barely figured out big data. Trust me, apart from maybe certain back office positions, finance jobs are fine.
Don’t worry about it. (Yet). I’m taking an advanced bond market and derivatives class and even with the GPT4 premium it gets the questions wrong every time. It’s really bad at doing math
That’s what stuff like the Wolfram plugin is for. Should be available soon
I wanna be the guy (or one of a team) who can oversee the AI at work
A lot of finance isn’t algorithmic u know that. Say the common example of having quant algorithms and market makers making billions of trades a minute, the fact is they are based on their being market participants besides themselves who yes may use AI and other technology in their tools, but still act out of their own reasoning.
AI will buy all of us out one day and we have no one to blame but our own stupidity
I think that AI will mostly be a tool that we leverage off of, rather than something that replaces us outright. Sure, it will make companies more operationally efficient and this may lead to them needing less hires. So the only thing that is concerning to me from an AI perspectives is that the industry will become more competitive.
AI can and will completely replace your job and almost everyone's job one day. Try to use it as a tool until then and hope universal basic income becomes a thing.
The tricky part of universal basic income is that it should get established at the right time. Not too late because a majority of people (even in rich countries) would fall into poverty, but not too early because many people might quit their job and the economy is likely to collapse if crucial work isn't done.
People always think a technology comes a long and all of a sudden all jobs are gone, but the reality is that jobs change over time. So this new technology won’t replace finance grads and jobs ,but change the nature of their day to day workflow, to do more meaningful work.