AI - The Perfect Assistant?

Recently, while doing a demo of one of our products, I was asked “where is the AI in this?” The question is neither uncommon nor rhetorical but comes with much sub-text. Do we genuinely want to know how the machine has arrived at an answer? How many will even understand the method if it was explained to them? Or do we think that unless AI is demonstrable in an in-you-face way, it just isn’t impressive? 

My personal view is that AI should be telling me things that I wouldn’t know or pay attention to otherwise. It is not there to take a decision for me. It is not there to wave a mathematical algorithm in my face. Just tell me what you think I should know, learn from my input and just keep getting better at it – not a big ask, surely?

We all see suggestions from Amazon and Netflix. The broad logic is evident even if the mathematics is not – do we care? Sometimes, we go “hmmm, that’s interesting”, which tells their AI engine something about us. But much of the time we simply ignore their suggestions, which also tells their AI engine something about us. 

This is even more true in financial services. I want someone to track my portfolio all the time, keep looking at the market and tell me that one of the funds in my portfolio hasn’t done well for 2 months in a row. I want someone to tell me what my choices are if I want to make a change. Just show me the result and let me decide. 

Most of the time, I don’t want be shown a covariance matrix of 2,000 funds and results of daily analysis. Nor do I want to know the optimisation methodology which makes one fund choice better than the other. But sometimes, maybe just to reassure myself, I want to be able to say “Hold on. Can you please show me how you got to this result?”

So for me, the best AI is the one that makes you go “Wow, I didn’t know that – thanks for pointing it out”… and that is where it stops – I still want to decide and remain in control. 

But it is there to explain, if I ever want an explanation … ever present, ever watchful and ever ready to answer my questions – the perfect assistant.