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Investment banks are human resources business. Clients pay generous fees in the hopes of obtaining wise advice from the analytical thinker. The relationship is cleverly managed by a silver advisor. The UBS experiment raises the question of whether high-financial humanity is overestimated.
The Swiss Bank has digitally cloned roughly 30 stock analysts and produced a short video presented by Lifelike Avatars. They run the script based on analyst research notes and feature hand gestures and eyebrow rise. The AI is good, but not perfect, so the results are slightly non-heimlich. Still, the bank says that video works just like its clients as an old fashioned variety.
Replications of living employees may be new, but the use of AI at banks is not. It is primarily done by employees, not clients. Morgan Stanley has an assistant who takes notes to use during meetings. Goldman Sachs is running “Co-Pilots” to help with everything from coding to translation. It’s reasonable to keep the bot inside. For brands that boast paranormal smart, so-called hallucinations and communication failures are corrosive.
So the common catchphrase on Wall Street is “the human of the loop.” That is, there are pairs of biological eyeballs that scan everything for clients. UBS also follows that principle. For avatars, the analyst reviews both the script and the final video. Because in highly regulated industries, humans are not only at the brunt of mistakes, but also at risk of nail pay and professional bans.
More financial companies will inevitably track UBS when wearing AI outside. Stock analysis is also a good place to start. According to one researcher, generally available models can do second year associate work. Eventually, AI should be able to find patterns and enclosure data in ways humans cannot. It’s naive to think that only Drudge’s work will be phased out, as few people oversee the broader loop.
The sky is at its limit as “agent” AI is more refined and allows for more data to be searched more quickly. Do you want to update your price targets in real time? of course. Do you ask a company CEO a pointy question on a quarterly revenue call? Why is it not good? At least, as did half of Microsoft’s last revenue call analysts, it would pull the plug into the disastrous habit of congratulating your boss on great results.
That moment is the journey. For now, UBS says the goal is simply to increase productivity and have some amazing analysts like cameras. But as spreadsheet jockeys know, productivity increases is either increasing revenue or lowering costs. It is notoriously difficult to request a sell-side investigation, which leads to more attention on the potential for cost savings. Expect your avatar to develop his professional life.
john.foley@ft.com
