4 ms·

>We used to struggle with financial decisions—where to invest, whether real estate was a good idea, when is the right time to buy a house, pension plans, S&P 50

by viccis 2y ago

>We used to struggle with financial decisions—where to invest, whether real estate was a good idea, when is the right time to buy a house, pension plans, S&P 500, Bitcoin, all of it. We never really figured it out properly. Now, we just ask AI, and it helps us structure our thinking. This one is a step too far for me. Glad it's working out for you (for now) though.

rpcope1 2y ago
Yeah, that's absurdly scary. That's a huge social engineering/social control risk of there's a non trivial number of people using it like that...I mean imagine influencing the LLM to subtly pump and dump assets.
- rvnx 2y ago
  A bit like what X/Twitter is doing.
- viccis 2y ago
  Yeah I mean I just asked it how to make a million bucks off of memecoins and it gave me an extensive list of memecoin investing tips to make sure I didn't end up as a bag holder. The only thing I'd trust it for would be explanations about well documented concepts and strategies, but even that is better to get from a well respected Youtube channel or financial advice outlet.
- jsemrau 2y ago
  Two thoughts on this. (1) The agent is the ad (Facebook/Reddit) (2) Game Theory and Agent Reasoning (Subtle malevolent intentions in adversarial gameplay)
- elliotto 2y ago
  Isn't this what Google does already? And it throws ads at you (ranked on whichever company pays them the most) I suspect a decent open source llm would have a lot more transparency than the current methods of coagulating collective information
sumedh 2y ago
> when is the right time to buy a house, pension plans, S&P 500, Bitcoin, all of it. This is why I think ChatGpt can become the world's biggest ad company. Any recommendation it gives can be go through a bidding network where advertiser can bid for their keywords and ChatGpt can give the highest bidders recommendation. Of Course it needs to give good or good enough recommendation, if the quality goes down then users will move somewhere else.
- throwing_away 2y ago
  Sorry to pick on your comment, but this type of thinking drives me crazy. How is it so baked into the culture that "enshittify with ads and do the bare minimum" is the plan at this point? What are you going to do when companies start winning based on offering good value for products with integrity? Would you blindly copy that? How long would it take? Is the drive to enshittify nature or nurture? Argh.
  - MyOutfitIsVague 2y ago
    > What are you going to do when companies start winning based on offering good value for products with integrity? I'll wake up.
  - arccy 2y ago
    why just take money from the user when you can also take from advertisers? you're asking the ai questions because you don't know any better yourself, as long as the answer it gives is reasonably plausible, you'll accept it.
    - throwing_away 2y ago
      The amount of time Microsoft and Google wonder about how they lost me as a customer is surely 0.
  - nice_byte 2y ago
    it's based on crazy amounts of evidence
scarface_74 2y ago
He said it “structures their thinking”. Think in terms of a Rogerian psychotherapist that just keeps asking you questions and makes you think about things you wouldn’t have thought about. He didn’t say he would use the advice. I use ChatGPT all of the time to clarify my thoughts like this and NotebookLM actually comes up with some good questions I didn’t think about when doing discovery with a client (cloud consulting). I put all of the collected artifacts - transcripts, statements of work and anything else I collect during discovery. Yes both ChatGPT (if we turn off sharing content for training) and NotebookLM is specifically allowed by my company and we use GSuite as our office standard
- makeitdouble 2y ago
  The scarry part is before using ChatGPT they couldn't figure it out, so they're either getting more information or are ending with the same results but just feel better about it, whithout still having figured it out. It sounds innocent enough, but your parallel to psychotherapy is I think very spot on. You need trust in your therapist and they also do their best to be non directive and let you explore your own state. When you tell your therapist you have self-harm thought, it makes a world of difference when they ask what happened vs what tools do you think you need. To me, my train of thought is the last part I want involvement from a third party I have no trust in.
makeitdouble 2y ago
> My wife used to draft simple business contracts by mixing and matching content she found in the public domain. Now, she uses AI—better quality, less time spent. That part sounded way worse to me. In the end she may be fully understandind the contracts and ramifications and it doesn't matter where the bits and parts came from...but that really doesn't sound like it, and we're talking legal documents.
rat87 2y ago
Just put it in an index fund.
- makeitdouble 2y ago
  The interesting part of this advice: index funds will probably include Starlink, Tesla, Apple, Amazon, Meta and Microsoft etc. While "index fund" sounds plain and boring, it's an inplicit vote for the status quo and binding one's fortune to the current market leaders, effectively supporting them.
  - rat87 2y ago
    My understanding is that index funds adapt they rebalance shares mlby market value and add or drop companies. Sure they might miss out on some rapid movement from nothing but they'll add that company in next quarter. They're a vote that you think the economy as a whole (us, eu, worldwide) will go up not that particular companies will go up. Of course if some political figures succeeded in destroying things there may be a large recession in which case index funds may do badly for a couple of years but if you think there will eventually be a recovery and end up higher then its still worth it.
    - makeitdouble 2y ago
      > They're a vote that you think the economy as a whole (us, eu, worldwide) will go up not that particular companies will go up. That's the sales pitch. The other side of the coin is any company that is influencial enough to bring part of the market down if it fails will also hold index funds as hostages. The more index funds are chosen the more "too big to fail" companies impact people's savings as a whole. Whatever you think of the next behemoth being caught red handed doing something egregiously criminal, it's survival will be partly guaranteed by index funds.
rat87 2y ago
"Just put it in an index fund"advice has been around far longer then llms, as well as "time in the market beats timing the market"

by viccis 2y ago

rpcope1 2y ago

Yeah, that's absurdly scary. That's a huge social engineering/social control risk of there's a non trivial number of people using it like that...I mean imagine influencing the LLM to subtly pump and dump assets.

rvnx 2y ago
A bit like what X/Twitter is doing.
viccis 2y ago
Yeah I mean I just asked it how to make a million bucks off of memecoins and it gave me an extensive list of memecoin investing tips to make sure I didn't end up as a bag holder. The only thing I'd trust it for would be explanations about well documented concepts and strategies, but even that is better to get from a well respected Youtube channel or financial advice outlet.
jsemrau 2y ago
Two thoughts on this. (1) The agent is the ad (Facebook/Reddit) (2) Game Theory and Agent Reasoning (Subtle malevolent intentions in adversarial gameplay)
elliotto 2y ago
Isn't this what Google does already? And it throws ads at you (ranked on whichever company pays them the most) I suspect a decent open source llm would have a lot more transparency than the current methods of coagulating collective information

sumedh 2y ago

> when is the right time to buy a house, pension plans, S&P 500, Bitcoin, all of it. This is why I think ChatGpt can become the world's biggest ad company. Any recommendation it gives can be go through a bidding network where advertiser can bid for their keywords and ChatGpt can give the highest bidders recommendation. Of Course it needs to give good or good enough recommendation, if the quality goes down then users will move somewhere else.

throwing_away 2y ago
Sorry to pick on your comment, but this type of thinking drives me crazy. How is it so baked into the culture that "enshittify with ads and do the bare minimum" is the plan at this point? What are you going to do when companies start winning based on offering good value for products with integrity? Would you blindly copy that? How long would it take? Is the drive to enshittify nature or nurture? Argh.
- MyOutfitIsVague 2y ago
  > What are you going to do when companies start winning based on offering good value for products with integrity? I'll wake up.
- arccy 2y ago
  why just take money from the user when you can also take from advertisers? you're asking the ai questions because you don't know any better yourself, as long as the answer it gives is reasonably plausible, you'll accept it.
  - throwing_away 2y ago
    The amount of time Microsoft and Google wonder about how they lost me as a customer is surely 0.
- nice_byte 2y ago
  it's based on crazy amounts of evidence

scarface_74 2y ago

He said it “structures their thinking”. Think in terms of a Rogerian psychotherapist that just keeps asking you questions and makes you think about things you wouldn’t have thought about. He didn’t say he would use the advice. I use ChatGPT all of the time to clarify my thoughts like this and NotebookLM actually comes up with some good questions I didn’t think about when doing discovery with a client (cloud consulting). I put all of the collected artifacts - transcripts, statements of work and anything else I collect during discovery. Yes both ChatGPT (if we turn off sharing content for training) and NotebookLM is specifically allowed by my company and we use GSuite as our office standard

makeitdouble 2y ago
The scarry part is before using ChatGPT they couldn't figure it out, so they're either getting more information or are ending with the same results but just feel better about it, whithout still having figured it out. It sounds innocent enough, but your parallel to psychotherapy is I think very spot on. You need trust in your therapist and they also do their best to be non directive and let you explore your own state. When you tell your therapist you have self-harm thought, it makes a world of difference when they ask what happened vs what tools do you think you need. To me, my train of thought is the last part I want involvement from a third party I have no trust in.

makeitdouble 2y ago

> My wife used to draft simple business contracts by mixing and matching content she found in the public domain. Now, she uses AI—better quality, less time spent. That part sounded way worse to me. In the end she may be fully understandind the contracts and ramifications and it doesn't matter where the bits and parts came from...but that really doesn't sound like it, and we're talking legal documents.

rat87 2y ago

Just put it in an index fund.

makeitdouble 2y ago
The interesting part of this advice: index funds will probably include Starlink, Tesla, Apple, Amazon, Meta and Microsoft etc. While "index fund" sounds plain and boring, it's an inplicit vote for the status quo and binding one's fortune to the current market leaders, effectively supporting them.
- rat87 2y ago
  My understanding is that index funds adapt they rebalance shares mlby market value and add or drop companies. Sure they might miss out on some rapid movement from nothing but they'll add that company in next quarter. They're a vote that you think the economy as a whole (us, eu, worldwide) will go up not that particular companies will go up. Of course if some political figures succeeded in destroying things there may be a large recession in which case index funds may do badly for a couple of years but if you think there will eventually be a recovery and end up higher then its still worth it.
  - makeitdouble 2y ago
    > They're a vote that you think the economy as a whole (us, eu, worldwide) will go up not that particular companies will go up. That's the sales pitch. The other side of the coin is any company that is influencial enough to bring part of the market down if it fails will also hold index funds as hostages. The more index funds are chosen the more "too big to fail" companies impact people's savings as a whole. Whatever you think of the next behemoth being caught red handed doing something egregiously criminal, it's survival will be partly guaranteed by index funds.

rat87 2y ago

"Just put it in an index fund"advice has been around far longer then llms, as well as "time in the market beats timing the market"