I am pleased to announce we have our first blog post inspired by our clients. With so much in the news about AI, we’ve received quite a few questions about investments in AI, how we protect you from the risks of AI, and how we use AI to help us be better planners.
Am I invested in AI?
You’re not directly invested in AI; however, you own very diversified stock index funds. A small portion of the companies owned by index funds are involved in AI. For example, Microsoft, Google, and Amazon are all involved in AI in some fashion. However, index funds own thousands of companies across many different industries, so your exposure to any one industry such as AI is very small.
Can AI steal my assets?
No, AI cannot create a permanent loss of ownership of your investment assets.
Fidelity has extensive business continuity and data backup plans to retain logs of your assets held in your investment accounts. Fidelity also has multiple cybersecurity protocols to prevent unusual log in attempts to stop fraudulent activity and has policies to reimburse you in the off chance this occurs.
Your LPP team also has internal cybersecurity protections, and we regularly download your statements to a system separate from Fidelity.
How does your team at LPP protect you against cyber threats?
- Your team at LPP will always call you to verify money movement requests you make through email or texts to ensure it’s really you.
- We get alerts anytime money leaves your investment account.
- We worked with many of you to set up credit freezes to prevent unauthorized individuals from opening financial accounts in your name.
- We also have cybersecurity protocols and people that monitor our servers to protect your private information.
Is AI bad?
The media has written extensively about the nefarious uses of AI whether it’s fraud or attacks against the public. Many forget that AI isn’t only being used by people who want to cause problems.
Some of the positive ways AI is being used in the world are in:
- Healthcare: AI is helping doctors diagnose disease, develop vaccines, and find novel treatments for diseases. They also use it for notetaking for patient visits.
- Financial institutions: AI is being used to protect against cyber criminals, detect financial crimes, and often provide faster service to customers.
- Agriculture: Farmers use AI to help protect and grow crops more efficiently.
- Everyday life: AI helps individuals with anything from planning a trip, finding new and healthier recipes, or assisting with home projects. I have also used it to help find vendors for my wedding!
How are we using AI at LPP?
We are now using an AI notetaker for our meetings unless a client prefers that we not use it. The notetaker captures all the important information and provides us with a summary and follow up items. This allows us to be more focused on our conversation with you and ensures we don’t miss anything important following our meeting.
Our notetaker is not public and is not used to train other notetakers. It doesn’t record any of your personal information and recordings are not retained by the system. In using it over the past couple of months with client’s permission, it has done a good job helping us organize the details of the meeting and creating follow up tasks.
We understand that not everyone is comfortable with AI, and it’s completely okay with us if you don’t want the notetaker to be used in our meetings. Over the next year, we will ask each of you if you are okay to use the notetaker on an ongoing basis so we don’t have to bother you with the question every time we have a meeting.
We understand new technological advancements can cause angst. Like any new technology, AI comes with both benefits and risks. While we can’t predict exactly how AI will evolve, we will protect your personal information and financial accounts and help you navigate the evolution of AI.
We’re just a phone call away if you have any more questions or would like to discuss this topic further.