MorganStanley is launching an advanced chatbot powered by OpenAI’s latest technology to help the bank’s army of financial advisors, CNBC has learned.
The bank has tested the artificial intelligence tool with 300 advisors and plans to roll it out widely in the coming months, according to Jeff McMillan, head of analytics, data and innovation in the firm’s wealth management division.
Morgan Stanley’s move is one of the first announcements from an established financial firm following the success of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which went viral late last year by generating human-sounding answers to questions. The bank is a wealth management juggernaut with more than $4.2 trillion in client assets. The promise and dangers of artificial intelligence have been written about for years, but it seems it wasn’t until after ChatGPT that mainstream users understood the impact of the technology.
The idea behind the tool, which has been in development for a year, is to help the bank’s approximately 16,000 advisors tap into the bank’s vast body of research and data, McMillan said.
“People in our company want to be as knowledgeable as the smartest person,” McMillan said. “It’s like having our chief strategy officer sitting next to you when you’re on the phone with a client.”
While generative AI has blinded users and sparked a race between tech giants to create products, it has also led some users down odd paths. Last month, Morgan Stanley analysts wrote that ChatGPT occasionally “hallucinates and can generate responses that appear convincing but are actually false.”
User Guardrails
Similar to ChatGPT, the tool instantly answers questions for advisors. But it’s based on GPT 4, a more advanced form of the technology that underlies ChatGPT.
And instead of all the content on the web, this tool only generates answers to the 100,000 or so research papers Morgan Stanley has reviewed for that use, which should reduce errors. To further reduce glitches, the bank has people verify the accuracy of answers, he said.
“We’re trying to actually break the platform” through human testing, he said. “With high-quality information, better models and an ongoing monitoring process,” the bank is confident in its new tool, he said.
Morgan Stanley logo seen in New York
Shannon Stapleton | Reuters
The move builds on McMillan’s previous efforts, including introducing machine learning algorithms in 2018, prompting advisors to reach out to clients or take other steps. With every new development, there is a growing concern among knowledge workers that technology could one day disable humans entirely.
“I think every industry will be disrupted in some way by what I describe as routine, essential tasks,” McMillan said.
But machines can’t replace humans when it comes to hosting discerning customers, he said.
“These things have no empathy; they’re just very clever math capable of regurgitating knowledge,” he said.
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2023-03-15 14:30:19
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