You Really Need to Do This Before You Act on What the Chatbot Told You
When you're asking AI for advice, it knows only what you tell it, and if you don't include every detail about your financial situation, you can't trust that the advice is solid. Here's what you can trust, though.
AI became a larger part of our ordinary lives quickly.
We already had AI assistants like Amazon's Alexa and Apple's Siri. And in March, Amazon added a health assistant to its website that can read your medical records and book your appointments.
In May, Schwab gave retail clients a tool that summarizes why their portfolio moved. The technology turns up in the search bar and the banking app whether you asked for it or not. Schwab includes a disclaimer on their AI tool saying the output, "should not be construed as investment advice or recommendations and are for informational and educational purposes only."
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A general-purpose chatbot like ChatGPT or Claude includes no such disclaimer when someone asks whether to pull $60,000 out of an IRA for a new roof and to replace windows.
Yet, people keep asking. A July J.D. Power survey found that 40% of respondents had sought help from AI to manage their personal finances. In the same survey, 34% said AI helps them make smarter financial decisions, 1 percentage point behind the 35% who said that about their own bank.
A chatbot answers in the same confident tone whether it has the facts or not, and it doesn't flag what might be left out.
The chatbot doesn't know:
- Your marginal tax bracket
- Whether the money sits in a traditional IRA, a Roth or a taxable account with a low cost basis
- How your state treats the distribution
- That a two-year lookback on your income sets your Medicare premium
- That your income will drop in 18 months when you move to part time
- If you have carryforward losses to utilize
None of those details, which can sway the answer completely, enter the conversation unless you introduce them. The chatbot answers the question that is asked, not necessarily the ones that are exclusive to your situation.
Sixty thousand dollars out of a traditional IRA arrives as ordinary income, and if the rest of your income already sits near a tax line, that money can push the total past an IRMAA threshold that resurfaces as a higher Medicare premium two years later.
The same $60,000 from a taxable account with a high cost basis might barely register on your tax return.
None of those details require the chatbot to be wrong. It's answering a loaded question for the general reader without the specificity and complexity of your personal situation.
Where AI helps
AI makes a good study partner and can prepare you for more productive meetings with your adviser.
For example, researching and learning about qualified charitable deductions (QCDs) at home saves time that doesn't have to be spent on explanations.
Other ways it can help include:
Translating documents. Paste in the section of your summary plan description that governs in-service withdrawals or the paragraph of an annuity contract that lays out the surrender schedule, and ask the chatbot to explain it in plain language. Those documents get written for compliance review rather than for you, the reader. Delegate the explanation to the chatbot.
Build a question list before the meeting. Provide the chatbot with three sentences about your situation and request questions you should ask your adviser. This will create an agenda for an efficient and productive meeting.
Argue the other side. Ask it to make the strongest case against a recommendation you've already received, including mine. The objections it raises are worth bringing to the person who made the recommendation.
Ask it what it does not know. Some version of "what would you need to know about my situation to answer this well?" returns insightful questions to consider.
One note to keep in mind. Account numbers, Social Security numbers and full statements don't belong in a general-purpose chatbot. Round numbers and account types give the tool everything it needs to be useful.
What's next
Forty percent of consumers have already taken a money question to AI, and that number is likely rising. There are smart ways to use these tools. Moving money on an answer that never had your full picture is not one of them.
The tools will keep improving, and more people will walk into meetings with better questions because of them.
Take the response for what it is, which is a starting point. Reading it against your own numbers is where we come in.
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