A number of months ago, I used to be teaching my courses at Stern when my friend Vasant Dhar, who teaches a variety of courses from machine learning to data science, called me in regards to the Damodaran Bot.
This is an AI creation that has read every part I've ever written, watched every webcast I've ever posted, and reviewed every review I've published. He told me that the bot was ready for a test run and was ready to guage corporations. These rankings could then be in comparison with the rankings of the highest students in my class.
The results of the competition are still being tabulated. I'm unsure what results I need to see. If AI values corporations as much and even higher than I do, that could be a strong signal that I’m facing obsolescence. If things go so badly, it could be an indication that I actually have failed as a teacher.
AI is the convergence of two forces – the rise (and cheapening) of computing power and the buildup of each quantitative and qualitative data. As an AI newbie, I see a bonus over humans in three dimensions: in mechanical/formulaic work versus intuitive work; in rules-based, more principles-based disciplines; and there may be an objective answer to tasks with and no subjective judgments. Taking this to the private level, the threat to your job or occupation from AI is larger in case your work is basically mechanical, rules-based and objective, and fewer whether it is intuitive, principle-based and non-judgmental.
While AI in its current form may not give you the chance to switch you in your job, it can improve over time and learn more by observing what you do. So what are you able to do to make it harder to be outsourced by machines or replaced by AI? I actually have 4 thoughts.
First, in a world of specialists working in silos and exhibiting tunnel vision, AI will empower generalists who’re comfortable across disciplines and may see the massive picture.
Second, in case your valuation technique for investments and valuations relies totally on financial modeling with extrapolation of past data, AI can do it faster and with far fewer errors than you. However, in case your reviews are based on a business story and enriched with soft data, the AI could have a harder time replicating your activities.
Thirdly, we’re victims of the “Google Search” curse where, when faced with a matter, we quickly seek for the reply online moderately than trying to seek out out the reply. While it’s harmless when you find yourself in search of answers to trivialities, it might be malicious when used to reply questions that we must always find answers to on our own. This reasoning may take longer and lead you to fallacious answers, however it is a learned skill that we risk losing if we let it atrophy.
Fourth: An empty mind could be the devil's workshop, but it is usually the birthplace of creativity. The ability to attach seemingly unrelated facts and experience “aha” moments is exclusive to humans, and AI will struggle to attain the identical.
If you were a conspiracy theorist, you may invent a story of tech corporations conspiring to offer us often free and easy-to-use products that make us more specialized, more one-dimensional, and fewer rational while filling up our free time, a precursor to weaponizing AI to let out on us.
Since my life's work is in the general public domain and there may be a bot with my name on it, my AI threat is here. The AI threat to you might not be that immediate, but as you consider the countermeasures, there are three strategies you may try. The first is to maintain your activities secret enough that a bot can't track you. However, the caveat may very well be that your actions may reveal your work process and the AI may reverse engineer your activities.
The second option is to look to regulators and the law for system protections against AI interference. So even when AI can replace humans within the valuation business, I bet courts and accounting standards drafters will likely be convinced that the one acceptable valuations can come from human appraisers. The third is to create a “moat” – strategic defenses that make it harder for AI to switch you in your job. However, this requires an honest assessment of what you bring to your job.
If you’re thinking that I'm overreacting to the AI threat, I suggest that whether the threat is real or imagined, the prices are so consequential that it's as much as all of us to act as they’re , and acting now, after we have now acted, will make us all higher at what we do, even when it seems to be our imagination.
