Artificial Intelligence Potential

Retirement savings and behavioral finance expert Shlomo Benartzi is turning his attention to artificial intelligence. The University of California, Los Angeles, professor emeritus and founder of PensionPlus is starting to explore AI’s role in the qualified retirement plan space.

Benartzi has begun working on a project to see if AI can help personalize, at scale, content for plan participants. “Can the machine help take the same idea about the need to save and tell me the style I need to write it in for people [based on] income, gender, whatever?” he says. “I think it would allow us to do 80% of the assessment with 20% of the effort.”

He also recognizes some of its problems such as the technology’s potential to give educated, but ultimately wrong, answers and its propensity to “double down” after a bad bet to try and recoup losses.

Besides being consumer-facing, AI can also help advisers, Benartzi says, noting the technology can assist in client assessment, proposals, plan management, plan administration and more.