Is Talking to AI About Money Helpful?
I’d like to think that transparency is something I shoot for. My last post heavily leaned on AI to help me write it. The last post was about everything being a skill set. My ability to write coherently is not a skill set that is particularly strong. After looking at that last post, I also realize that AI tends to write in a very specific formula. If you want to know what I mean, peruse through a LinkedIn feed and you’ll encounter countless posts.
I tend to utilize a tenet of ACT that things aren’t inherently good or bad. They just are. Thoughts aren’t good or bad, emotions aren’t good or bad, I tend to think that AI isn’t good or bad either. Does it have tremendous potential? Sure, why else would companies pour billions and billiions into building out data centers, buying semiconductor chips, and layoff thousands of employees because they think that AI can do it better. (Still debatable).
It also has incredible detrimental effects too. There are the environmental factors. Seeing and reading different articles about how many resources that data centers use up, which causes energy costs to rise. Also, the human toll it takes. Thousands of people losing their jobs and the whole software engineer field potentially being reshaped forever (that’s may be hyperbolic and it also may be true?).
I wanted to write about our feelings towards money and how AI could be beneficial and also detrimental to things.
Money is one of those topics where most of us are walking around with some kind of story we've never said out loud. I'm bad with money. I'll never get ahead, what’s the point of saving anything. Talking about it is rude, or stressful, or both. Those thoughts and feelings aren't good or bad either, they’re definitely unpleasant but a lot of us treat them like facts instead of just the thoughts we have.
There are benefits here I think. There's something about asking a chatbot the dumb question at 1am that you'd never ask a person. I have more than one client who like to process their feelings with AI in between sessions. So many people have questions like “How does a Roth IRA actually work?” “Am I behind?” “Why do I feel so guilty every time I buy something for myself?” To not experience any judgment on the other end (or at least it doesn't feel that way), and for someone who's spent years avoiding the topic entirely, has to feel incredibly freeing. I could at least see it as a gateway to starting conversations that they’ve been avoiding for a long time.
While it may make starting these conversations easier. The same thing that makes it easy can make it a trap. If I make AI the go-to every time do I start to develop a dependence on it? At what point would a person outsource their discomfort to AI. Potentially they’d never learn how to regulate themselves if they’re always outsourcing to AI. Again, that’s not good or bad, but there are definitely problems to that. I think it can go either way, and I'm not totally sure which way it goes more often.
There's also the confidence problem. AI says things with this very even, sure-of-itself tone whether it's right or generic or just kind of repeating what you already believe back to you. With money, that feels riskier than it does with most things. People want certainty about money more than almost anything else, and AI is very good at sounding certain even when it’s wrong it will double down. That’s scary if you’re going to it all the time for decisions around money. It would create a false sense of confidence and that would be very unfortunate.
I think AI has benefits. It can help teach you terminology and begin initial conversations that guilt or shame may have gotten in the way of starting before. It also has a lot of potential to become dependent on it and with it’s ability to gaslight you, may lead you into a false sense of security and safety.
