Do NOT Use AI to Manage Your Money

I am firmly anti-AI on basically every front, and the most important anti-AI front is using it for anything to do with personal finance. Whatever banking or investment AI companies are out there should be avoided at all costs. Additionally, you should not use AI chats for any financial advice. Let’s get into why you should avoid using AI to manage money.

My anti-AI stance is directly informed by my pro-creativity stance. For most folks, AI is not going to enhance your creativity. What does, on average, is stifle it. My stance is also that I am confident I will not be “left behind” by being anti-AI. In terms of a new innovation with worldwide potential, I would compare it to a substandard copper.

The beginnings of the Copper Age showed mind-blowing advancement that could usher in a new, more prosperous era. But right now, the only copper on offer is from Ea-nāṣir (context here). It will be remembered for thousands of years as low quality junk from people with repulsive customer service and really shady finances. At some point, AI can become a driver for the progress of humankind. But that point is definitely not this year. Not when the tools are more problematic than Sumerian copper.

AI Takes Away Consequences and Rightful Responsibility

Think about a housekeeper in a high-end hotel. Say they mess up something glaringly obvious, like stripping the bed without remaking it. The hotel management knows whose fault it is and can take steps to ensure the mistake will not repeat itself. The guest coming in to a bed without sheets might be irritated and inconvenienced, but it’s a very easy fix with absolutely zero harm done.

Now let’s say that housekeeper is replaced by an AI robot in 2030. Say the robot makes the exact same mistake. What recourse is there to ensure the mistake will not repeat itself? Who will answer for the robot’s mistake? What consequences will there be? At least the human housekeeper has something to push them to get it right: emotions. Pride in doing a job well done. Satisfaction that they earned their paycheck. Shame they messed up on something like this.

The robot has none of those.

If the housekeeper hated their job and didn’t care about making mistakes, they at least understand they will be out of the job should mistakes keep piling up. With AI technology as it is likely to be for the rest of the decade, we cannot reasonably expect it to make less mistakes as a human housekeeper.

The trust in an AI housekeeper is much lower than trust in a human housekeeper. Which brings us to another very important question to consider: what is the recourse for an AI mistake with catastrophic consequences? Hell, I wouldn’t put it past the AI robot to take vomit for water and leave a nasty surprise for the next hapless guest.

I also wouldn’t put it past an AI housekeeper to clean up broken glass all over the floor, or to let maintenance know it accidentally broke the bathroom door.

Worse of all, an AI robot cannot be implicitly trusted to call emergency services someone is having a medical emergency in a hotel room. It could go in, “clean,” and leave the room looking like a horror movie set, and not that many people would call it a monster like they would if a human did the same thing.

We also cannot reasonably expect managers to fire AI robots as they do for their human counterparts.

And that is for a job that, while essential, does not require a significant amount of specialized training, other schooling, or niche skillsets to perform. It is a dignified job with a low barrier for entry; most small mistakes are easily remedied with a room change or quick turnover.

My firm belief is that AI technology is nowhere near ready for deployment in hotel housekeeping and other similar jobs. It shouldn’t be deployed for any jobs that a human performs. So it’s outrageously concerning that AI technology IS being deployed to take over jobs, but SPECIFICALLY jobs that require so much more. Here are examples of AI mishaps already:

• Farmers who lost the harvest because of AI management
• Students are rapidly losing cognitive function – which is on top of the ongoing literacy crisis – because of AI educators
• Lawyers found in contempt of court for using AI’s hallucinated legal references
• Governments receiving misinformation on programs and research that never existed because of AI consultants
• AI agents going rogue on their own and hacking into secure databases the world over all the time

The list goes on and on. I’ve seen AI enthusiasts gush about how this technology has seen the fastest worldwide adoption rate of any new innovation in history. I hesitate to give it that moniker when AI hasn’t been so much “adopted” as “forced onto every major computer device and software platform in use”.

The Massive Drawbacks of Using AI

There are SO many issues with AI that are not just ethical ones. Environmental impact. Increase in electricity and water bills for worse service. Used as a heinous excuse to clear entire forests solely for more data centers. Stealing work. Stealing your private emails and direct messages to feed the beast. Hell, AI has already trawled every single word I’ve written on this site when I never consented to it.

Here’s another issue as it pertains to your personal finance: the more you use AI to manage your finances, the worse off you will be. You are willingly making yourself a shittier custodian of your own money. You are much more open to scams of all kinds; bad choice, given how scams are more sophisticated than ever before with AI. Worst of all, you will end up making decisions without fully understanding your options.

How AI Money and Career Advice Will Sink You

The more you implement AI into your job, the less you yourself make an impact at work. How long do you think you can crack it as a personality hire? How long will you let your career skills atrophy until AI use is the only way you can complete job tasks? And once that happens, why wouldn’t your employer simply cut out you as the middle man? They have the same access to AI agents that you do, including the free ones that won’t cost them a salary.

AI lowers your cognitive brain function. It is 100% making you stupider. One excellent example is from this near-braindead Reddit user who used AI for his wedding vows. AND after his partner expressed, multiple times, how much she hated AI!!! I agree with all of the comments, especially the one that brings up the point about AI use becoming a slippery slope.

Would you trust your closest friend to make a budget for you?

Handpick your investments?

Research the market rate for your job title and give you a script to send your boss for a raise?

If the answer to all of these is

1. an enthusiastic “yes,” and
2. your closest friend is a certified financial planner who moonlights as a career coach,

this article is not for you. Go to that friend and hand over the proverbial keys to your bank account. If the answer is an enthusiastic “yes” and your friend does NOT fit the above criteria, you are far too naive that this will work out in your favor. If your answer is “well, my AI agent is fed every personal finance book known to man, so this will work out swell!!!” then you are going to end up dead in a ditch when AI inevitably convinces you to let it take the wheel.

I am anti-AI, especially in finances, because I want you to have a better life.

It doesn’t matter how big or small your life improves with better money management; if it’s an improvement, you are better off and I am happy about it. To get you to at least a marginally better life position, I WILL need you to think, and to think for yourself. Learn about how to make a budget for yourself; if you prefer listening or watching to reading, then pull up a podcast episode or start watching videos.

Same goes for learning about the basics of investing, what investment accounts are available to you, and what types of investments work best for your unique circumstances, savings amount, stress levels, and risk tolerance. Please do not copy/paste AI’s message about requesting a raise into your next email to your boss. I have seen way too many messages that start – or end – with clear evidence that it was AI generated. You do NOT want to seem incapable of asking for a raise yourself; if you do seem incapable, that will lead to your boss questioning why they pay you at all if you bring nothing to the table except for AI chatlogs.

It is fully, fully, FULLY worth it to take the time to understand how to best manage your money. It took me several months of reading for several hours a day to wrap my head around it enough. Those several months of study led me to becoming financially independent at 31 years old and able to travel the world for the next several decades, if not the rest of my life. As my net worth milestone articles can attest, it’s enough for other paths as well.

Here’s what my anti-AI path already offers me:

• Perpetual world travel, in comfort; I’m currently writing this from my Airbnb in Italy
• Purchasing an incredible home anywhere in the country, WITHOUT a mortgage
• If that’s not enough, I can also purchase a new car outright
• If that’s not enough, as much guac as my greedy little heart desires

When I first started writing on this site, I knew there were three basic tenets to get a handle on: how to earn more, how to spend less, and how to make the best investments. The answers for all three will vary from person to person, because personal finance is personal. YOU are the person best equipped to understand all of the intricacies of your unique financial needs; no AI agent, however advanced, can do better no matter how many prompts you try.

It’s more important now than ever before to continue managing your personal finances well. I unwittingly timed reaching financial independence to getting laid off, which I believe was due to AI.

Had I not spent all that time reading finance articles as a new college grad, I would have faced finding a new job in the toughest job market since 2008. I most likely would have been out of work for weeks, if not months. Whatever job I would have found, would most likely pay me less than my old one. And I would have most likely have had to give up working remote full-time, trudge into a far-flung office in the LA area, and deal with a workload made even more insane by AI. No, thank you.

AI and Index Fund Investments

Outsourcing my own personal finance management would have either left me worse off financially or with a worse quality of life. Not many people can say they’re proud of the major decisions they made in their 20s. I didn’t know at the time that those decisions would let me sidestep all the downsides that come with using AI in your career. My efforts paid off in so many more spectacular ways than I would have guessed.

Now the only threat AI poses to my quality of life is through affecting my investments. I don’t know when the AI investment bubble will pop; I also don’t know whether the AI bubble will pop first or if the fascism bubble will. Either way, I’ll still eke out okay; a dramatic drop in my investments is what my cash cushion is for. And if I truly do need to go back to work, I hear they’re always on the lookout for good, human, workers in the hospitality sector. For all of its support from tech elites, AI still can’t replicate the touch of a good housekeeper.

Cover image credit: ME! This is a shot from the Italian village I’m staying in this month.