Is AI Coming For You or Coming Alongside You?

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Is AI Coming For You or Coming Alongside You?

AI is growing. With AI growing it reminds me of the early days of the internet. As a 17-year-old, I was one of the early adopters in Paris, TN to sign up for this new thing called the internet in the 90’s. At first, it really just used a tool for communicating with people (remember AOL instant messenger?). It was also used for playing games with other people. But over time, the internet and its applications grew, and it evolved into a revolution that affects every area of our lives. What would happen today if we didn’t have the internet? We’d survive – but we’d have to majorly regroup and find a new way to do everything all over again. It has become imbedded in the way we do life and society. I think we’ll say the same things about AI two decades from now. Well, maybe even two years from now. Early on, people were using AI to draft funny images and witty poems. Now, people are putting AI to work in ways that are much more significant. What you read about the potential for AI is not hype. It will change the way we do everything, eventually. Just as I tell my kids that I remember the days before the internet and cell phones, my kids will tell their kids they remember life before AI. With that being said, the goal of today’s episode is to share some early reflections on AI and its applications, particularly in the arena of finance.

I use AI every day. I utilize Chat GPT and Co-Pilot primarily. Just like any technology, I think it has incredible potential, both for good and for ill. Let me start with some of the dangers:

First is the danger of sharing too much with it. If you share enough of your information, it can build a personal profile on you more vast than any government. It might not only know your bank account, date of birth, and social, but where you spend your time and what you like. I’m careful with what I share with AI. I speak in generalities and theoretically rather than specifics to me. I have friends that give it access to everything. This is not bad in and of itself – just risky because you are handing over the keys of your privacy to Artificial Intelligence. The reward may be worth it – but it’s not worth it for me just yet. You also don’t want to be putting customer information into unprotected AI – as in non-public information that could be at risk if those AI servers were ever compromised. The more we use technology, the more we sacrifice a certain measure of privacy. That’s just the trade off.

Secondly, AI risks robbing people of their ability to create. If AI writes a speech for you, you didn’t really write the speech. You might have given it some raw material, but there is value in learning how to craft words and use them in an organized, effective, and inspirational way. We don’t want AI to do all of our thinking and creating for us. Rather, I think we should use it to augment our thinking and creating. I have a good friend who uses AI to write all of his emails. This may be okay for simple, day-to-day interaction, but I can always tell that it is not him when I get his emails. His AI doesn’t talk the way he does.

Thirdly, AI is coming for lots of jobs. Much of the knowledge economy is going to be replaced by AI in the not-too-distant future. White collar jobs are in short-term danger, but this could be a positive long term. It will force people to retool their skills into certain jobs that a machine will never be able to replace. This will make the economy more productive in the long run – but there will be some pain in getting there.

That leads me to talking about some use cases for AI.

Research Assistant – Since AI has the ability to comb the web, it can give you all you ever wanted to know about everything. It has been reported by Mr. Jenkins with the Wall Street Journal that traffic to Wikipedia is down 10% to 30%. This is because AI is being sought for answers before Wikipedia and before Google’s traditional search engine. As AI gets smarter, it makes older search technology like Apple’s Siri look downright primitive. AI has been helpful for me to track the calories and added sugars in what I eat, to help me do banking regulatory research, to help me find and summarize articles of interest, and to better help me advise clients on tax and estate planning.

Real Time Monitoring – AI can be helpful to monitor your IT network to look for anomalies. It can help banks watch checking accounts and credit card transactions to detect fraud. In its essence, AI is what Nathan Beacom calls a “pattern engine.” He likens it more to a super calculator that analyzes and then generates human-like responses that do not truly comprehend but just regurgitate. In this way, he says that it is not truly intelligent, at least not in the same way humans are. He calls them tools, not minds – and I think this language is helpful. So, utilizing this pattern recognition can be a game changer for industries that are trying to ingest and analyze massive amounts of data.

Summarizing – Not only is AI able to analyze the data, it’s able to share it in succinct summaries. I’ve utilized it to analyze long contracts, long articles, and to share the high points of policies. I actually did an interesting experiment regarding this recently. I asked one of our most detail oriented and conscientious teammates to review a vendor contract and then share an executive summary of high points I would care about. I ran the same contract through our business AI and then compared them side by side. The human picked out some things to share that AI did not. AI doesn’t know me well enough to know the kinds of questions I’m interested in asking, so it missed one or two details I would have liked to have known. My teammate knows me and knows what the bank is looking for, and she was able to raise some things to the surface that were quite valuable. So, for this use case, I’m not ready to replace a human on that task – at least not yet.

Analyzing Past Behavior to Predict the Future – In the arena of finance, AI is likely to take a more prominent role in the underwriting for loans. It can analyze massive amounts of

qualitative data beyond a typical credit score to predict whether someone is going to repay their loan. Every website we visit, every app that we download, every reel that we view, every article that we read and every location that we visit is building a digital profile on us that will help predict our tendencies. This is scary for consumers, but very helpful for businesses who are trying to create products that they think you will have the tendency to buy.

Real Time News – AI is able to crawl the web and sometimes give an objective view of current events to compliment the reading of these events through opinion pieces. It also seems to do a good job of sharing different points of view fairly and helping give an objective comparison.

It’s super early in this AI Revolution. But this one is going to move faster than the Internet Revolution. If you haven’t used AI yet, I’ll bet that you will within the next year – because you’ll hear about something cool that your friend discovered that it could do. Could AI evolve and end the world in the next five years? Sure. But could AI revolutionize the way we live, interact, and lead to a society where more people are able to provide for the things they want in life? Absolutely. My guess is that it will fall somewhere in between. There will be good benefits and bad costs that hopefully net out to the good in the long run. But I would remind you that no matter how “smart” a machine gets, it is not a human. There are some things AI cannot replace.

As a local community bank, we believe there is no substitute for a human being holding your hand through a major financial chance. Whether it is buying a home, buying a small business, or being reminded of the importance of saving for retirement, we believe we can bring more value to you than an emotionless machine. Start your financial conversation with us today by exploring our website or visiting your local branch. We hope you’ll subscribe to this podcast in your favorite podcast app and share it on social media. And until our next episode, God bless you.

-President Chad P. Wilson, CFP

Today’s episode of “Money Matters” was written and recorded by President Chad P. Wilson of Foundation Bank/McKenzie Banking Company on August 12, 2025. This episode does not constitute financial advice. Please consult a financial professional to discuss your specific needs. Any rates mentioned are subject to change and are accurate as of the recording date. Foundation Bank/MBC is an Equal Housing Lender, Member FDIC.