AI financial advice is surprisingly good, especially if you ask the right questions

MIT Sloan and Stanford researchers had 1,000 adults ask chatbots for financial guidance, then simulated lifetimes of following it. The advice was better than the researchers expected: higher savings, diversification, sensible risk reduction with age. The catch is that outcomes tracked prompt quality. Women and less financially literate users ended up roughly $50,000 worse off by 60, and people unfamiliar with AI nearly $100,000 worse, because their prompts drew weaker advice. The models also leaned on rules of thumb, failing to adjust to shocks like unemployment.

Good advice being freely available but unevenly extractable is a striking new kind of inequality.