AI and Personal Financial Planning

[MUSIC PLAYING] CRAIG KIRKPATRICK: The cool thing about having AI is financial planning devices becoming available to groups that never could get access to it. Just all of those people that before couldn't afford financial advisors. So I think that that's really a benefit. So there's a lot of benefits, but there's also these negatives.

When do you engage a human? Because, it turns out, the more life and business experience you have really is a huge benefit in engaging with these AI. JILL FINLAYSON: Welcome to The Future of Work podcast with Berkeley Extension and EDGE in Tech at the University of California, focused on expanding diversity and gender equity in tech. EDGE in Tech is part of the Innovation Hub at CITRIS, the Center for IT Research in the Interest of Society and the Banatao Institute.

UC Berkeley Extension is the continuing education arm of the University of California at Berkeley. AI is changing how we think about money, from budgeting apps to digital investment assistance to tools that promise personalized financial guidance in seconds. But knowing when to use AI, when not to, and when to bring in a personal financial professional isn't always obvious. In this episode, we unpack where AI truly helps with personal financial planning, where it's blind spots show up, and why context, critical thinking, and human judgment still matter.

We also explore how today's financial planners are using AI to focus more on what clients need - clarity, confidence, and guidance through life's biggest decisions. If you're navigating financial choices in the AI-powered world, this conversation will help you use tools wisely and know when it's time to talk to a human. To guide this conversation, we welcome Craig Kirkpatrick, who is the cofounder of Optimal Advisor AI, the learning - to guide this conversation, we welcome Craig Kirkpatrick, who is the cofounder of Optimal Advisor AI, the AI learning partner for financial services firms.

Craig has more than 25 years of experience in the financial services industry. His perspective comes from more than 3,000 hours of working hands on with AI models and over 10,000 prompts used across advisory and asset management use cases. Optimal advisor AI helps teams simplify AI and adopt it effectively, delivering training built by financial professionals for financial professionals. Craig has cofounded two alternative mutual fund companies and served as a consultant to asset management firms and investment advisors.

In addition, he contributes as an advisory board member to UC Berkeley extension's personal financial planning program. Welcome, Craig. CRAIG KIRKPATRICK: Jill, thank you for that introduction. I am so excited to be here as a Cal grad and then part of the Extension program as well.

Looking forward to our talk today. JILL FINLAYSON: Go Bears. Well, you've come to AI, not through technology, but as a financial services expert. What first made you realize that AI could meaningfully change how everyday people think about how they manage their money?

CRAIG KIRKPATRICK: Yeah, sure. It's a personal experience, actually. We sold my asset management company in 2022, almost the same week that ChatGPT launched one of their models. I was doing some consulting, and I remember the week somebody sent me 100-page real estate document, and I put it into AI, and within minutes, it summarized it five to seven key takeaways, gave me a summary of it.

Now, this is in 2022, so the models weren't as good, but still, it literally was in that moment where I thought, oh, my gosh. And I have my knowledge of financial services and all the problems and hassles. And I thought this could be really interesting. So it started out as a hobby.

It turned into a passion. I've probably done nothing else since then. I find myself here teaching folks around the world. So it's just been a wonderful experience.

A number of people, I'm sure, have had that moment where they've used AI, they've gotten an output like, wow. So that was my moment, and learning that my experience in financial services really helped know how to leverage AI as opposed to vice versa. JILL FINLAYSON: So you jumped right in. You started researching it.

But when did it go from interesting to, hmm, this is going to fundamentally change what we do? CRAIG KIRKPATRICK: So it was just through the outputs and the use cases because I put a document in here, write an email, help me think about this problem. It was all those moments and problems that I would have in financial services, and I just started to apply AI. And it was interesting, I literally started to call all my financial advisor buddies and say, hey, look at this.

Look what I've done, just sort of sharing that moment. I'm quite a curious person as well, which I think helps in terms of exploring that, but that's really what just sort of fascinated me about this technology, sort of moving from searching to getting answers. And obviously, just seeing a need out there. Early days, a very large asset management company had me on a webinar to share what I had learned, and almost 1,000 people showed up.

And I thought, oh boy, there's an interest in this. So that's what began my own journey here. And it's just been completely enjoyable ever since. JILL FINLAYSON: I'm excited to hear that you had this community of practice, that your first instinct was peer-to-peer knowledge sharing.

CRAIG KIRKPATRICK: I mean, probably five months later, one of my advisor friends, like, you should go teach this to people. And anyway, so again, that led to the firm that we have today. And I'm the son of two school teachers, and so there's a learning and teaching aspect of this. It just makes it enjoyable as well.

JILL FINLAYSON: That's a lot of fun that you're actually following in your parents' footsteps in a way and teaching. People who are experienced and expert in their field are the best people to adopt these technologies because they know when to question the outputs that you get from the AI. CRAIG KIRKPATRICK: Jill, we're going to talk about that today. I know, for sure, because, it turns out, the more life and business experience you have really is a huge benefit in engaging with these AI models.

I know we're going to talk about that as well because, for those of you on the call that have just used AI, if you're in an area that you know and you see an output, you have just a better sense of whether that's good or whether it should change. So actually, it's funny, it's probably the first time in history where a technology has showed up that turns out if you're older and have more life experience, you can have a huge benefit. JILL FINLAYSON: Let's talk about how individuals are using tools like ChatGPT.

So not even getting into financial tools, how are people using ChatGPT and other AI platforms for personal financial planning? CRAIG KIRKPATRICK: So it's still early days with that. We saw a number of studies out there, maybe 10% or 20% of individuals are leaning into the AI tools to get information, but really, it's more asking questions. What's the difference between a traditional IRA and a Roth IRA, for example?

They're getting more educated and using it more as a learning tool that can lower intimidation in this particular area. I mean, I think there's a number of people using it to make investment decisions. But I think, initially, as we see more adoption, it's mainly just been around this financial education, which is great because there's a whole series of populations that just hasn't had access to this information. JILL FINLAYSON: Where does AI genuinely help people make better decisions?

You're saying it helps them define terms. It helps them compare offerings maybe a little bit. Is it actually helping them to make investment decisions? CRAIG KIRKPATRICK: Again, there's not wide studies on this.

I believe that people are. And we're going to talk about some of the great benefits of having AI available to help you in financial planning. Obviously, with those benefits come a number of risks as well. Just a study that just came out that 54% of people think they're really good at AI.

And then they looked at the actual output, and it turns out probably only 10% are really proficient at it. So there's AI proficiency gap that's there. Well, we're going to talk about hallucinations and different ways that investors should be on the lookout here. But I think the benefits are really quite good just in the form of education.

But there's also a number of risks to be on the lookout for. JILL FINLAYSON: Yeah, well, let's start to look at that. So when you work with people, people often trust that the AI is fact based. And so how should they be looking at the outputs that they're seeing.

CRAIG KIRKPATRICK: Yeah, it's interesting, it's almost like it's like having a calculator that's right 95% of the time but won't tell you when its 5% is wrong. It's really tricky. And again, this is where your human judgment comes in. The more experience you have, you can see what's right and what isn't.

But one of the ways of engaging with AI, it's the type of question that you ask. If you ask what an IRA is, very specific, it does really good at that. But if you ask a more complex question, something that's more involved, what were the best songs in 2025, for example. That type of complex question has an ability to just generate more hallucinations or stuff that isn't correct.

For those of you on the call, you know you've seen AI deliver information that it says is right, and it's really not. So what can you do? What can someone do? And there's just a couple of techniques.

This is manageable on some level. So again, Jill, I know you and I have spoken about this, but a very simple question to ask AI is, after you get the output, where did you get this information? Or cite your sources or defend your answer. Those cause the AI model to go back and relook at its information.

That's one way to remove this hallucination factor. I would also say, and listen, these models, these are websites you're going to to get answers from, just like Google. So do you believe everything you read on Google? No.

By the way, would you put your personal financial statement in Google? There's the compliance questions around that? So treat it as another source. Treat it as a trusted source.

Trust, but verify. All of that can be really helpful in navigating getting improved answers from AI. JILL FINLAYSON: And what do you think people believe when they see it. As you say, there tends to be this over trust because it looks good.

It looks reasonable. But are there warning signs that maybe something isn't right? Often, AI doesn't want to tell you you're wrong. So if you're like, I should get an IRA, right?

AI will be like, of course, you should get an IRA. CRAIG KIRKPATRICK: I love this topic, and listen, for those of you listening, if you've gone with these models, you will it happy talks to you. Really, its default is, great question, Jill, really good job. And so again, there's a lot of good with AI.

But managing your new assistant in a way to check their answers and so forth is important. It's trust, but verify. You really just need to push back with these models a number of times. I mean, just this morning, I was like, don't happy talk to me.

I just want the straight answer. So once you begin working - and I think because it's early days, I think people - the models will get better. I think people will learn these little tricks over time. But, yeah, you just have to be careful.

We're talking about doing this on your own versus a planner. This is where the human judgment of a financial advisor, depending on how complex the conversation is and how big of stakes there are, boy, it sure might be helpful to lean into a human to just verify that stuff. JILL FINLAYSON: Are there other questions that you could ask AI. You alluded to telling AI, am a sophisticated investor, please give me an answer as you would a financial advisor.

Are there ways that you can get it to give you better answers? CRAIG KIRKPATRICK: Yeah, it's interesting. You were just talking about context. And this is the problem.

People need to pay attention here because if you're going to try to use AI as your planner, it's only going to provide you information that you're asking. It's going to leave out a whole bunch of stuff. So it's really tricky. So again, specific questions are great.

Complex ones, it gets tricky. But the more you can tell it about yourself, the better. And in another call you and I had, here's a great one, before you answer, do you have any questions for me? JILL FINLAYSON: Hmm, I like that.

CRAIG KIRKPATRICK: Yeah, and because we leave out a whole bunch of stuff, these are the things that we teach people. When you prompt, you leave out a whole bunch of stuff. And AI has to figure out, it's just - it either makes stuff up or has to assume a bunch of stuff. So literally, that simple prompting can really help improve.

The other thing that's interesting, boy, it turns out, if you can tell AI to act like a particular expert, that the quality of the output will improve. So two prompting tips, one, the questions prompt is, before you answer, do you have any questions? And then if you can just - it's strange. I don't know why, but if you can assign an expert to your prompt, it just focuses the AI output.

JILL FINLAYSON: For that context, what type of questions will the AI come back to you? If you say, do you have any questions for me? What kind of questions might I anticipate? CRAIG KIRKPATRICK: It depends on what your original prompt is.

Like, I'm trying to write a newsletter to send to my clients. Before you answer, do you have any questions for me? Well, AI will come back, well, who's your clients? And what do you think they really want from your newsletter?

And are you looking to sell them something? Or are you looking to educate? Are you looking to just inform? What is the outputs.

So it'll ask all these kinds of questions, and I'd imagine we're talking about financial planning here. Tell me, I want to just get a better sense of what I should do from a financial planning standpoint. Well, who are you? How old are you?

What do you think? Where do you work? It will come back and try to gather more information so that the output can be better. So these are just public models you're just going to get answers for.

You don't take it at face value. Trust, but verify. But there are ways to improve that output. JILL FINLAYSON: They are also global.

They're pulling data from all over the place. That means, of course, bias can creep into the data. And there's also, of course, restrictions. If you're in California, you might have different rules, different guardrails, different opportunities.

So as we think about, how do we avoid bias? Do you need to tell it some things? Do you need to ask it not to do things? CRAIG KIRKPATRICK: It's so interesting because we spend a lot of time, and we teach on, how can we improve our critical thinking skills?

We're in a world where we're pretty soon just going to all take in answers? We're moving from searching Google, we're moving from searching with Google - by the way, I'll just share the biggest difference between Google - Google you're asking questions, and with AI you give instructions. So now we're in a world of answers. And how do we not just take everything at face value?

And again, some of these techniques of, where did you get that information? What bias is inherent in the information you provide? I just think is a skill that all of us are going to learn. Jill, you and I remember when computers just came out.

We had to learn a new skill about dealing with computers. So the new skill with AI, the skill that everyone's going to learn is a skill called prompting or how you give instructions. And it turns out, the better instruction, the better the output. But I will just say it is a challenge.

And I just think, as I think about - the cool thing about having AI is financial planning devices becoming available to groups that never could get access to it. You think about just all of those people that, before, couldn't afford financial advisors. So I think that that's really a benefit. So there's a lot of benefits, but there's also these negatives that we talked about.

When do you take it at face value? When do you engage a human here? And it's a lot about the complexity of your situation. I know, for example, we have done a bunch of our own legal work through AI, operating agreements and different master services agreement.

But we're still not comfortable taking that output at face value. So we lean in with a human lawyer to help make some sense of that. Anyway, that's my perspective on that. JILL FINLAYSON: I like the clarity of a Google search is asking a question.

An AI or generative AI is giving instructions, and that's a big pivot for how people think about interaction. CRAIG KIRKPATRICK: Yeah, it's funny. We're used to giving instructions our whole life to everyone around us. We're just not used to giving instruction to this computer.

It takes some getting used to, but once you're in there, you get used to it. JILL FINLAYSON: I do like the democratization point, though, that this is giving access to people who maybe have lower investment dollars, so they can't afford to hire a big financial planner, but they can actually start to learn more about how to make their money make money. So are there different experiences for people at different stages of life, different careers? CRAIG KIRKPATRICK: Yeah, there's a number of benefits, actually - access to this kind of information, obviously, at a lower cost.

It's available 24 hours a day, and it can be personalization at scale. No, I'm a plumber, and I do this, and this is where I live. And so it can help. There's another funny point that we bring up is there's just no judgment zone.

There's no dumb questions you can ask AI. Sometimes, with humans, we feel that. But it's getting access to groups of people that never - young professionals starting their career or families with income of $50- to $200,000 or something, people who need advice, but they could never get it. On either student loans or first home purchase or basic tax document, it just wasn't available.

So the benefit of that is that, as an education tool, we can just get more educated. It's accessible to everybody else. The big problem is, again, as you engage with AI, you can engage on a topic, you might leave stuff out, and you're not getting the full story. So I feel, the more complicated your situation is, I mean, I do believe there's a huge benefit in leading with a human advisor.

Let me give you a very well-known stat in financial planning. There's the chart of the last five or six stock market bottoms, i mean, the very bottom. Remember, with COVID, when the market corrected the most, and it turns out that, in these market bottoms, the amount of money market assets is at its highest peak. So investors and individual investors are scared, market's down, I'm moving out.

And it turns out, you want to be invested in those moments. So there's this human psychology moment. There's this in-stress crisis moments. Being able to get guidance can really help.

And other crisis, death or divorce or different things, these complex moments, boy, whatever that fee is, I think can really overcome that part of it. JILL FINLAYSON: Yeah, so there are, it seems, moments where it's more critical to get this advice. You talk about, first of all, early on in your career. And then, when there are crises moments, but also transition moments where you're transitioning from, now I have children.

Now I'm planning my retirement. So when you start to think about all of those externalities, all of these things that are going to affect your financial planning, money decisions aren't just math. They're an emotional thing. People also have a lot of stress tied up in money decisions.

So how does AI help? And how does it fall short? And then what do the financial planners do that AI doesn't? CRAIG KIRKPATRICK: Yeah, so, interesting, if you look at the history of financial advice, just, literally, over the last 40 or 50 years, every wave of technology has made advice cheaper and more accessible.

There was a time you couldn't buy a stock without calling a broker, or you couldn't get access to anything. So the trend will be, I think, with this wave, advice will ultimately be cheaper and more accessible to people. It is interesting, in a world of AI, as I talked about, we're moving from searching to getting answers. So from a financial planning standpoint, what happens in a world of answers?

What happens when a billion people move from searching to get an answer? What happens with your clients or individuals? And so I believe, over the next three to four years, there's going to be some critical things in financial planning that will change. First, the client expectations, they're going to absolutely change.

They're going to want more personalized, more direct experience, for sure. I think human connection will matter more than ever. It's always been important, but people are going to - all the financial stuff, that's just going to be covered. It's the human connection, traits for and particularly an advisor.

And even a retail person, they're going to crave that more. I think the other big trend will be comprehensive financial planning or understanding that will become even more important. If you're just a tax person or you're just a financial that plays with, obviously, the extension and just people getting their CFP and so forth. And then the last item I just think, listen, this is an angsty moment in time, isn't it?

All the stuff we hear, like, really. I mean, it's endless. It's every day. And anytime we go through one of these big - obviously, the transition period, you talk about The Future of Work, the transition period's going to be tricky.

On one level, it's kind of cool to be alive in one of these 500-year moments, I guess. But I think the response for everyone is just lean in to this, learn, and be open as we're navigating the future of work and the future of life in these moments. JILL FINLAYSON: You alluded to the financial planner job changing. What percentage of the current defined job do you think I will be able to do?

What percentage will it not? CRAIG KIRKPATRICK: Yeah, it's going to be anywhere from maybe 50% to 70%. And a lot of this is aggregating data, reporting. There's just all of this operational information that they have to spend a lot of time aggregating so that they can communicate it to their client.

So much of that - and meeting note takers, much of that work is just going to be done by AI, which, on one level, for an advisor, is great because now all of this time is going to be freed up to connect with clients, human connection, and have more deep personalization at scale. I think done right, if these advisors can lean into AI, I really feel that they're going to have more time to connect with their clients. And what does that mean for an advisor to connect more deeply?

And it means things like asking an individual, hey, what are you most proud of in your life? And what do you want to be remembered for? Or if money weren't an issue, what would you change about your life right now? Or what does successful retirement look like for you, not financially, but in terms of how you spend your day?

So many advisors are asking these kinds of questions, but they don't have time to connect in this way. I just think there's this great moment to move from the operational stuff to the connection in life stuff. JILL FINLAYSON: If you went into financial planning because you liked math, how are your skills going to have to change? CRAIG KIRKPATRICK: Yeah, and it's asking and being comfortable with questions like this.

See, through no fault of their own, much of their day is filled with investments, reporting, a lot of statement reviewing. Listen, I think that the people who were really being as successful - and by the way, I know this is the case. I mean, I don't about you, but, oh, my god, I crave human connection now much more. So I think I see the advisory business having deeper and richer relationships with those clients.

And what's that worth? That's how I see the industry moving, leveraging this technology. JILL FINLAYSON: Well, let's walk a mile in your shoes and say your fees are going down because people are expecting more and they're expecting more personalization, more automation. How can AI act as a force multiplier for you to make you more productive to enable that deeper connection?

CRAIG KIRKPATRICK: Yeah, so this is one of the reasons we've been so popular because we teach. How do you use ChatGPT or a Copilot, for example, how to save three to five hours in your week leveraging it around communication? How do I be a better communicator? How do I better LinkedIn post?

Around business development, how can I help grow my practice? How can I partner with CPAs? JILL FINLAYSON: How are your skills going to have to change? CRAIG KIRKPATRICK: So we just had a client call up, and they own a plumbing business in Minneapolis.

The client does three million revenue or whatever. And the plumber/client/owner asked the advisor, how is this tax code going to affect my business? Now, that's a conversation that advisor might not necessarily have. They're not tax advisor.

And, my gosh, that tax code's 1,150 pages. I take the tax code in, and I insert the 1,150-page document. I have this client, they're a plumber, analyze the entire tax code. Give me five to seven key takeaways that they might want to consider as a small business owner in the state of Minneapolis, and give me three or four questions they could ask their CPA because I'm not a tax advisor.

So here's a moment a client calls. They never would've been able to handle that, and they can just say, hey, here's some considerations for you. So they're there quickly being of service. That's just one example of getting to have a conversation with a client you might not otherwise do by leveraging AI to consume more information.

Real quick, Jill, AI delivers its benefits in three ways. Doesn't matter what you do, you're an administrator, or you're an assistant. You work at a arena, whatever. It rapidly analyzes information.

It does. I mean, we were talking earlier, think of all the information that you consume on a daily, weekly, monthly basis. It's a lot. So can I use AI to help consume more information better?

To make better decisions? That's one area. The second area advisors are doing is on communication. How can I communicate better to my clients?

I have a grumpy client, they've called me. Or someone's upset, can I use AI to help me have a better conversation? And then the third way that AI is huge - I don't see a lot of people using it this way - as a strategic coach. Or help me brainstorm an idea.

Oh, my gosh, I'm at this company, and my company's not doing well. And I'm really trying to figure this out. Can you help me brainstorm three or four ways that I might approach this situation? So force multiplier for financial professionals for every human is around consuming more information, writing better, and then using it as a brainstorming partner.

Those are the three buckets people can use. JILL FINLAYSON: How can brainstorming strategy help you to identify more clients or prepare for those client meetings? CRAIG KIRKPATRICK: Yeah, so we have a use case where we have a financial advisor. They're managing 200 million through 300 clients, and they just are instructing, AI, listen, I want you to - well, first act like a McKinsey consultant.

And I want you to look at my business, and here it is. And I want you to give me three or four ideas I maybe haven't thought of before on how I could grow my business. And it will give you ideas on your technology stack, how to get more client referrals. The use cases I'm really are almost limited to your imagination, so one of the things that we share in all of our talks is everyone - and everyone listening here has access to any expert in the world right now.

And all they have to do is go lean in to AI and bring in an expert to help you solve a problem. Now, all the things that we talked about, hallucinations and so forth, so there's real-life use cases that people are doing every day to solve problems. Just for this, for people listening, I want you to think of a problem right now that you could bring any expert in the world in to help you solve that problem, who would it be? I want to hire an administrative person.

Well, wouldn't it be great to go get a human resource expert. Wouldn't that be great? Hey, AI, act like a human resource expert and help me solve this problem. So as you engage with this model, it's just sort of knowing how to leverage, knowing how to instruct AI to help you navigate that.

And then, again, it's all about trust, but verify. JILL FINLAYSON: So this has probably been a bumpy journey, I would think, for a lot of people. This is a disruptive technology. How are people dealing with that just psychologically?

CRAIG KIRKPATRICK: Listen, it's really tough. I mean, it really is. And I think you just have to turn the news on to hear. AI is taking my job, and robots are going to eat my babies or whatever.

It's every day. So we speak in front of large audiences, and there's just a lot of anxiety out there around this particular topic. And by the way, can we put this in perspective? This is one time in maybe 300 or 400 years, this level.

And so I get the anxiety. And again, having lived in this thing, my only response has been lean in because one of the things that we share all the time, Jill, is I don't necessarily believe it's humans versus AI. I think it's humans with AI versus humans without. And jobs will be lost and things will move, but I really think that's the humans with AI.

So what can you do on this call today around AI, if you're - most of the groups that we speak with are 60% to 70% people using it, and then there's 20% to 30% that aren't, go find one of these public models. And it's just like going to Google. Go over here and just type this question. It's, hey, AI, I'm new.

I don't know what's going on here, but can you give me three or four ideas on how I could maybe work with you or get more educated? One of the messages we just share is you could just - again, you use AI once, Jill, you know you can just have a conversation with it. By the way, I had this woman who was telling me about this, and she's angsty, and she's like, well, listen, I heard AI hallucinates kind of like my grandkids. How do I know to trust this information?

And her and I, I had her type that exact sentence in, and it came back and he was like, yeah, I do tend to hallucinate, but here's how you can help stop that. So another message on today's call for those of you, just the more - you can just have a conversation. And you can't do that with Google. And that's why everybody's kind of confused.

JILL FINLAYSON: You've obviously worked with a lot of people. You've trained a lot of people to get over or to transition to these new technologies. Is there a success story that you can share where you're particularly proud of somebody who took a step in a way that you were not expecting maybe? CRAIG KIRKPATRICK: So this is a funny story.

So just a month ago, we held an event for a financial advisor's clients. It was a night of AI. There was 100 people on the phone, and we just sort of sharing individuals like, how do you use AI? How do you go there?

And at the end of the call, this seventy-year-old guy unmutes, and he says to me, listen, when you started this call, I was never going to use AI. It's a black box, you know how it goes, by the time you were done, my wife and I were on AI, and we were planning our next trip. So, I don't know, this was kind of a goofy example, but again, just that moment, especially for those of you who haven't leaned in, I just I really enjoyed that. And then one of the neat things about being a teacher in this is to see people that are a moment of, oh, my gosh.

I didn't know it could do that. And there's a bunch of them. JILL FINLAYSON: And as you said, AI is really an enabling tool. It's a consultant partner that you can go to.

But at the end of the day, financial planning can be very time-consuming. It can be intimidating for folks. So I'm wondering if you have any advice for three things people can do now, whether it's AI or not, to improve their financial decision-making. CRAIG KIRKPATRICK: Yeah, I think, depending on your situation, I think AI is a great learning tool that can really lower the intimidation around this because there's a lot of jargon in our industry, 529 plans and so forth.

So to me, the first thing to do, all of those planning questions that are tricky and intimidating, it can be a really good help there as well. So I think the education factor and the "lower the intimidation factor" is really important. Again, I still think if, your situation gets a little more complicated, I just think there's just no replacement for a human to have that perspective. There is clear - I mean, I'm in this all day long, and I want a human's perspective because, again, just for the people on the call, you know if you go to AI on a topic that you understand pretty well, you'll see.

You'll know what's right, and you'll know what's not. So the thing I worry about, about just going to AI, is if you don't have that perspective, it makes it tricky. I mean, so the better you work with it, the better you can instruct it, the better you learn how to uncover bias. JILL FINLAYSON: So when you think about The Future of Work, what makes you optimistic?

CRAIG KIRKPATRICK: I think so much of our work - and by the way, we just talked to a group of 400 administrative assistants in financial planning in person. And for those of you who may not know that world, I mean that job is a lot of administrative work and paper pushing and just organizational stuff. And so the first message that we told that group of people who do administration, this is not to replace you. This is to make you more valuable.

And what I found, again, is freeing up some of this mundane work can really help people be more creative in their role. I don't think anybody really knows how generative AI and all this is going to play out. I'm not naive to that. But I do know the people who are using AI have a complete advantage, huge advantage over those that don't.

I mean, it's very clear to me. So find a way to learn more, hop off YouTube clips, and just go to one of these models and start having a conversation. So JILL FINLAYSON: That's where we'll leave our conversation today, is to get people to go out and start a conversation and start asking those questions. What should I be asking a financial advisor?

What do I need to about my future career financial planning? And all of those questions will help you prepare if you go meet with an in-person planner, you'll have given some thought to some of those questions. Thank you so much. CRAIG KIRKPATRICK: As I said at the start, complete honor to be here.

Go Bears, and love that you're bringing this topic to the forefront because I think it's important. JILL FINLAYSON: And with that, I hope you enjoyed this latest in a long series of podcasts that we'll be sending your way every month. Please share with friends and colleagues who may be interested in taking this Future of Work journey with us. And make sure to check out extension.

berkeley.edu to find a variety of courses and certificates to help you with your financial planning and thriving in this new working landscape. And to see what's coming up at EDGE in Tech, go ahead and visit edge.berkeley.

edu. Thanks so much for listening, and I'll be back next month to talk about the power of stillness in the midst of rapid changes at work. The Future of Work podcast is hosted by Jill Finlayson, produced by Sarah Benzuly and edited by Matt DiPietro.