From Horsepower to “Humanpower”!

October 25th, 2024 [5 min. read]

By Drew W. Boyer, CFP®

BACK in August, I asked my wife what she’d like for her birthday. Like myself, she knows what she wants- which I greatly respect. If you don’t know what you want, then you’re like a boat going in circles with no destination. Being a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER®, my goal every day is to help my clients identify their goals and then work towards those goals in all seasons. Being that the World Series starts tonight, my batting average on gift giving would look great in the MLB at .333, but I’ve learned to just ask beforehand and let her pick. Everyone has their own relationship rules, and this is one of ours. 

Happy wife, happy life.

Her answer this year: “I want to go horseback riding.” What? Turns out she had never gone (myself included) and got a bit jealous at a recent birthday party that one of our daughters attended that they got to ride horses. Me being me, I then asked, “would you like a clown and cotton candy too?” Cue the eye roll that this 45-year-old, who acts 14-year-old, often gets. She was dead serious.

Time to get to work.

A quick Google search later yielded lots of options (too many options), so I picked the one with the best name: Uncle Buck’s. That’s a classic John Candy movie, so perhaps these people also had a sense of humor. It was a win-win, albeit pricey for a two-hour ride, but a great example of the internet solving a problem very quickly and discovering a place I wouldn’t have found on my own. I couldn’t help thinking that for all the ‘bad’ new technology brings, there’s probably an equal amount of ‘good’.

Fast forward to the day of: We were deep in the Hocking Hills country on a cool, fall day, and the people working at the stables were a bit more business than joking, but very qualified.  We were in a group of three couples and paired off with the horses that best suited us all. My wife’s horse’s name was “Tiny Dancer” and mine “Simeon”, evidently best friends even though “Tiny” was 20+ years old and “Simeon” was half her age. Hey, sometimes in life there’s winter-summer romances...

My initial reaction? Just how big and strong these animals were compared to us, but if I used the right commands, they would heed us.

My second reaction? As we trotted along those forest trails, I couldn’t help but think how the world used to be running at a much slower pace. In a world where you can fly anywhere in a day and get answers and news almost instantaneously, what does that mean exactly? What’s the cost of these newfound speeds and technology? My uber short list is patience and attention spans both running at about three seconds these days.   

In business schools everywhere, the replacement of horse-powered labor to modern machine-powered labor are widely studied. There were initial fears of the jobs that horses provided, like the horse-shoer, would be decimated. Where would these affected people work then? How could the brand-new technology (gas-powered automobiles measured in ‘horsepower’), possibly employ enough of these lost jobs? There was genuine concern and societal push back, but not enough to stop forward momentum.

Guess what? It worked out pretty well for society after all that initial concern. I’d say it worked out even better for both “Tiny” and “Simeon” as they:

a) have cush jobs carrying around city folk like my wife and I leisurely through forest trails,

b) the glue factories updated their recipes, and

c) horse meat is generally frowned upon at modern restaurants.

We now are on the precipice of a brand-new technology, AI (artificial intelligence). It’s going to push our collective three seconds of patience and attention spans further down to instantaneous answers, ever-increasing productivity, and bring about very valid questions of what jobs will be decimated and what jobs will be created from it. The answer: a lot.

How do I know? Because the one guaranteed thing of technology is disruption, and the number one side effect is efficiencies and cost-savings. If the first didn’t offer the second, no one would invest in it. Since 2023, just look at the sheer amount of funding raised or the share prices of companies like Nvidia and Microsoft. It’s a juggernaut and it’s coming full steam ahead.

My prediction? If automobiles are measured in ‘horsepower’ then AI will be measured in ‘human-power’. Just like buying a car, there will be all sorts of models to choose from with different features and of course- different prices. The people concerned with one sentient AI-being leading to human civilization’s doom (ie. The Terminator movies dreaded ‘Skynet’) is probably a bit too fatalist.

Want a better problem to ponder? The people who know how to use AI are going to take the jobs of the people who don’t know how to use AI. If you or your children want to stay relevant and employed, it is best to get started learning the basics. Want a real-world example? Instead of me spending an hour handwriting this blog, Chat-GPT would’ve spit this out in seconds, and I would’ve spent another 5-10 minutes editing this. I enjoy the writing process, but for those of you who don’t, AI is a great tool to help you communicate efficiently and clearly.

I’m sure you may be asking yourself, “So if this AI is so great, why would I need a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER®? Can’t I just have it do Drew’s job?” Yes, and definitely no. If you are always as unemotional and as logical as a machine, then ‘yes’, then me and the other 100,000+ CFP®’s out there will need to adapt or find ourselves unemployed. If you are emotional and at times illogical (the human condition) about your decisions, then ‘definitely no’. I feel confident in delivering the very best advice for my clients in all seasons of life, in bull or bear markets, or when life throws you a curveball. That’s what we’re here for and why we emphasize the tagline: “Let’s Make a Plan.”

If you still don’t have a CFP®, have no financial plan in place, and are woefully ambivalent to life’s (and technology’s) disruptions, you probably will live a care-free life until you don’t. Life happens fast and it’s always better with clarity and a roadmap. Let’s make a plan before AI does it for you.