University at Buffalo School of Management

Spring 2017 Buffalo Business 15 connected to a particular user," says Alam. "You're balancing the ability to get information about users and giving them the right experience, but at the same time protecting them and making sure there is no abuse of that data." When Donald Trump won the 2016 U.S. pres- idential election, many Hillary Clinton supporters were left stunned. According to Sanjukta Das Smith, sites like Facebook may be partially to blame because of how they use AI to personalize what we see. As a result, Clinton backers had news feeds fi lled with #ImWithHer, not realizing they were seeing tunnel vision. "In social media, we see a lot of overt and even hidden uses of AI — some positive and some not so positive," says Smith. "Algorithms mine our en- gagement, conducting deep sentiment analysis on what we post, how we interact and what we spend time on. All of that feeds other algorithms that drive what we see and what we don't see, creating an echo chamber effect." Possibly the biggest concern with AI is that jobs once performed by humans will someday be taken over by robots or computers that automate these tasks. According to a 2016 report released by market research company Forrester, robots will eliminate 6 percent of all jobs in the U.S. by 2021, starting with customer service representatives and eventually truck and taxi drivers. However, Smith says that while businesses will use AI in repetitive, administrative support roles, we're not all doomed to a dystopian future in service to our robot overlords. "AI will certainly shape how we operate in this world, but we cannot expect an algorithm to replace a human — that's not going to happen," says Smith. "What we work on and how much time we spend on repetitive tasks will shift, but creativity, innovation and judgment will always be dictated by a human being." x competition with Vanguard's Personal Advisor Services and Personal Capital. Michael Brace, MBA '94, senior portfolio man- ager at Courier Capital, says these robo-advisors are great for smaller clients who want better portfolio management without high fees. Brace says AI investing isn't a fi t for his clients, though, because they value a personal connection. "People are as emotional as they are quantita- tive," says Brace. "It's about trust. If my clients don't trust me, it doesn't matter how well I do perfor- mance-wise, they'll always be wondering if I'm the right person to run their money. You can't build trust with a computer, and you can't build trust with a guy in Iowa over the phone, even if you know his name." Brian Wolfe, assistant professor of fi nance, says AI has changed the way we trade stocks, but with some risk. "The speed that comes with the use of AI and algorithmic trading is a double-edged sword," says Wolfe. "It can make markets more effi cient by help- ing us get a better sense of what a stock should be priced, but when code is running to make automatic trades, there's a possibility of trading, say, 100,000 stocks instead of 10,000 — something that would never happen between two human traders face to face." Proceed with caution Artifi cial intelligence can work 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It doesn't have to sleep or take a break, doesn't get bored with repetitive work, and makes decisions faster and using more information than humans are capable of. With all these benefi ts, though, experts say chal- lenges lie ahead. According to Shoaib Alam from Adobe, privacy is top of mind for technology fi rms. "Privacy is big. We want to be sure that when data is picked up, it's all anonymous — nothing Shoaib Alam, BS '10 Solutions Consultant, Adobe Marketing Cloud " Privacy is big. You're balancing the ability to get information about users and giving them the right experience, but at the same time protecting them and making sure there is no abuse of that data."

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