INTERVIEW DISRUPT, CREATE, GROW models we build, based on all the data we have, based on us hiring the best scientists and data scientists and risk-modeling people.” And I showed them a graph where you can predict with pretty high reliability that in year 2029, we will build computers that are computationally as smart as the human being. Then by 2050, 2060, you will have computers that are computationally as smart as every single human being on this planet. So compute power becomes abundant. It’s already pretty abundant, but it becomes truly abundant. Then you put artificial intelligence and machine learning and big data analytics on top of that, and I guarantee you that a computer will make better risk models than a human. So you might come into a world where the risk model you’re running on your phone in the form of a robo-advisor, for example, is better than any human. So your competitive advantage probably becomes that you have the best algorithm, but not the best humans anymore. Or your algorithm has the best access to data, so it becomes smarter than humans. I think it will become deeply disruptive. Just to be clear, I also believe that the role of humans will shift. The human advisor will care much more and spend much more time on really understanding the client’s needs, and then will have the computer figure out what the perfect portfolio looks like or what the perfect insurance plan looks like. FELDMAN: But I would guess there are people, particularly younger ones, who prefer the non-human service. FINETTE: I’ll give you an interesting example. This is minor, but was fascinating for me. I recently set up a new account with one of the large broker firms. I used one of their internet-based tools, and they actually called me. One of their advisors said, “Hey, we’re seeing that you are opening an account and we would love to offer you this free service,” which is great. But here’s the thing, I don’t want to talk to them. For me, I don’t like speaking on the phone. I asked the person, “Can I use chat with you, because that’s my normal way of interacting?” 16
And they said they don’t have chat, which was really fascinating. I thought, Wow, you’re cutting out a whole generation of people younger than I am who do everything with chat. And they didn’t offer this as a service at all, which just blew me away because it’s such a missed opportunity. It’s so easy for them to implement. It’s even cheaper for them to have chat than to call me. I think there’s a lot that needs to be sorted out in the industry, and lots of opportunity. There’s a massive amount of opportunity. FELDMAN: More broadly speaking, what is the future of humans in the workforce? FINETTE: Of course, this is currently a huge debate, the idea of technological unemployment. There are a lot of questions and very murky answers at the moment. But I think in very broad brushstrokes, at a very high level, what we will see is that machines, both artificial intelligence as well as robotics, will take over a lot of the more mechanical tasks when machines are better at doing them. And with mechanical tasks, I also mean stuff like picking a stock or picking an insurance portfolio, or when you go to a doctor, having a machine look at your X-ray and telling you if you have pneumonia based on machine learning algorithms. IBM has a working product that looks at X-rays and predicts cancers and things you can see on X-rays on behalf of doc-
InsuranceNewsNet Magazine » October 2017
tors. And it’s better than any human in detecting those. So we’re already in a world where, if your hospital or your doctor says, “Do you want to have an AI look at this, or do you want me to look at this?” you actually want to say, “Please have the computer look at this.” But that doesn’t mean that the role of the doctor goes away. I think the doctor then becomes much more what the doctor really should be, which is this human interface to me and working with me on my health and advising me and helping me. And I think the same is true for the insurance industry and the financial industry. FELDMAN: With all of this stuff happening, is there a way to future-proof yourself? FINETTE: Yes, absolutely. We’re already in an age where constant learning is the norm. So, this old idea, which is that you go to college and then you get your job and you work in your job for 20 years or longer —that’s over. I think it’s really about constantly learning and doing these micro-credentials, probably. You want to get credentialed and stay on top of stuff. What this does to you as a human is move you higher up in the service hierarchy. It’s a little bit like, if you remember, Maslow’s hierarchy or pyramid of needs. We’re moving higher and higher up. Take the financial advisor, for example. Understanding that role is probably less about knowing everything there is about