Is ChatGPT writing all the online Personal Finance articles now?

[Much Fishing to Do]

Not only do the Personal Finance articles I've clicked on lately often say some non-sensical things in addition to the usual boring rhetoric, but at least in the past the writer was interviewing someone.  Everything lately seems to be writing about something they read from some poster on Reddit or the like, along with of course all the holes that come with that sort of information gathering.

Now I really do wonder if there is an actual person writing any of this anymore.

[GuitarStv]

Didn't you hear?  AI ended the information age a few years back.

[JupiterGreen]

Yeah I've noticed this too in all kinds of online writing. And I second the discouragement for all the "Here are the best [insert subject] according to Reddit". Like bro, please Reddit's ship sailed back when they went public it's like 80% karma farming bots now. This is the only place left online that I visit where I feel like I am actually talking with humans. It's going to be really interesting to see where this goes. I miss good writing and writers. I'm not sure what the best way to support them are, but this timeline is def getting boring.

[AuspiciousEight]

Honestly I stopped reading financial books and articles years (decades?) ago.

This is the only place on the internet I go to for financial information.

But yeah I assume AI is either writing a lot of things these days, or some writers are using AI as a starting point to write some articles. It's pretty easy to just pull up chatgpt and ask it to write a 1,000 page article about cats, or something. I suspect AI will be making a lot of changes to the way we interact with information.

I already ask AI some questions these days instead of google, or in addition to google, as another reference point or starting point for further research about various subjects. My company also pays for AI coding assistants so I ask them some questions at times as well as part of my job.

AI is pretty much already embedded into my life so much at this point that I would be willing to pay a monthly subscription for it, if it weren't free already.

[LaineyAZ]

What is AI "coding assistants"?

[AuspiciousEight]

What is AI "coding assistants"?

https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/github-copilot/

[Retire-Canada]

Now I really do wonder if there is an actual person writing any of this anymore.

I don't read pers FI articles so I can't say for that segment specifically, but I have noticed the quality of other content dropping and I've responded by being a lot less likely to click on sources I'm not familiar with as the chances of getting some quality content is pretty low. It's cut down on screen time so that's not a bad thing and kept me focused on long form content which is better bang for my time.

[kite]

I was listening to an episode of a finance podcast the other day and they were discussing some of the incorrect details in a PF article published in Suze Orman’s newsletter.
Kinda comical how diplomatic they were trying to be “She’s too smart to have made this error, it must be someone in her orbit” kinds of comments. Fact is, there were just too many intricacies and variables in the subject area the article was trying to address, that it couldn’t be adequately explained by any short, newsletter length article. And, to be fair, the article did say “speak to your tax adviser.” 

It makes me think of the “talk to your doctor” kind of disclaimer that is necessary for anything medical in an article or news item. There are just too many what-ifs and confounding bits that the generic info is either common sense or rather flat.

[acepedro45]

I sometimes wonder if @boarder42 was still around if he'd turn to AI to auto-generate his posts.

[Chris Pascale]

Bleep bloop blorp I don't know what you are talking about.

[41_swish]

The short form video and Tik Tok era started the slop era, and now that AI has come into effective it is only worse. A lot of articles are just regurgitated Tik Toks / Reddit Posts / Tweets. It's actually sad, because a lot of people unwillingly consume this stuff.

[obstinate]

For what it's worth, the articles from 2018 weren't much better. There really hasn't been a whole lot of innovation in the space since the early '10s. Which makes sense because all the necessary information had already been produced at that time.

What I'm more interested in, and what I miss, are the personal stories of people who are exercising major badassity and buying their financial freedom one drop of sweat at a time.

I recommend switching to a reputation-based approach to consuming media, to the extent you want to consume at all. Find people/channels who you respect, and consume the content from those channels. Do not consume algorithmic slop, which basically consists of anything that appears on a major outlet, and especially anything from the video sites.

[41_swish]

The 2018 era of personal finance was before my time. I was still in University and spending money like congress. I kind of remember watching some Grahm Steffon, not sure if that is how you spell it, videos and they were fine. I remember the articles back then just all felt like buzzfeed type slop

[malachite]

The company I work for was recently bought out by another company and de-listed from the stock exchange.

5 days later I saw a freshly published finance article trying to suggest buy/sell points for this stock.

The article was clearly some sort of auto-writer bot or human writing by a template using recent historical stock prices to offer 'advice' without doing any actual research on the company.

[VanillaGorilla]

I recommend switching to a reputation-based approach to consuming media, to the extent you want to consume at all. Find people/channels who you respect, and consume the content from those channels. Do not consume algorithmic slop, which basically consists of anything that appears on a major outlet, and especially anything from the video sites.

That's always been the case. The historic Achilles heel of all anonymous media is vetting the author.

Even on forums like these - are the really intelligent-sounding posts written by someone who has accomplished what you're trying to do? Or are they written by someone who has mastered sounding intelligent but has no competency to speak of (I can think of a few)?

[obstinate]

At least here there is no financial incentive to post BS. That's no guarantee of correctness, but it eliminates one avenue for things to get messed up.

[41_swish]

What even brings you to a FIRE forum in the age of Tik Tok and other short form content? This place, at least to me, feels the most intelligent and least condescending finance group out there. I tried to do the FIRE and Boglehead subreddits, but people on there just feel like they are boasting instead of helping.

[GilesMM]

AI is everywhere and spreading like a virus.  Leverage it!


https://www.npr.org/2024/05/16/1251917136/ai-generated-articles-are-permeating-major-news-publications

[Retire-Canada]

I was at an appointment and uncharacteristically clicked on a pers finance article on my phone to kill time. I had to stop reading after the second paragraph as I felt myself getting stupider. I really hope it was written by ChatGPT because it it was a human that wrote something so logically incoherent I'd be super sad for them.

[aasdfadsf]

Personal finance articles on major internet sites have long been terrible. And this was true long before it was possible for AIs to write them. I'd say about half are just plain wrong, about a quarter are incoherent, and the remaining are correct but so obvious that they could be for children. I'm not sure how you'd even know whether they had been replaced by AI slop because they were so bad to begin with.

The problem is that good personal finance advice is rather boring and not what most people want to hear, and definitely not what advertisers want to you to hear. Telling people not to buy any of the crap that subsidizes the platform they're reading probably doesn't please the editors. 

[obstinate]

That was/is part of what's so compelling about Mr. MM compared to most personal finance joints. He's not really a personal finance blogger. He's a lifestyle blogger, and his lifestyle is very usual, fun to read about, and admirable. Early Retirement Extreme is the same way.

On the other hand, guys like Early Retirement Now are indeed mostly about personal finance. But they offer a depth of analysis and insight that is not economical to produce for a general audience. It can only be done as a passion project by a special interest blog.

[41_swish]

Mr. MM is definitely a lifestyle blogger. I think the core investing philosophy is so simple that he doesn't need to really blog about it. Financial advisors are for the nitty gritty.