Fear and greed escalate as Musk takes on ChatGPT

ChatGPT’s artificial intelligence has changed the way people interact with technology. Picture: AFP

Elon Musk’s decision to launch an artificial intelligence business through a new company which will directly rival privately-held ChatGPT has added fuel to an investment sector which is – according to the Wall Street Journal – already at “fever pitch”.

The man behind Australia’s most widely held overseas stock, Tesla, is reported to be hiring a range of AI scientists as plans for “an app for everything” emerge from the Musk empire.

Fear and greed relating to ChatGPT-style innovation is literally ripping through every corner of Australian business, from the sharemarket and property to a spectrum of white-collar professions.

No wonder. Earlier this week, the powerful US investment bank Goldman Sachs issued a report suggesting that the $US7 trillion productivity boost coming down the line from AI technology would lift global GDP by 7 per cent inside a decade.

Whoosh! That’s a big call, but it is also the flip side of a torrent of negative coverage where the focus has been on the numbers of jobs that will be cut out by AI adoption in the workforce.

Elon Musk says he wants to back the creation of an AI “app for everything”. Picture: AFP

Investors and business leaders are treading warily through the hype.

In our own market, sharemarket research, financial advice and property services stand out as ready for upheaval

Top fund managers have already been adopting AI-driven “quantitative” models which cut down on the more routine or prosaic elements of stock research such as monitoring investment chat rooms or listening in to CEO results presentation calls

One of the world’s leading hedge fund groups, the UK-based Man Group, claims its machine-learning project can project how shares prices move with an 80 per cent success rate.

Closer to home, Queensland-based financial adviser Ben Neilson of Neilson and Co Wealth Management says OpenAI can create answers to financial problems with high levels of accuracy, “creating required content in 3.88 seconds”.

In property, something of a hot debate has broken out in social media networks such as LinkedIn, as combating commentators take different points of view: In the domestic real estate market, Aaron White of Theo Poulos Real Estate recently suggested that eventually AI would “be able to find and match the right buyers to get the best result for the vendor … even conduct an auction”.

Not so fast, Fiona Jefferies, founder of Diva Works, responded: “ChatGPT’s current settings throw up a SHEDLOAD of cliches.”

So, no more cliches from human real estate agents. An instant win!

Journalists watch a video by AI anchor “Fedha” on the Twitter account of the Kuwait news service. Picture: AFP

On a more serious note, as activity on the ground accelerates, investors are moving to try to pick the companies and sectors that will be early winners.

In our own market one of the few windows into broader activity is Exchange Traded Funds where funds linked with AI tech are rebounding.

One of the best known AI-related funds is from the Betashares group, where in the past three months the Global Robotics fund is up 24 per cent. In contrast, the broader Australia 200 ETF is up just 3.4 per cent.

As portfolio construction expert Graham Rich says, “semiconductors are the new oil in this area”. One of the biggest holdings in the Betashares Robotics EFT is Nvidia, the semiconductor maker which is seen as a leader in AI.

For investors who want to go beyond the generic ETFs, the range is limited as the bulk of the action is in US tech titans such as Amazon, Alphabet and Meta and Microsoft.

Unfortunately, the Goldman Sachs research report does not spell out stock picks. Rather, the New York group calmly informs us that “two thirds of all occupations could be partially automated by Ai”, although it goes on to say many new jobs and positions will be created.

Perhaps the job losses might even be felt deep in the heart of the finance industry?

Laura Rusu of Melbourne-based smart investment technology group Lensell, is not so sure. “AI will be good for investors seeking information; as for work such as we do in portfolio allocation – these problems are just too complex for it,” she says.