ChatGPT and AI: An investor’s guide

Key takeaways

• ChatGPT is an advanced form of generative artificial intelligence (AI), which can have human-like conversations, and create text content.
  
  
• Generative AI has significant implications for different areas of the economy ranging from displacing web-based search tools to automating various services industries.

Note: The below section titled “How might ChatGPT impact investors” was written by ChatGPT when we entered the prompt, “How might ChatGPT impact investors?”.

As an investor, you’re probably always on the lookout for new investment opportunities. You also might be looking for ideas about how to invest in the “next big thing.” If so, you may be wondering about ChatGPT and how this fits into the world of investing, which garnered a lot of media attention after crossing one million users within five days of its launch in late 2022.¹

The following article is designed to help you understand what ChatGPT is and, more importantly, its potential implications for investors.

What is ChatGPT?

ChatGPT (Generative Pre-Trained Transformer) is an advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot that can understand and create human-like conversation. ChatGPT uses a transformer algorithm, which is based on a neural network: a computer program that mimics the way the human brain works.²

Created by OpenAI, a company focused on artificial intelligence, ChatGPT was trained using a massive amount of data from the internet, including books, Wikipedia, articles, and other pieces of writing, amounting to 300 billion words!³ The model uses its knowledge to predict what the next word should be in a sentence. ChatGPT is continuously learning, so as it processes more text it becomes better at predicting what words should come next, generating increasingly realistic outputs.

Investors have taken notice of the potentially transformative nature of artificial intelligence, as the NYSE FactSet Global Robotics and Artificial Intelligence Index has returned 19% since the launch of GPT on November 30, 2022, outperforming the S&P 500 by more-than 10%.⁴

Implications of ChatGPT on the broader economy

Mentions of “Artificial Intelligence” in the S&P 500 Transcripts

Source: FactSet. Accessed on 1/27/23. Transcripts reflect company commentary on earnings calls and investor day presentations. Chart Description: Bar chart reflects mentions of "artificial intelligence" in transcripts for S&P 500 companies dating back to 2000.

While still in its infancy, we envision two ways generative AI could revolutionise the world.

1. Search: Generative AI could upend the search engine model, which has been the dominant form of digital information gathering since the 1990s. Today, search engines rely upon digital advertising spending that allows companies to promote products in response to specific search queries (e.g., “what should I visit on my vacation in Barcelona?”). Digital advertising is a $681 billion (USD) market⁶ which could be disrupted if there is less reason for people to click on advertising links; that is, if generative AI can eliminate the requirement for a search engine intermediary and deliver information directly to consumers.
   
   
2. Services Industries: Generative AI can perform a wide variety of tasks that are currently done by humans. It can do everything from developing complex lines of code to language transcription and translation to making wardrobe suggestions for a particular occasion. Impacted sectors include technology, education, and retail, though it’s not difficult to imagine other areas of the economy, such as healthcare, being impacted as well (no more waiting several days for a doctor to call you back and explain an MRI result). With the U.S. still facing a labour shortage of 4 million workers,⁷ and aging populations around the globe threatening future labour supply, companies able to create AI tools that enhance productivity and efficiency could benefit.

How might ChatGPT impact investors?

ChatGPT, as a language model, has the potential to impact investors in a variety of ways. It can be used for natural language processing, which can help with tasks such as sentiment analysis and news summarisation. This can potentially aid investors in making more informed decisions by providing them with a better understanding of the overall sentiment and key information related to a particular stock or market.

Additionally, ChatGPT can also be used for content generation, such as creating financial reports or earnings call transcripts. This can potentially save investors time and resources in analysing financial information. Overall, ChatGPT could help investors make more informed decisions and increase efficiency in their analysis of financial information.

Note: This does not constitute investment advice. As a reminder, the above section was written by ChatGPT.

How to invest in the AI theme

Investors looking to access AI companies may want to consider ETFs that hold pure-play firms across the full value-chain of artificial intelligence, targeting both the AI developers as well as the AI enablers.

• AI Developers: Companies that develop various forms of artificial intelligence such as natural language processing, generative AI, pattern recognition or predictive analytics.
  
  
• AI Enablers: Companies that produce various forms of technology such as cloud services or AI-oriented chips which enable the development of AI.

Looking ahead 

ChatGPT is not the only generative AI offering making headlines. DALL-E creates digital images based on user descriptions. Check out the painting below, which was created by DALL-E after being asked to “paint us a picture of your favorite futurist inventor”.

Source: Image created by DALL-E.  Image Description: We think that DALL-E painted an amalgamation of Albert Einstein and Thomas Edison!

Technology like DALL-E has major implications for creative areas of the economy, such as the arts and entertainment, which previously had been thought of as immune to the forces of AI.⁸

Character.AI is another generative AI service which allows people to chat with a facsimile of anyone alive or dead, real or imagined.⁹ We see these new use cases for AI technology are appearing with increased frequency, reflecting the fast-flowing nature of the space.

Ultimately, the goal is to achieve multi-modal AI; an application that can learn from and engage via text like ChatGPT, also learn via and generate images like Dall-E and extend to understanding and learning from audio, time-based and spatial data too. By combining all of these “types of intelligence” AI can become exponentially more useful and multi-faceted.

Conclusion

66 years after the birth of artificial intelligence at the Dartmouth workshop of 1956¹⁰, ChatGPT might be the most impressive AI tool yet. While new use cases are still being discovered, we believe that GPT and other forms of AI could continue to impact wide swaths of the economy. People looking to invest in AI may want to consider ETFs that provide exposure to pure-play stocks across the theme’s value chain.