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Investors using generalized, all-purpose AI platforms for retirement planning help may not even realize these tools' shortcomings.

Have you ever considered asking an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered assistant like Google's Gemini or Microsoft's Copilot for help allocating your retirement portfolio? If so, you wouldn't be the first. You may already be using AI to allocate your retirement savings without knowing it.

These tools are obviously powerful by virtue of being able to access much of the world's collective knowledge. A handful of brokerages and investment managers know this and have been providing such technology for some time now. They just don't tell clients that their stock picks are being powered by artificial intelligence because ... well, because the world's still not completely convinced that generalized AI-powered chat tools like OpenAI's ChatGPT or Gemini always get things right.

That's because the AI doesn't always get things right, by the way. Indeed, when it comes to retirement planning, all-encompassing platforms like the aforementioned Copilot or ChatGPT can sometimes be alarmingly problematic by missing key details about your specific situation.

With that as the backdrop, here's why you're better served by sticking with the AI tools built specifically to help you manage your retirement investments.

If you're a customer of brokerage firm Charles Schwab (SCHW 0.95%), then you've already been exposed to an AI-powered stock-picking tool. Unveiled in early 2022, this technology allows investors to narrow their investment choices down to a manageable handful based on the usual criteria like risk, growth, and valuation. But the tool also helps investors identify and capitalize on qualitative trends or themes.

It's not exactly a new idea. Investors have had access to theme-based stock suggestions for years now. Usually, it just seems like another criterion offered by a stock screener.

There's far more artificial intelligence being applied here than there seems to be on the surface. Much like Microsoft's Copilot and Google's Gemini, Schwab's tool uses AI "to find companies linked to those keywords and phrases, combing through millions of public documents, such as patents, clinical trials, and company filings." It very likely comes up with picks most investors would have otherwise never come across.

Perhaps more relevant to future or current retirees is Schwab's menu of so-called Intelligent Portfolios, which build and then update a portfolio pre-selected for your particular situation. What the company refers to as a robo-advisor doing this portfolio maintenance is actually a form of automated AI. Although these portfolios certainly don't outperform the broad market each and every quarter, they do offer less volatile, more consistent performances without requiring constant monitoring and management by investors.

Image source: Getty Images.

Mutual fund giant Fidelity also has its own robo-advisor tech, powering an automated investment service called Fidelity Go. Although it's not Fidelity's invention, the brokerage firm offers its customers access to Capitalize.ai, allowing users to turn the simplest of word-based instructions into a trading algorithm.

Investment management outfit BlackRock (BLK 0.56%) -- the name behind the iShares family of exchange-traded funds (ETFs) -- is another financial services name waist-deep in AI waters.

While most of the company's interest in AI has been to empower financial advisors via a revenue-bearing platform called Aladdin, it's not unaware of the potential of AI as a stock-picking tool. For instance, commenting specifically on retirement portfolios, BlackRock explains that "by analyzing vast datasets, including satellite imagery and labor mobility data, AI can extract early insights on economic activities across regions, which can be used to inform macro (e.g., regional) and micro (e.g., company level) tilts in our portfolios."

To this end, while it doesn't offer a Schwab-like robo-advisor to individual investors, BlackRock has never denied the fact that it's using AI to help guide its fund managers' investment choices. So, in a sense, some individual investors are directly benefiting from BlackRock's AI tech.

Some might argue that general-purpose AI chat platforms like ChatGPT and Gemini have come a long way since Schwab and Fidelity first launched their AI-powered stock-picking tools. Namely, they've become incredibly user-friendly.

And that's not incorrect.

But all-purpose AI platforms still aren't great self-service options for allocating your retirement savings even when you can convince a general AI assistant to help you do so. These platforms are seemingly aware that even they are not ideally suited to offer you a full-blown portfolio plan; as such, they don't always provide more than a broad allocation theory.

Not all AI is the same. Microsoft's Copilot and OpenAi's ChatGPT, and Google's Gemini are all large language model (or LLM) AI, meaning they rely on the collective wisdom created by the text available on billions and billions of web pages. By interpreting and integrating as much credible information available on the web as they can, these platforms can end up ignoring a nuance that might be uniquely important to you.

It's also worth adding that while LLMs can analyze numerical data, they're not built to deal with numbers. They often struggle when it comes to doing predictive numerical analysis. This, of course, is the kind of math retirees typically need done (and need done right).

The missing element? Context. Gemini or Copilot "understand" words largely based on the words appearing before or after them. With numbers though, these tools don't always understand what it is you're trying to accomplish or determine, or how to do it, particularly when you're giving these AI platforms instructions using words.

That's not the case with the portfolio-allocation tools offered by Schwab or Fidelity, or perhaps eventually by BlackRock. Their technology is built from the ground up to handle numbers and meet needs specific to investors. They may require more input from you on the front end, but they're far better suited to provide you with the solutions you need in the end.

These investor-oriented AI tools also do something important that most general AI-powered chatbots don't; they ask you questions that force you to think about what it is you ultimately want to accomplish. ChatGPT, Gemini, and Copilot don't ask any follow-up, clarifying questions. In fact, these tools don't even recognize that they should be asking more probing questions of investors using them.

Connect the dots. The additional information and investment of your time in the creation of a customized retirement portfolio will very likely lead to superior returns (relative to the risk you're taking) from your retirement fund. So, stick with the tools purpose-built to allocate a portfolio specifically for you. It's worth it even if they're not the easiest and most accessible option to use.

Suzanne Frey, an executive at Alphabet, is a member of The Motley Fools board of directors. Charles Schwab is an advertising partner of The Ascent, a Motley Fool company. James Brumley has positions in Alphabet. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet, Charles Schwab, and Microsoft. The Motley Fool recommends the following options: long January 2026 $395 calls on Microsoft, short January 2026 $405 calls on Microsoft, and short June 2024 $65 puts on Charles Schwab. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

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Surprise: Artificial Intelligence (AI) Might Already Be Used to Allocate Your Retirement Savings - The Motley Fool

Artificial intelligence (AI) computer programs that process MRI results show differences in how the brains of men and women are organized at a cellular level, a new study shows. These variations were spotted in white matter, tissue primarily located in the human brains innermost layer, which fosters communication between regions.

Men and women are known to experience multiple sclerosis, autism spectrum disorder, migraines, and other brain issues at different rates and with varying symptoms. A detailed understanding of how biological sex impacts the brain is therefore viewed as a way to improve diagnostic tools and treatments. However, while brain size, shape, and weight have been explored, researchers have only a partial picture of the brains layout at the cellular level.

Led by researchers at NYU Langone Health, the new study used an AI technique called machine learning to analyze thousands of MRI brain scans from 471 men and 560 women. Results revealed that the computer programs could accurately distinguish between biological male and female brains by spotting patterns in structure and complexity that were invisible to the human eye. The findings were validated by three different AI models designed to identify biological sex using their relative strengths in either zeroing in on small portions of white matter or analyzing relationships across larger regions of the brain.

Our findings provide a clearer picture of how a living, human brain is structured, which may in turn offer new insight into how many psychiatric and neurological disorders develop and why they can present differently in men and women, said study senior author and neuroradiologist Yvonne W. Lui, MD.

Dr. Lui, a professor and vice chair for research in the Department of Radiology at NYU Grossman School of Medicine, notes that previous studies of brain microstructure have largely relied on animal models and human tissue samples. In addition, the validity of some of these past findings has been called into question for relying on statistical analyses of hand-drawn regions of interest, meaning researchers needed to make many subjective decisions about the shape, size, and location of the regions they choose. Such choices can potentially skew the results, says Dr. Lui.

The new study results, published online May 14 in the journal Scientific Reports, avoided that problem by using machine learning to analyze entire groups of images without asking the computer to inspect any specific spot, which helped to remove human biases, the authors say.

For the research, the team started by feeding AI programs existing data examples of brain scans from healthy men and women and also telling the machine programs the biological sex of each brain scan. Since these models were designed to use complex statistical and mathematical methods to get smarter over time as they accumulated more data, they eventually learned to distinguish biological sex on their own. Importantly, the programs were restricted from using overall brain size and shape to make their determinations, says Lui.

According to the results, all of the models correctly identified the sex of subject scans between 92 percent and 98 percent of the time. Several features in particular helped the machines make their determinations, including how easily and in what direction water could move through brain tissue.

These results highlight the importance of diversity when studying diseases that arise in the human brain, said study co-lead author Junbo Chen, MS, a doctoral candidate at NYU Tandon School of Engineering.

If, as has been historically the case, men are used as a standard model for various disorders, researchers may miss out on critical insight, added study co-lead author Vara Lakshmi Bayanagari, MS, a graduate research assistant at NYU Tandon School of Engineering.

Bayanagari cautions that while the AI tools could report differences in brain-cell organization, they could not reveal which sex was more likely to have which features. She adds that the study classified sex based on genetic information and only included MRIs from cisgendered men and women.

According to the authors, the team next plans to explore the development of sex-related brain structure differences over time to better understand environmental, hormonal, and social factors that could play a role in these changes.

Funding for the study was provided by the National Institutes of Health grants R01NS119767, R01NS131458, and P41EB017183, as well as by the United States Department of Defense grant W81XWH2010699.

In addition to Dr. Lui, Chen, and Bayanagari, other NYU Langone Health and NYU researchers involved in the study were Sohae Chung, PhD, and Yao Wang, PhD.

Shira Polan Phone: 212-404-4279 Shira.Polan@NYULangone.org

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Artificial Intelligence Tool Detects Sex-Related Differences in Brain Structure - NYU Langone Health

The Council of Europe has adopted the first-ever international legally binding treaty aimed at ensuring the respect of human rights, the rule of law and democracy legal standards in the use of artificial intelligence (AI) systems. The treaty, which is also open to non-European countries, sets out a legal framework that covers the entire lifecycle of AI systems and addresses the risks they may pose, while promoting responsible innovation. The convention adopts a risk-based approach to the design, development, use, and decommissioning of AI systems, which requires carefully considering any potential negative consequences of using AI systems.

The Council of Europe Framework Convention on artificial intelligence and human rights, democracy, and the rule of law was adopted in Strasbourg during the annual ministerial meeting of the Council of Europe's Committee of Ministers, which brings together the Ministers for Foreign Affairs of the 46 Council of Europe member states.

Council of Europe Secretary General Marija Pejinovi said: The Framework Convention on Artificial Intelligence is a first-of-its-kind, global treaty that will ensure that Artificial Intelligence upholds peoples rights. It is a response to the need for an international legal standard supported by states in different continents which share the same values to harness the benefits of Artificial intelligence, while mitigating the risks. With this new treaty, we aim to ensure a responsible use of AI that respects human rights, the rule of law and democracy.

The convention is the outcome of two years' work by an intergovernmental body, the Committee on Artificial Intelligence (CAI), which brought together to draft the treaty the 46 Council of Europe member states, the European Union and 11 non-member states (Argentina, Australia, Canada, Costa Rica, the Holy See, Israel, Japan, Mexico, Peru, the United States of America, and Uruguay), as well as representatives of the private sector, civil society and academia, who participated as observers.

The treaty covers the use of AI systems in the public sector including companies acting on its behalf - and in the private sector. The convention offers parties two ways of complying with its principles and obligations when regulating the private sector: parties may opt to be directly obliged by the relevant convention provisions or, as an alternative, take other measures to comply with the treaty's provisions while fully respecting their international obligations regarding human rights, democracy and the rule of law. This approach is necessary because of the differences in legal systems around the world.

The convention establishes transparency and oversight requirements tailored to specific contexts and risks, including identifying content generated by AI systems. Parties will have to adopt measures to identify, assess, prevent, and mitigate possible risks and assess the need for a moratorium, a ban or other appropriate measures concerning uses of AI systems where their risks may be incompatible with human rights standards.

They will also have to ensure accountability and responsibility for adverse impacts and that AI systems respect equality, including gender equality, the prohibition of discrimination, and privacy rights. Moreover, parties to the treaty will have to ensure the availability of legal remedies for victims of human rights violations related to the use of AI systems and procedural safeguards, including notifying any persons interacting with AI systems that they are interacting with such systems.

As regards the risks for democracy, the treaty requires parties to adopt measures to ensure that AI systems are not used to undermine democratic institutions and processes, including the principle of separation of powers, respect for judicial independence and access to justice.

Parties to the convention will not be required to apply the treaty's provisions to activities related to the protection of national security interests but will be obliged to ensure that these activities respect international law and democratic institutions and processes. The convention will not apply to national defence matters nor to research and development activities, except when the testing of AI systems may have the potential to interfere with human rights, democracy or the rule of law.

In order to ensure its effective implementation, the convention establishes a follow-up mechanism in the form of a Conference of the Parties.

Finally, the convention requires that each party establishes an independent oversight mechanism to oversee compliance with the convention, and raises awareness, stimulates an informed public debate, and carries out multistakeholder consultations on how AI technology should be used. The framework convention will be opened for signature in Vilnius (Lithuania) on 5 September on the occasion of a conference of Ministers of Justice.

Explanatory report of the Convention

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Council of Europe adopts first international treaty on artificial intelligence - Council of Europe

Advocates are pushing for the passage of bills in Albany to protect New Yorkers from the negative impacts of artificial intelligence.

They're calling for more industry and legal accountability in the use of AI in the state.

That includes legislation to protect people from the biases of AI systems in employment, policing and other high-risk areas.

Lawmakers are also looking to regulate the government use of artificial intelligence and to ensure there's transparency within state agencies.

They say these bills are needed as AI continues to evolve.

"We're really at a critical moment where whether we decide to step up to this challenge and proactivily regulate in a responsible way can determine whether our future is built by every single one of us that protects our rights, or a future that will be written for us by the few," Democratic state Sen. Kristen Gonzalez, of Queens, said at the Capitol on Wednesday.

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Advocates: Pass N.Y. bills over artificial intelligence - Spectrum News