Paul’s Perspectives

By Paul Tully, CFP®, RICP®, Founder, Senior Wealth Advisor

I am both fearful and excited by the prospects of artificial intelligence. The fear is based on some of the key tech players sounding a warning about what bad could happen, while the excitement is based on gains that will be made in medicine, climate, education and a new way of performing many tasks faster and with better accuracy.

I think we already have seen the speed at which AI can change our world, from the Covid vaccines to the development of GLP medications. Nobel prize winner Demis Hassabis—Nobel Prize winner in Chemistry and CEO of Google DeepMind—stated that artificial intelligence could help cure or eliminate all diseases, including cancer and Alzheimer’s, within the next 10 years. He made the statement during a 60 Minutes interview. Dario Amodei, CEO of leading AI company Anthropic, has also predicted that AI will help eliminate most cancers and major diseases within 5 to 10 years. A life changing accomplishment even partly becomes reality.

There is some real concern about rising US government debt, now over $40 trillion and rising at a rate of $2 trillion per year. Unless addressed, it will rise even faster as the interest on the debt increases as rates rise. After many years of warnings, we will address the impending insolvency of Social Security and Medicare. What was once 30 years in the future is now 5 years. There are fixes, they are simple, but they won’t be politically easy.

Many of us are dealing today with the increasing problem of inflation. It’s a political issue for sure, but more importantly it’s a quality-of-life problem for many Americans. Food, gas healthcare and utility prices have increased dramatically, and inflation has resulted in both higher house costs and higher interest costs, a kind of double whammy that is painful for many. I do believe that inflation and borrowing costs will decline over the next

few years, but it won’t be a sudden precipitous drop than many are hoping for.

Coming very soon is my favorite holiday, Thanksgiving. In addition to being thankful we as a family can spend time together, I hope yours can as well.

When you look around the world, whether that’s Europe, the Middle East or South America, the turmoil that exists there is very difficult to hear about.

So, for this Thanksgiving let’s be grateful that even after our problems in the US, we are far better off than most of the people in the world. Happy Thanksgiving!

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