ChatGPT is the fastest growing app of all time, gaining more than 100 million users just two months after its launch in November. It allows users to have human-like conversations that include reasonable-sounding and often correct answers to all sorts of questions. Like humans, it can ask for more information and explain reasoning.

We’re now seeing the first academic research about the use of ChatGPT in finance. Two recent studies make GPT seem like a promising technology both to improve investment decision making and to explain its decisions. Perhaps the long-held dream of replacing humans in finance is coming true.

In December I wrote that "a tireless machine able to digest all information and immune to biases should be clearly superior to humans when it comes to investing. Except it's not.” Financial management was one of the earliest goals of artificial intelligence, or AI, research because it seemed like an easy and highly rewarding task. But so far, AI has succeeded only in niche applications in finance.