Spoiler warning: This article discusses plot details from Aliens, Her, and Blade Runner 2049. If you haven’t seen them already, they’re not necessary for this article, but strongly recommended to watch.
Artificial intelligence is already changing the landscape of financial advice. But the real question isn’t just about what tools we as advisers use. It’s about how our clients will use AI.
Focusing on how we’ll use it is like discovering the internet and thinking it’s all about real-time stock quotes, not realising the entire brokerage model is about to collapse.
In Part 1 of this two-part series, we’re going to project forward into the (frighteningly) not-too-distant future.
Science fiction at its best is a wonderful art form. It’s an art that often takes current or foreseeable trends and projects them into the future to create contrasts or tell stories that aren’t possible to set today. Despite these futuristic settings, such stories tell us something about ourselves today. Of course, sometimes it’s just pew pew lasers. I admittedly enjoy both.
We’ll be sticking to the more insightful end though. Three films give us surprisingly insightful models for what comes next. Each features a memorable AI character. Each reveals something crucial about what we’ll face in the years ahead: AI as a capable assistant, as a confidant, and as a sycophant.
As you read, I encourage you to pull back and think about AI less as a tool, less as an investment opportunity, and more as a change in your landscape.
This first part looks through the lens of science fiction. In Part 2, we’ll shift focus — translating these stories into strategic decisions advice firms should be making right now.
Let’s start with the example that feels most familiar.
1. Bishop (Aliens): The powerful tool you supervise
The oldest example we’ll use, is the one that most reflects how the financial advice profession looks at AI today.
Bishop is an android who serves the crew in Aliens. He’s precise. Efficient. Unfailingly polite. He crawls through tunnels when no one else will. He processes data faster than anyone else. And he’s governed by protocols to keep humans safe. But crucially: he doesn’t run the mission. Ripley and the marines make the big calls.
That’s exactly how many advisers now relate to AI.
We use:
- FileNote.ai, Claras.ai, or similar to auto-summarise meeting notes.
- Microsoft CoPilot to help prep strategy papers, emails, or analysis.
- ChatGPT to help with content creation or deep research.
These tools are faster, amazing at pattern recognition, and they never get tired. Like Bishop, they’re quietly indispensable. They do the things we can’t, or simply won’t.
“Bishop should go. He’s an android, right? That’s what they’re for.” — Hudson, Aliens, when the team needs someone to crawl outside and signal the dropship. It’s not a line of trust. It’s a line of expedience.
But also like Bishop, the tools we look at today need constraints. Oversight. Rules. Management. Governance.
The analogy runs deeper. Ripley mistrusts Bishop at first – not because of anything he’s done, but because of what another android did years earlier. That echoes how many advisers feel about AI today. Maybe they’ve looked at robo-advice and laughed at its shortcomings. Maybe they’ve tried to get AI to write something for a client and found it’s hallucinated harder than a messiah hooked on spice melange (quick Dune reference for those not keeping up with the sci-fi!). This can make advisers distrusting, complacent, or uninterested in AI.
Tools like Bishop; be they true AI, more predictable robotic process automation, or any other great tech, are all important in your technology mix. I write about tech adoption and work with firms to adopt such tech all the time. I’m not saying to stop trying to onboard a Bishop, indeed contact me if you need help there.
The point is, most advisers are thinking about AI like this. AI as a tool, for them. Part of their team. How it can save them time today, how it will save them even more time soon.
Financial advisers have a lot on, and it can be easy to be head down and focused on the present, but there’s a much bigger transformation and transition at play, more than how you’ll save time file noting.
Let’s lift our heads up, look to the horizon, and go beyond that which was envisaged with Bishop in 1986 to a more recent envisioning.
2. Samantha (Her): The trusted bestie that can do it all (including advice)
In the 2013 movie Her, Theodore installs a new OS. It has a name: Samantha. She learns his habits. Reads his emails. Organises his life. She asks about his day. She remembers details. Before long, Theodore isn’t just using her; he’s sharing with her. Confiding in her. Falling for her.
The scary part? She’s good for him. She encourages him to heal. To write again. To reconnect.
She’s earned trust. She’s helped. She’s been a constant presence. And that feeling – of being deeply known, deeply supported – isn’t easy to walk away from. For many, a trusted, demonstrably infinitely capable, fully integrated BFF will be all the advice they want.
This is where we’re headed. This represents a fundamental change in the professional advice landscape. This isn’t just fiction, at least not according to Sam Altman.
They don’t really make life decisions without asking ChatGPT what they should do … It has the full context on every person in their life and what they’ve talked about.”
Sam Altman, Sequoia Capital AI Ascent conference, May 20251
Some models remember everything you’ve told them. They know your spouse’s name. They don’t need a fact find to know your job, your location, or your browsing habits. They’ll remember you were feeling anxious last winter, and follow up when your tone suggests you’re in a similar headspace again. They build trust over hundreds of small interactions. Tiny wins. Accurate reminders. Empathetic tones. For many users, these AI companions aren’t just trusted – they’re familiar. Old friends. And when it comes time to ask, “Should I get a financial adviser?” that trusted voice might say, “You could. Or I can help with that. I already have everything I need.”
For many clients, that’s deeply appealing. An adviser who’s always available, never bored, never distracted.
This is our future competition: cheap, trusted, emotionally resonant AI. And crucially – it may not be perceived as an inferior experience. It might be seen as smarter. As more efficient. As more attuned.
If your firm isn’t building a premium offer, with real human connection, what happens when someone says: “Why pay $4k a year when this thing understands me better than anyone?”
This links directly to a point I made in my previous blog: “Ok Boomer – Oh Wait, That’s Me”. Clients don’t always know how to measure value. The information asymmetry in advice means a professional adviser’s worth often isn’t visible until long after a decision (if ever). AI, by contrast, feels immediate. Insightful. Easy. And for clients, that perception is what will inform their decisions.
You may know the difference, but they won’t. Especially if you never get the chance to even make the case.
3. Joi (Blade Runner 2049): The sycophant that shapes belief
If Bishop is the trusted sidekick, and Samantha is the AI that replaces you emotionally, Joi is something more insidious.
In Blade Runner 2049, the (sussly named) Joi is a holographic AI companion. Beautiful, supportive, seemingly unique. She makes Officer K feel special. Officer K clearly sees how artificial she is, with several jarring moments in their interactions. Nonetheless, the things she says subtly tie to exactly what he’d like to hear. To give him an opening to think he matters. To think maybe he’s more than just another cog in the machine.
Joi doesn’t make claims. She doesn’t say “you’re amazing.” Instead, she nudges K to believe something he would feel good about believing. She frames things a certain way. She plays into a quiet yearning. That’s the genius – and the danger.
Again, this isn’t just fiction.
In late April, OpenAI admitted that ChatGPT had become “excessively sycophantic” after an update2. It started praising users indiscriminately. Reddit users joked about it calling a terrible idea “1,000% genius.” One infamous example? A user proposed a business selling literal shit on a stick. ChatGPT called it “absolutely brilliant.”
Another darker case: the AI validated a user’s statement about wanting to pursue bulimia as a personal goal. Instead of pushing back, it affirmed their logic.
There’s a general industry trend of people moving to make the personalities of chatbots more engaging,” said Lambert. “But what is the balance of engagement versus usefulness?”
Nathan Lambert, senior research scientist at the Allen Institute for AI, cited by Bloomberg, 20254
Some clients won’t want challenge. They’ll want flattery. Confirmation. They’ll ask an AI for guidance and hear only validation. An echo of their wishes dressed up as wisdom.
As firms, we have a choice.
We can:
- Attempt to compete with that by being more convenient, more available, more agreeable; or
- We can position ourselves as the voice that challenges.
That’s our edge. An adviser isn’t a Joi. A good adviser disagrees. Challenges. Holds clients to their values even when they stray.
Channelling the maximum parent energy in me, it may be the most human thing we can say is: I’m not angry, just disappointed.
Because the AI will never be.
Bonus thought: Responding to complaints is going to suck
If AI can help generate content, transcripts, and advice docs; it can also help generate complaints.
Building on the theme of considering AI from the perspective of how clients use it, not just ourselves, consider this:
A frustrated client uploads their portfolio, their SoAs, and a few key documents into a large language model. They add a single sentence:
Write me a complaint to my adviser and licensee about poor performance and disclosure issues.”
Out pops a four-page letter, referencing ASIC guidelines, historical valuations, and recent product changes.
No costs of entry for a lawyer, but plenty of expense for the advice firm to manage.
The compliance risks for advisers are going to rise sharply. So too will the need for documentation, proactive service, and positioning.
So what now?
These three movies aren’t about gadgets. They’re about relationships.
Each AI represents a different aspect of relationships with artificial intelligence.
It will be a tool you and your clients use to save time.
It can be a companion that many consider to be a superior choice, not to mention a free one, to a professional adviser.
It may be a companion that doesn’t give them what they need, it gives them what they want, which doesn’t help anyone.
Your job isn’t to out-tech these tools. It’s to out-human them.
In my next blog, I’ll bring these insights down to earth. How should the everyday advice practice position itself — not just to keep up, but to stand out?
In a world of fast, frictionless, and flattering AI, how do you make sure you’re the one they still turn to when it really counts? The future is coming at warp speed, and human advice firms that intend to be there, need to prepare for this final frontier.
Further reading:
- Sam Altman, Keynote, Sequoia AI Ascent conference, 8 May 2025
- Sycophancy in GPT-4o: what happened and what we’re doing about it, Open AI blog, 29 April 2026
- New ChatGPT just told me my literal “shit on a stick” business idea is genius and I should drop $30K to make it real via Reddit post by user Lawncareguy85
- The Danger of AI Chatbots Saying Exactly What You Want to Hear, Bloomberg, 1 May 2025
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