12 Feb 2026 AI: Apocalypse or Paradise?

If you spend much time reading history, one of the most common refrains you’ll encounter is this: new technology is always either going to save the world or kill it. But even though the inventions of the central air conditioning (save the world) and the atomic bomb (kill it) have brought us debatably close to those promises, somehow we keep soldiering on.

So what about AI? Is it going to eat our reasoning capabilities and stunt our children or even take over the whole world? Or is it actually our only hope in the face of rapidly declining birth rates and productivity stagnation? 

Of course I don’t know. Something about human brain chemistry makes us susceptible to these extreme truth claims—it is somehow easier to imagine apocalypse and paradise than it is the vast middle ground between the two. The future is hopelessly complicated, and we are prone to shortcutting our prophecies, I guess. 

All that to say, you can already get decent financial advice for some problems using one of the many AI tools available. It’s not perfect, of course, and caveat emptor and all that, but the improvements are happening at a blinding pace. And it’s not just financial advice: People consult Chat or Claude or Gemini (or whatever) for medical advice, legal advice, nutrition and workout advice, relationship advice, car advice, data analysis, etc., etc. We are miles removed from Ask Jeeves.

What then is the point, exactly, of a financial advisor? What are we even here for? 

Here’s what I will say: Beacon is not here simply to give answers to questions. If that were the case we might already be closing up shop. Of course, we do give answers, and our clients often come to us with complex questions, and I anticipate that AI tools will only help us get better at delivering great answers in an even more timely way. 

But our clients don’t primarily hire us for answers. They hire us for care, and there is a categorical difference between the two.  Care is inherently human because it requires empathy, the ability to make meaning, eye contact, openness and listening, and a bond of trust that is predicated on the biological and emotional and spiritual components of Homo sapiens. Many people will grow increasingly comfortable with AI tools and get more and more advice from them. But there are some who will always want human care, and those are our people.  

Spouses die, children are born, children have special needs, big vocational choices need to be made, large sums are inherited, layoffs occur, businesses start and sell, divorces are finalized, kids go to college, memories start to fail. Some people want demonstrably trustworthy humans to care for themselves and their families in the midst of these huge and often unexpected life events.  

They also want someone who is well acquainted with their value system, their habits, their community, who can help integrate behavior with worldview and manage tradeoffs every day. Who can simply get things done and take responsibility. They are interested in accumulated wisdom being brought to bear on their life.  

So, color me naïve, and dig this blog post up if AI puts us out of business, but I am not worried. We aren’t trying to serve everyone. Just a small portion of the population who recognizes that wealth can be a gift or a curse, and who’d rather have some likeminded humans help nudge it toward gift.