Investors should ask broad and unbiased questions when interacting with large language models in order to get the most accurate answers, professor Andrew W. Lo told Axios.

"Even before the change in policies that are being implemented now, vaccines were a difficult business," said professor Andrew W. Lo. "It's just become that much harder." Smaller biotechnology companies, which already tend to operate on thin margins, "will get out of the business," Lo said. If a new pandemic were to ignite in the current climate, "Operation Warp Speed Part 2 would not operate at warp speed," he said.

"All financial innovation is generally there to solve a problem," says professor Andrew W. Lo. "If you've got some long-dated obligations, you want long-dated assets to mature and pay them off." Lo, speaking generally and not about Fox Hedge, adds that complex ways of engineering long-dated investments could end up creating their own problems if they become common.

Andrew W. Lo, a professor of finance at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is looking at ways to facilitate the commercialization of compounds shelved for business reasons and is part of an effort to build a clearinghouse for them. He says moving those molecules from big pharma to a biotech to develop “is a great way of taking advantage of essentially a head start and being able to make use of assets that are right now just gathering dust and not really helping anybody.”

"We're on the cusp of a pretty significant change in how people are able to use AI to help manage their finances," said professor Andrew W. Lo. "I don't think these apps are all ready for primetime, but nonetheless, there is a sea change between today's AI finance applications and what existed even two years ago."

Professor Andrew W. Lo believes that generative AI is fast approaching the capacity to parse complex market dynamics, weigh long-term risks, and earn the kind of trust typically reserved for human advisers. "This could be in the form of the so-called agent AI working on our behalf and making decisions on our behalf in an automated fashion. I believe that within the next five years we're going to see a revolution in how humans interact with AI," said Lo.

"One of the biggest challenges that we face in finance is financial advice," said professor Andrew W. Lo. "How do we deal with various different investors' needs to manage their portfolio to achieve certain objectives."

This article examines the capabilities and limitations of AI tools in retirement planning, highlighting the work of Andrew Lo and Jillian Ross in which they are exploring whether large language models like ChatGPT can provide reliable financial advice to everyday investors.

In a recent ESG Dive interview, MIT Sloan School of Management professor Andrew W. Lo discusses his initial skepticism regarding ESG investing and how it led to the development of an executive education course on impact investing more broadly.

At the EmTech AI conference hosted by MIT Technology Review, researchers and industry leaders discuss how organizations are evaluating the return on investment (ROI) from generative AI initiatives.

In this the first of two pilot episodes of Chalk Radio with video, Professor Andrew W. Lo, who teaches finance at MIT’s Sloan School of Management, knows that many people find financial matters perplexing and scary. Lots of us don’t have a good head for numbers, and besides, how can one get advice and make sound decisions when it’s taboo to discuss one’s finances at all? That’s where a financial advisor is useful–someone who understands the concepts, can crunch the numbers, and has a fiduciary responsibility to look out for your best interests. For many people, hiring a financial advisor might be a financial impossibility, but Prof. Lo and his colleagues are working to develop an AI financial advisor that not only gives ordinary people access to sound financial advice, but acts with real fiduciary responsibility. Large language models can’t do this yet, he says, but the technology is developing fast. Other topics he touches on in this episode include the outsized influence of finance on drug development and global decarbonization and the equally outsized influence of teachers on their students–he names many who changed his own life, from his third-grade teacher in Queens to his professors at college and graduate school.

ChatGPT can help with a lot of things, from searching to generating images to planning outlines. But when it comes to financial advice, it's probably best to leave it to the (human) experts.

Nearly half (47%) of respondents to an Experian survey from October 2024 said they had tried using AI chatbots for financial advice — but a new study from the broker analysis site, Investing in the Web, found that tools like ChatGPT might not be very good at it.

There is a dual challenge of meeting increasing global energy demand alongside an urgent need for transition to clean energy sources. Despite major progress in renewables, fossil fuel use has actually increased in recent years. Instead of thinking solely about an energy transition, we might look for "energy addition" opportunities—adding in new sources of breakthrough renewable technologies like nuclear fission, fusion, and geothermal for new demand. What's the catch? The development required to scale these novel cleantech projects to commercial viability requires significant investment. Promising tech in a lab can often hit the dreaded "Valley of Death", the point where increased risk and uncertainty is a major barrier to commercial deployment. Here's where financial engineering comes in, like deploying mega funds and adopting phased development models akin to biotech. These strategies can de-risk and attract the critical investment needed to get us through the Valley of Death and into a much more sustainable future. Andrew W. Lo is the Charles E. and Susan T. Harris Professor, a Professor of Finance, and the Director of the Laboratory for Financial Engineering at the MIT Sloan School of Management.Lo's current research spans four areas: evolutionary models of investor behavior and adaptive markets, artificial intelligence and financial technology, healthcare finance, and impact investing. He has co-founded several asset management and biotech companies, and sits on the boards of several for-profit and non-profit public and private healthcare organizations.Lo holds a BA in economics from Yale University and an AM and PhD in economics from Harvard University. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community.

In his 17 years as dean, David Schmittlein led the transformation of MIT Sloan into a management school uniquely positioned for the future and “the best version of its distinctive self.”

Tax season is so stressful that it’s driving some people to therapy. A new survey suggests a big part of the problem is the complexity of filing taxes.