It's Not Creepy, It's the Future

Your next financial adviser might be a centaur -- not half-human, half-horse, but half-human, half-machine. You might have heard of centaurs in chess, where a person and a computer form a team that together can beat the best human or computer playing alone. The idea, popularized after IBM's computer Deep Blue learned chess well enough to defeat world champion Garry Kasparov in 2003, is infiltrating financial planning. In artificial intelligence or machine learning, computers effectively program themselves to analyze data and solve problems. That's how IBM's Watson beat champions Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter on the television quiz show Jeopardy in 2011.