- ✓ AI will automate many parts of financial advising — but judgment, trust, and emotional attunement cannot be outsourced.
- ✓ Efficiency is valuable only when it serves people; when speed becomes the goal, it can amplify risk as easily as it creates opportunity.
- ✓ The families who navigate transitions best are rarely the fastest movers — they are the ones who prepared thoughtfully and stayed disciplined.
- ✓ As intelligence becomes abundant, the rarest and most durable assets become wisdom, patience, and trust — all of which still build slowly.
“In the era of artificial intelligence, when human dignity is threatened by new forms of dehumanization, ours is the pressing duty to remain profoundly human.”
Earlier this spring, an unlikely voice entered the global conversation about artificial intelligence.
The Vatican.
In a new encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, Pope Leo XIV raised a question that felt at once ancient and deeply modern: What happens when technological capability advances faster than human wisdom? What responsibilities remain distinctly human in a world increasingly shaped by machines? What happens when efficiency quietly becomes the highest good?
The question stayed with me, partly because it feels larger than technology, and thinking about stewardship as it relates to technology is something I talk to my kids about basically daily. It reaches into parenting, education, medicine, leadership, and perhaps most immediately for our work, the future of financial advice.
Recently, we attended an industry conference where speaker after speaker repeated a reassuring refrain: the human element of financial advising will never be replaced.
I understood the instinct behind the statement. Periods of rapid change tend to make people uneasy, and reassurance feels stabilizing. Yet, I disagree. Some parts of financial advising almost certainly will be replaced, and many parts should be. Administrative work, meeting preparation, data gathering, portions of tax coordination, scenario modeling, portfolio reporting, and first drafts of research will likely become faster, more accurate, and increasingly automated. Much of the operational friction surrounding advice deserves improvement, and efficiency, when placed in service of people, is a good thing.
The more interesting question, at least to me, is what happens next, as replacement is only half the story.
The future of advice may look less like expertise, because we have reached the point of collective intelligence, and more like true attunement.
For years, wealth management has relied heavily on reduction. Families become risk scores, liquidity analyses, balance sheets, and asset allocation targets. Useful tools, certainly, though anyone who has spent enough years sitting across from families understands money is never about money alone.
We get the privilege of walking through so many scenarios with families of scarcity, abundance, and everything in between. Some people fear scarcity even in abundance. Others say they want growth until volatility arrives and suddenly discover what they value most is stability. Family history shapes financial decisions in ways spreadsheets rarely capture. An entrepreneur who built something from nothing often experiences risk differently than the spouse who spent decades protecting what was built. Families who lived through the Great Financial Crisis tend to think differently than families whose wealth grew during one of the longest bull markets in history.
For years, our industry has measured what is easiest to count rather than what matters most. A balance sheet tells us something useful. A tax return tells us something important. An investment allocation reveals preferences and priorities. Yet none of those things fully explain why one person panics during volatility while another remains calm, why one family struggles to discuss money openly while another treats stewardship as a shared responsibility, or why one generation quietly carries assumptions shaped by experiences their children may never fully understand.
Pope Leo returns to this distinction repeatedly throughout Magnifica Humanitas. The concern is not whether machines become more capable. They almost certainly will. The concern is whether capability begins to substitute for judgment, whether efficiency becomes an idol, and whether people begin outsourcing the responsibilities that shape wisdom in the first place.
Financial advice has always been less about intelligence than judgment. Most sophisticated investors already possess more information than they could reasonably process. Information has never been scarce, in any era, yet wisdom often is the true rarity.
The challenge rarely comes from lacking options. The challenge comes from discernment. What deserves attention? What deserves patience? What deserves restraint? What tradeoffs deserve acceptance? These questions matter even more in markets, particularly during periods where speed increasingly resembles certainty.
Last year we wrote about what we called the Hall of Mirrors. Modern markets increasingly reflect themselves. Indexes reward what has already grown. Algorithms train on reactions generated by earlier algorithms. Narratives accelerate before reflection has fully occurred. Momentum begins feeding momentum until speed itself starts resembling truth.
Efficiency creates remarkable benefits and in tandem creates new risks.
Index investing has democratized access to markets in extraordinary ways, and for many investors broad diversification remains deeply appropriate. At Somerset, we believe strongly in disciplined, non-correlated investing with a strong tilt towards quality. Yet momentum carries vulnerabilities of its own. Systems that reward concentration on the way up often amplify risk on the way down. The same efficiency that accelerates optimism can accelerate fear.
The deeper question beneath all of this feels less technological than human. What becomes more valuable when intelligence becomes abundant?
One observation from the Vatican document stayed with me in particular: periods of rapid innovation often create both optimism and disorientation. Institutions adapt slowly. Confidence tends to rise before consequences become fully visible. During those moments, discernment becomes unusually valuable.
That observation feels relevant to families.
People rarely come to Somerset because information is unavailable. Information has become abundant. Families come because complexity has increased. They want help interpreting competing priorities. They want someone who understands the emotional weight sitting beneath financial decisions. They want perspective when circumstances change quickly and certainty becomes difficult to trust. This is why we created the CLARITIES framework.
Trust, in many ways, becomes more valuable when complexity rises.
Perhaps this is what thoughtful stewardship has always required: a willingness to move slowly enough to think clearly, even while the world speeds up around you.
Most people know the story of The Tortoise and the Hare. The faster creature races ahead, certain the outcome is already secure. The slower one simply continues moving.
The lesser-known versions of the story feel more interesting to me. In one telling, the hare asks for a rematch and wins easily, shifting the lesson from perseverance to humility. In another, found in the ancient Indian Panchatantra, the race changes entirely. The faster creature reaches a river he cannot cross. The slower animal arrives later but slips calmly into the current and reaches the other side.
The lesson expands.
Patience matters.
Preparation matters too.
Ultimately, every family with whom we have had the pleasure of working eventually reaches a river. It arrives through markets, illness, loss, succession, divorce, aging parents, or the sale of a business that took decades to build. Occasionally it arrives through success itself, when abundance creates complexity that quietly changes family dynamics.
The faster creature in the story loses for an important reason: he optimized for the wrong terrain.
That strikes me as one of the more useful lessons for the current moment. Speed and innovation both matter. Artificial intelligence will almost certainly reshape our profession in meaningful ways. Yet the families who tend to navigate difficult transitions well are rarely the ones who moved fastest. More often, they are the families who prepared thoughtfully, communicated clearly, maintained liquidity, diversified wisely, and accepted that patience occasionally feels uncomfortable in the moment. We see it as our responsibility to be attuned to these dynamics.
At Somerset, very little about our philosophy has changed since the Great Financial Crisis. We still believe deeply in keeping, protecting, and growing wealth. We still believe patience compounds. We still believe quality matters, preparation matters, and discipline matters. Singles, over long periods of time, often outperform home runs.
That philosophy occasionally feels unremarkable in the moment. Time, however, has a way of rewarding steadiness.
Parents increasingly ask some version of the same question: What skills will still matter for my children?
Technical skills will evolve. Entire professions may change faster than any generation has previously experienced. Yet certain qualities feel increasingly durable. Judgment. Curiosity. Emotional intelligence. The ability to hold complexity without rushing toward certainty. Stewardship. These qualities feel increasingly human in a world where so many things can be collected (and thus devalued) as shared intelligence.
Artificial intelligence may become extraordinarily capable. Markets may move faster than ever. Information may continue multiplying at a pace difficult to comprehend.
Trust, however, still builds slowly. Judgment still develops through experience. Wisdom still requires time.
In many ways, this feels like the quiet architecture beneath good advice. Rarely dramatic. Often invisible. Built through repetition, steadiness, thoughtful questions, and the willingness to remain present when life becomes uncertain. Over time, trust compounds much like wealth itself.
We prefer the kind of race where time does the winning for you.
Lauren Pearson is the founding partner and Managing Director of Somerset Advisory, an independent wealth management firm built to serve the complex needs of multigenerational families, entrepreneurs, and executives.