AI Pioneer Divides Assets Across Multiple Banks and Brokerages

I’m trying (and failing) to keep up with AI developments, but inside this interview with AI pioneer Geoffrey Hinton (Wikipedia names him the Godfather of AI) was an interesting tidbit that relates to personal finance. Here is an excerpt from a transcript of the interview (emphasis mine):

GEOFFREY HINTON: Among the AI researchers, people are more aware of it. So the people I know who are kind of most depressed about it are serious AI researchers. I have started doing practical things because AI is going to be very good at designing cyber attacks. I don’t think the Canadian banks are safe anymore.

So Canadian banks are about as safe as you can get. They’re very well regulated compared with US banks. But over the next 10 years, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if there was a cyber attack that took down a Canadian bank.

BROOK SILVA-BRAGA: What does take down mean?

GEOFFREY HINTON: Suppose that the bank holds shares that I own. Right. Suppose the cyber attack sells those shares. Now my money’s gone. So I actually now spread my money between three banks. Okay. So that’s the first practical thing I’ve done because I think if a cyber attack takes down one Canadian bank, the others will get a lot more serious.

BROOK SILVA-BRAGA: Okay. Anything else like that? What else?

GEOFFREY HINTON: That’s the main thing. That’s where I noticed I actually did something practical that flowed from my belief that very scary times are coming.

In that context, Hinton is not just talking about separating his assets across multiple banks but also brokerage accounts that own shares of companies.

I believe this idea of keeping your assets separated into different silos is a good one. I plan to also avoid linking information from one brokerage account to another brokerage firm (either to initiate funds transfers, or to use in data-sharing services like “Full View”). Assume that any one major bank or brokerage firm may eventually go down in a complete mess, and it may take a very long time to clean up that mess. Hinton’s choice of three different places seems like a reasonable number.

It’s good to have some actionable advice, as opposed to pondering his concerns about bad actors using “lethal autonomous weapons”. 😨