Two former financial executives have successfully monetized the banking sector's technological panic. The duo is securing massive daily retainers to slowly dictate chatbot outputs to captive board members.
NEW YORK — In a desperate bid to automate their workflows and justify billions in recent technological investments, global Wall Street banks have begun paying independent AI consultants $25,000 a day to sit in conference rooms and confidently read ChatGPT responses out loud to senior management.
The highly sought-after consultants, both former mid-level bankers who recently added "prompt engineer" to their LinkedIn profiles, have reportedly been hired by several top-tier financial institutions to "ignite the shift" toward machine learning. According to executives familiar with the arrangement, the pair's proprietary methodology consists of listening to a vice president describe a logistical problem, typing that exact problem into a free web browser interface, and reciting the generated text while making sustained eye contact.
Our workflow integration matrix relies entirely on the dramatic pause between hitting enter and the cursor blinking on the screen.
Bank insiders report that the $25,000 daily fee is considered a bargain compared to the cost of admitting that no one on the executive committee knows how to open a new browser tab. During a recent strategy session, the consultants reportedly spent four billable hours slowly reading a chatbot’s explanation of how to write a polite email declining a merger, a performance that earned them a standing ovation from the board of directors.
Industry analysts expect the consultants' valuation to double by the end of the quarter, provided they can continue to master complex technical hurdles such as remembering their login credentials and occasionally reminding chief financial officers that the artificial intelligence cannot hear them yelling through the monitor.