Jud Bergman channeled chess great Garry Kasparov to kick off Envestnet Advisor Summit 2016 in Chicago on Wednesday afternoon. The company’s chairman and CEO was introduced by Ron Fiske, Envestnet’s managing director who noted the summit had 1500 attendees from 525 unique firms with 125 exhibitors.
The portly Fiske also drew laughter when sarcastically mentioning the conference’s morning “fun run, adding it wasn’t his style, but 200 had people signed up.
“Whoop-de-doo, we have smoothies now and Soylent Green in the exhibit hall,” Fiske said to chuckles from the audience.
Noting he advocated for the chess master as keynote, but was ultimately unsuccessful, Bergman took the stage by noting, “I like to talk about the future of the industry, but I also like to talk about history to past disrupters. What can we learn from Garry Kasparov and his match against big blue? Man versus machine is an enduringly, captivating theme.”
Pointing to the Terminator and Transformers movie franchises, Berman referenced Kasparov match in 1996 with IMB supercomputer Big Blue.
“Kasparov won, and agreed to a rematch. When it happened in 1997, Deep blue could compute 2 million moves a second, and analyze those against 700,000 past chess matches. However, during the match, the computer made a nonstrategic move. Kapsorav thought it knew something he didn’t. He therefore made a mistake that the computer exploited. Big Blue went on to win the match 3.5 to 2.5. Had the computer ‘learned to learn?’ It’s another spooky theme. But that didn’t happen with Big Blue. It simply made a mistake to which Kasparov overreacted.”
Bringing the analogy full circle, he told attendees to not overreact to changes in the industry.
He then listed three “super trends” he sees happening. The first is that the DOL’s fiduciary rule will accelerate the move to fee-based financial planning. The second is the digital divide, and the fact that more people are crossing now more than ever. The third is that financial planning technology is moving to the center of the advisor value proposition.
Returning to Kasporav, Bergman rhetorically asked what has been learned.
“Complex tasks that we never thought could be performed by computers are happening; driving a car, playing chess, delivering financial advice. But humans are not machines, and machines are not human. It should be human and machines, not human versus machines.
He concluded with what he coined as the “Kasparov Principal.”
“Experts and machines deliver better outcomes than experts or machines alone. It’s about symbiosis, not singularity.