Will the real Daniel Kalt please stand up

As it turns out, I have an appointment tomorrow with my financial advisor. That probably sounds grander than it is. Basically, I’m meeting with a very nice young man from the place where most of my retirement money lives. Jake will assure me that I’m going to be okay, even if I live to be 100. Jake will be there in person, and whoever the other guy is on my two-man tag team will be on the phone. I still haven’t quite figured out what the other guy’s role is, but whatever it is, the other guys seem to rotate in and out. And they don’t add much value, as far as I can tell. Unlike Jake, who is not only nice but smart and who seems to get me. I will, as I always do, ask for role clarification on what the purpose of the other guy is, after which the info will rapidly move out whichever ear is opposite the one it came in on.

I also have a small account at UBS, but it’s not especially material. At some point, I’ll grab what’s in there and take a trip.

‘But if I were a big macher client for UBS – a high wealth individual or a money bags corporation – you’d think that I might, on occasion, get to hear from Daniel Kalt, the bank’s regional chief economist and chief investment officer. Most likely, he wouldn’t be there in person, like Jake is for me. Or even on the phone like the other guy. A computer-cloned version of him would be:

Mr Kalt (49) is well-known in Switzerland as a commentator. Much of his job involves briefing UBS clients on the outlook for the world’s economies and financial markets. By cloning him using the computer gaming industry’s latest animation techniques, he could serve many more account holders. (Source: Irish Times)

In real life, the virtual Mr. Kalt is not yet meeting with clients. While they perfect things, he/it (or, since I’m “learning” German via DuoLingo, er/es) is used to advise the advisors. And he/it (er/es) isn’t all there yet. He/it (er/es) can give a briefing, but can’t answer even basic questions on Brexit. And apparently the lip synching is imperfect.

You’d think the Germans would be pretty good at that, given that they’re past masters at dubbing. When my husband and I were in Berlin for the Fall of the Wall – now nearly 30 years ago – we were lolling around the hotel room one afternoon, taking a break from dismantling the wall with my nail file, and one of us said to the other, “What I wouldn’t give to see an old Streets of San Francisco re-run just about now.” This will sound unbelievable, but it is 100% true, that when Jim turned on the TV, there it was, an episode of Die Straßen von San Francisco.

We were expecting subtitles, but what we got was dubbing. Which would have been fine if we didn’t know what Mike Stone (Karl Malden) and Steve Keller, a.k.a., Buddy Boy (Michael Douglas) actually sound like. Not to mention that this was the episode in which Rick Nelson plays a former rock star turned pimp. And whoever’s voice was dubbing the Irrepressible Ricky (as he was known when he played himself on Ozzie and Harriet) sounded nothing like Rick Nelson.

With the technical advances over the last 30 years, and the head-start the Germans had on making words and mouths worked together by dubbing all those old TV shows, you’d think that they would have perfected things in this arena. I know that I’d be sitting there, completely distracted by the cloned Daniel Kalt’s weirdly moving mouth, even if he did have some good answers to what up with Brexit.

But virtual advising is probably the wave of the future:

As digital disruption gathers pace, retail and private banks in Switzerland – the world’s biggest centre for cross-border wealth management – are travelling in two directions at once. To cut costs, they are automating processes and services, including using “robo-advisers”. But to increase revenues, they are also looking to provide high-value services – via humans – to their wealthiest clients.

Cloned advisers “might be a way to bridge that gap” and provide “a kind of high-touch service at scale,” says Matthias Koller, project manager at UBS’s Wealth Management Innovation Lab.

They can tear the other guy away from me, but I really hope that my financial institution doesn’t decide that I no longer deserve a real live human in the form of Jake. I do not want to talk with, take advice from, or make facetious remarks to a clone.

One ambition of the design team, which is working with IBM on Mr Kalt’s dialogue and conversation skills, is to build a better relationship between client and clone. On the screen, Mr Kalt can wink, broaden his smile – and fall asleep. The sensors could notice that I am not wearing a tie – and remove his, Mr Koller says.

“He would change his shirt, because you have a blue one. He would maybe want to build up a rapport with you.”

Dear Lord. I’d rather get an email from a real fake human than develop a rapport with a virtual reality character. But maybe that’s just me. There may come a day when I wouldn’t recognize the difference.

The assumption of [Koller’s] programmers, however, is that interactive animation techniques in three or five years’ time will have improved so “you can hardly differentiate whether it’s a real or digital person,” says Mr Koller.

I haven’t come across this phrase yet in my German lessons, but, as my mother would say, “Ach, du lieber strohsack.” (Oh my dear mattress, if you must know. If I have to work with a clone, maybe I’ll just stuff my money under meinen strohsack and hope for the best.)