Investors say they're unlikely to trust or use AI. Many are already using it.

Investors don't trust AI and don't use it — at least, they say they don't.

Some 66% of investors say that they're somewhat or very unlikely to use an AI financial advisor, and 45% of investors — nearly half — say that they don't trust AI to advise them on their finances at all, according to a new Yahoo Finance/Ipsos survey of 1,276 Americans.

In contrast, 20% of investors said they were either very likely or somewhat likely to use an AI financial advisor.

The survey also showed that investors are mostly planning to avoid AI in their investment decisions in the near future. About 62% of respondents said that they're not likely to use AI in managing their finances within the next five years.

However, in many cases, investors are already using AI in their financial decisions — they just might not know it.

"So far, [AI] has mainly been in the background, with few investors likely to realize that AI is involved in the management of their money," said Q.ai Market Trend Analyst Jason Mountford.

"AI has permeated finance inside and out, from early to mature stages of implementation," added Pari Natarajan, CEO of strategy consulting firm Zinnov.

So, if AI is already here for investors, where is it?

Look no further than digitally-native personal financial management tools, such as Mint and NerdWallet, which by their nature require machine learning and AI to function at scale. The same is true of robo-advisors, which are AI-powered in that they're "providing automated, algorithm-based portfolio management services to investors," Natarajan said.

According to Statista, the number of assets under management by robo-advisors is expected to hit $2.76 trillion this year.

Likewise, algorithmic trading and investment analysis often involve AI. Even if AI isn't making the final decisions, it is gathering much of the data used to make decisions.

"AI already plays a major role in many of the financial products consumers use," said Mountford. "These run the gamut from use for simple data analysis to full-fledged AI-only investment strategies.

"Take an investment fund manager for example," Mountford added. "On one end of the spectrum, human analysts will use AI and machine learning to allow them to easily sort through massive amounts of data, pulling stocks or assets that fit a certain criteria set by humans. The final decisions and trades are made by people, but a lot of the number crunching in between is done by AI."

Mountford is bullish on these sorts of applications helping to democratize finance.

"In my opinion, the growth of AI can only be a positive for investors," he said. "Utilizing AI helps to bring down the cost of investing for regular people and can provide access to expertise and trading strategies that have previously only been available to wealthy individuals with private bankers and hedge funds managers on speed dial."

Over time, whether investors like it or not, AI will "definitely" become more visible, said Natarajan.

"AI, at its core, improves speed, augments computational ability with added intelligence, and enables data-driven decisions, all, at a lower cost," he said. "These attributes hold especially true when it comes to finance and act as huge motivators for investors to implement AI in their processes."

AI may become a "selling point" sooner rather than later.

"Now that we're seeing AI boom into the mainstream, and in a generally positive light, I expect we'll see more and more financial products using AI as a selling point," said Mountford.

Allie Garfinkle is a Senior Tech Reporter at Yahoo Finance. Follow her on Twitter at @agarfinks and on LinkedIn.

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