Senior’s Honors Project on AI and Economics Makes an Impact
Andrew Gaines ’24 asked Google’s AI chatbot to build portfolios and examined the results, an experience that helped him stand out as a candidate for his current internship at Englebert Financial Advisers.By: Mike Falk Thursday, February 29, 2024 04:48 PM
Andrew Gaines ’24 at his internshipFor Andrew Gaines ’24, his senior year at Muhlenberg is a potentially high-yield investment in his future.
At the end of the 2022-2023 academic year, Gaines, a finance and economics double major and a student-athlete on the men’s soccer team, learned of the opportunity to do an honors project. After talking to a former soccer coach who had helped him land a summer internship at a private equity firm, he decided to incorporate AI into the project.
The result is an honors project titled “AI’s Impact on Economics.”
Last fall, Gaines had Bard, Google’s artificial intelligence chatbot (since renamed Gemini) build five portfolios of 16 stocks each. The portfolios vary in risk level and activity level.
“I go in and I ask, ‘Can you provide me a list of 16 value stocks, as well as the reasoning behind the selection and associated risk level?’” explains Gaines. “And then I add the entire portfolio value. I’ve been doing that monthly since October and making graphs to track portfolio performance.”
The performance has been very good, as is to be expected when the stock market is doing well. But how would Gaines rate the performance of AI as opposed to a financial advisor who is a person?
“It's tough to say because a lot of the stocks Bard is suggesting are large cap stocks, so they're going to be present in a lot of portfolios anyway,” he says. “You can actually ask more in-depth questions to Bard about the responses it's given, but it's still not going to be the same as a person.”
“We've been creating custom models for our portfolios for years and with the advancements in AI, we're trying to see how it will make sense in our practice. It's like Andrew is working on the same project we are. He is terrific and was definitely the best candidate.”
—Englebert Financial Advisers President and Chief Compliance Officer Jamie Jones Englebert ’97
Gaines will present his findings, which include more research into AI, to his two project advisors, Associate Professor of Economics Lindsay Nagy and Economics & Finance Program Coordinator Roger Slane, at the end of the year. Overall, he says, “This project's really interesting and I'm enjoying my time.”
It also led to another opportunity in the financial industry. This semester, Gaines has been interning with a small Allentown-based company, Englebert Financial Advisers. Having the AI experience from his senior project was a huge factor in landing the position, according to President and Chief Compliance Officer Jamie Jones Englebert ’97.
“We've been creating custom models for our portfolios for years and with the advancements in AI, we're trying to see how it will make sense in our practice,” she says. “It's like Andrew is working on the same project we are. He is terrific and was definitely the best candidate.”
Early on in his internship, Gaines has been primarily “getting his feet wet,” familiarizing himself with systems and processes. He recently worked on a project involving pension plans for police officers.
Although Gaines knows his future lies somewhere within finance, he’s not exactly sure what specific path he will choose. He’s already shown flexibility as a college student, when an intermediate macroeconomics class he took made him fall in love with economics and decide to add it as a second major.
“The professors have been great,” he says. “Honestly, my two project advisors, Nagy and Slane, are the best.”
There’s a good chance that Google Gemini would agree.
