To The Moon

• I asked ChatGPT for five tech stocks that will make me rich in five years.
• Despite the chatbot’s advisory against its financial predictive powers, it managed to produce a pretty sound, albeit basic, list.
• The language model AI suggested four of the top five tech companies by market capitalization, including names like Amazon (AMZN) and Apple (AAPL).

Source: Ascannio / Shutterstock.com

With people worldwide quickly discovering the potential a tool like OpenAI’s ChatGPT can offer, stocks have risen rapidly as a particularly fascinating discussion area. Indeed, despite the AI chatbot’s warning over its inability to provide financial advice, it’s actually quite open to making suggestions. This time around, I asked the prolific chatbot for advice on which tech stocks to buy that’ll make me rich. And miraculously, it answered.

The language model grabbed five big-name tech stocks in response to the request for “Five tech stocks that will make me rich in five years.” These include:

1. Amazon
2. Apple
3. Alphabet
4. Nvidia
5. Square

While probably not the most daring set of stock picks, you have to appreciate the chatbot’s willingness and justification behind its choices. ChatGPT presented relatively strong cases backing all of its stock picks.

What’s behind the chatbot’s not-so-surprising stock picks?

Behind ChatGPT’s Tech Stocks of Choice

Starting at the top with perhaps the most predictable tech stock, Amazon is both well-known, highly diversified, and has enjoyed strong growth throughout almost all of its existence.

“Amazon is a giant e-commerce company that offers various products and services worldwide. Amazon’s revenue growth has been consistent, with a 38% increase in 2020 alone,” the chatbot produced.

Likewise, the chatbot honed in on Apple’s “history of innovation,” Alphabet’s position as the “leading search engine,” and Nvidia’s position atop the semiconductor industry.

“NVIDIA’s revenue growth has been impressive, with a 53% increase in 2020. NVIDIA’s GPUs are widely used in gaming, artificial intelligence, and other high-performance computing applications.”

While it is strange to see the chatbot refer to earnings figures that are now almost three years old, a product of the AI’s limited access to current information, perhaps even more surprising is how relevant its picks still are.

Perhaps the most shocking inclusion on the list is Square, which became Block as of Dec. 1, 2021 (a date probably outside of the bot’s dataset). The only company outside the top five tech companies by market capitalization, Square is an undisputed head-scratcher compared to the likes of Microsoft or Tesla.

My initial reaction to Microsoft’s exclusion was that the chatbot hesitated to promote a company directly invested in the AI. However, my concerns were quickly dismissed after discovering that a near-arbitrary change to my query pushed ChatGPT to suggest Microsoft and Tesla instead of Nvidia and Square, respectively.