Goldman Sachs: Would you trust its robo advisors with your money?

A growing number of finance houses are looking to digitise financial advice. Whether that's a good thing remains to be seen

The Terminator. Could this be your future financial advisor?

How would you feel about the prospect of a T-1000 Terminator robot sitting down to talk to you about your ISA courtesy of Goldman Sachs Skynet?

No, don’t laugh. Goldman’s wants to make it happen. Well, it at least wants to create a bot capable of providing financial advice to the masses. But given it's Goldman, there are a lot of people who may feel the Terminator analogy is apt.

This, after all, is the “great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money” .

Matt Taibbi’s memorable description of “the firm” was used in an article about its role in the 2008 financial crisis and the speculative bubble built up in mortgage backed securities that explosively popped.

It hasn't ever quite shaken it off and there are many who will shudder at the prospect of the squid using robots to provide financial advice to Mr and Mrs Mass Affluent.

But not everyone will feel that way. Don't forget, the Goldman names carries considerable cachet.

It’s almost always close to the top of the list when companies are seeking advisors to help them out with deals. And it’s not just wealthy and powerful corporations that beat a path to its door. The wealthy and powerful individuals that run them also seek its advice when it comes to their personal finances.

There are a lot of people lower down the food chain that might quite like the idea of showing off about the performance of an investment portfolio created for them by Robo Sachs. Yeah, this new set of golf clubs? Robo-Sachs came through for me. You should try it!

Tapping into advising the so-called "mass affluent" - people with cash to invest but without the means to be able to pay for a human to hold their hands - could provide a rich stream of earnings in future and I’d a imagine there are a considerable number of people in that group who might view the Goldman Sachs brand as aspirational. Goldman's hires the smartest people, if it creates the smartest robots, why wouldn't you?

Well, I wouldn't. But we're not there yet. The story emanated from the Reuters news agency, which spotted a Goldman Sachs job ad seeking people to help build an advice platform. When it approached the firm for comment it declined.

However, a lot of finance houses are working on similar projects, so if Goldman is planning to create Robo Sachs to advise the mass market, it wouldn't be alone. Cyber space may soon be full of them.

Is that something we should be comfortable with? We’ll see. If Robo Sachs is like the kid in Steven Spielberg's AI and makes people rich too, they’ll wonder what the fuss was all about. If it turns Terminator we might just need to call upon on Mr Taibbi's literary prowess again.