Intelligent? Or just greedy?

Everything Chip
#1

How long does it take for Chip’s artificial intelligence to get, you know, intelligent? I’ve been here over two months now and I’m still waiting!

I don’t think I’m unusual in this, but I get paid, on or around, the last day of the month and I have several large direct debits set to pay bills during the first week of the month. There are also a few more payments throughout the month. These are all regular and fixed in amount. Then there is a variable monthly credit card bill about a week in. So, obviously, my monthly disposable income, that I want to take savings from, is what is left after all these predictable deductions have been made from my income.

Even I can work that out, and I am neither artificial, nor intelligent! However Chip only seems to look at my account on a day to day basis? At the beginning of the month he thinks, “Woohoo, a large deposit just came in, I can take a big slice of that as a saving”. So then I have to reign him in and say, “Not so fast, artificial yet supposedly intelligent Chip, I’ve got all these other payments to come out of that first!”. As the month progresses, Chip recognises that the pot of money is diminishing but he still tries to take more than I will actually be able to spare at the end of the month.

And I have the Auto save level set to 1!

My question is, when can I stop micromanaging Chip’s automatic savings, and sit back and let him get on with intelligently taking amounts I can actually afford to spare? Because, otherwise, I may as well just do it myself…

2 Likes
#2

Interesting that you consider the AI as a “he”. In my mind it’s an “it”. Does anyone consider it a “she” or perhaps a “they”?

1 Like
#3

Chip is obviously a boy’s name!

#4

image

1 Like
#5

Your situation is, I imagine, similar to a lot of Chip users so I am interested in the answer you get here. I would have assumed the AI was designed to cater for this sort of setup and, if not, I think it needs looking at.

Personally, I don’t use the AI to save - maybe I am a control freak but I have a fairly well worked out system which any AI saving would just mess up!

1 Like
#6

Yes, I normally just save any surplus at the end of the month manually. I have two jobs at a local college, one part-time with a regular salary, the other as a teacher, so I only get paid term time for that. The upshot is that I have very irregular monthly pay and, consequently, more or less to put away as savings each month. I’m also a bit OCD and try to wait until I have a significant amount in my current account, then I move one or three hundred into savings. The problem is, whilst waiting for a significant amount to built up, I have a tendency to feel well off and spend it!

TLDR, I thought Chip would be able to work out when I was in a high pay month, or a low pay month, and sneak small amounts out accordingly without me noticing. Unfortunately, it doesn’t appear to be remotely ‘intelligent’ yet! Maybe it will learn; I was just wondering how long that would take, if at all?

1 Like
#7

I guess the lack of any sort of answer tells me that it is actually Artificial Stupidity after all! Probably programmed to take enough savings to tip you over into paying the fee, regardless of how much you can actually afford to spare. The silence tells me to just turn it off and make my own savings when I can…

2 Likes
#8

This Community forum doesn’t appear to be as well monitored as the Live Chat function within the app. You may do better to address your concerns there.

#9

Nah, I’m good, thanks. I suspected the auto-save was a gimmick at best. The lack of anyone leaping to explain it confirmed that! It’s easier to just save intelligent amounts myself when I know I can afford it.

#10

I think the people who participate in the community are generally unlikely to be autosave users. We’re likely to be interested in managing our finances ourselves. I think the audience that finds autosave useful is mainly different.

1 Like
#11

I use the autosave functionality and also manage my finances pretty well. You can’t generalise the forum users bud

1 Like
#12

Hi all, if you’d like an explainer on the AI I can certainly put this question to one of the team, however - as mentioned by Philip this community Forum isn’t the quickest way to get a specific answer in terms of your app - it’s a discussion Forum for all things Chip.

1 Like
#14

AI is one of the all things Chip…

2 Likes
#15

From my experience with the app, I have concluded that CHIP is not a true AI. It’s been dubbed AI by the CHIP folks (possibly misleadingly) because its behaviour mimics AI. From what I know of CHIP it takes money on the same days every week (I was expecting it to look and then randomly surprise me with a small amount that I wasn’t expecting to leave and wouldn’t notice) and is programmed to take those ‘random’ amounts at a percentage (that you set by choosing the level within the app) of what you have in your account at the time.

#16

It takes the money every 4 days so the day of the week should change.
In my experience the amounts change quite significantly through the month. Have you fully connected your bank?

1 Like
#17

My first three automatic saves:

£16.21
£16.45
£16.87

The saves just seem to be made up and have no relation to my balance :man_shrugging:

1 Like
#18

I guess it takes time to learn. Unless it can go back and look at the history of your account.

1 Like
#19

Hi Sally, as Phrase2 kindly pointed out, Chip will save for you every four days. Disappointed or not, it is AI! This is because it teaches itself whether to save you more or less. If you spend more, the AI will save you a bit less, or if you aren’t spending as much, we’ll put aside a bit more. Also, if you skip or edit saves, Chip will take note and save you a bit more or less in the future.

Now if you are working with a basic auto save you will pretty much see the same amount of money being put aside every four days, based on which level you chose. This is because you haven’t connected chip to your bank account meaning we are in the dark over your spend vs income behaviour.

To get those ‘random surprise me’ saving numbers that we all want to see, you would need to do a bank connected auto save. By connecting your primary bank to Chip, we can look at your previous and current finances to figure out how much to put aside for you. To put it into context, on my personal chip account since I started saving with a bank connection I have never had the same number automatically saved for me. Sometimes Chip will put aside £1, sometimes £8. I hope this helped clarify how Chip works!

1 Like
#20

Ryan! The reason why your first three autosaves were all in and around the £16 mark is because your accounted is simply card connected. For Chip to generate AI saves (saves that vary based on your current finances) you will need to link your bank account on the app. When your only card connected the autosaves don’t take into account your spending habits / balance and there is no overdraft protection. This is why you would be much better off to link your bank account on the app. Hope this helped!

#21

Hi John, This really divided the office at Chip HQ, friendships nearly ended over this one, some said ‘he’, some with a maternal ‘she’, and others called it genderless. After careful deliberation, we have decided people can gender chip however they like, no wrong answers!

1 Like