Artificial intelligence (AI) does not replace the human element of IR – it enables teams to have more capacity to focus on building relationships with investors, according to Darrell Heaps, CEO of Q4.
Heaps, who attended the NIRI 2023 Annual Conference in Chicago, spoke on a panel about the importance of relationships, both with existing investors and in attracting new investors. After the panel, IR Magazine spoke to the Q4 boss about his key takeaways from the session as well as how IR teams can best use AI.
‘What’s amazing when you think about AI is its ability to really focus on all the things that are not relationships, such as the tactical elements, administrative aspects and high-level analysis,’ Heaps said.
‘The really powerful thing when you think about an IRO using an AI-powered assistant is [getting answers to] things like: which are the investors I have not been spending time with? Who am I spending all my interactions with?’
Thinking about the limitations of AI, Heaps remarked that despite progress with technology, there will always be a margin of error.
‘We talked in the session around the [myths] that come up in AI, where it will respond and give you a bunch of data,’ he said. ‘But then when you look into it, you realize that’s not right. I think that’s just a maturity point in the technology.’
