Artificially Intelligent with Sam Maule and Maia Bittner

What We Got Wrong in 2024!

• Sam Maule, Maia Bittner, Rachel Morrissey

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Boy- did we get it wrong sometimes!   

Failure is the best teacher.   So, Sam and Maia sat down in the MoneyPot Booth at Money20/20 in October and went over where they really missed the mark, and what it has taught them about what to look for in 2025.   

This episode dives into the lessons learned in FinTech during 2024, exploring the unexpected challenges within the housing market, societal attitudes toward financial fraud, and the reality of AI in customer service. 

• Reflecting on the surprising downturn of the housing market  
• Discussing cultural shifts toward defrauding financial institutions  
• Analyzing the repercussions of BaaS failures  
• Critiquing the impact of AI on customer service experiences  
• Considering the role of deepfakes in modern media and politics  
• Addressing the stagnation of NFTs and missed opportunities for growth  

Thank you for your support through the year! Connect with us on LinkedIn and Twitter to share your thoughts!

Hosts: Sam Maule & Maia Bittner


Sam Maule:

Hi Maia, don't get me sick or I will be so angry at you.

Maia Bittner:

Hi Sam, Welcome to Money 2020.

Sam Maule:

Everybody welcome to another episode of Artificially Intelligent, a podcast brought to you and the team. We are live at Money 2020.

Maia Bittner:

Special episode.

Sam Maule:

We're in the same room for the first time ever, everybody.

Maia Bittner:

Ever Sharing the same airspace and surrounded by all of our brilliant colleagues here at the conference.

Sam Maule:

Yeah, it's actually been a good couple of days. Have you enjoyed it?

Maia Bittner:

I've been having a blast yeah.

Sam Maule:

Yeah, it's exhausting, but it's good. I'm Sam Mahl, everybody, and I'm joined by co-host Maia Bittner. It's great to have everyone here. Maia and I were tossing ideas around about what we wanted to talk about at Money 2020. And we both agreed let's talk about what we get wrong.

Maia Bittner:

Yeah, you know, we call ourselves the FinTech interns, and that's because, right, we are so eager to learn, we are so eager to get better at FinTech, to figure out how things work, and I think an important part of learning and growing is trying stuff out, realizing what you got wrong and then iterating on that to improve.

Sam Maule:

That's 100% right. It's a fail-fast concept, but in our industry we really don't like to use that terminology of fail-fast. I get it, but I mean I'm notorious. I have shared this story with Maia back. I think it was 2011 or 2012. I was in San Francisco at this bar. A friend of mine from Wells Fargo said hey, I got this kid you should talk to and meet. He's leaving JPMC as an idea for a company. Sam, give him your feedback. This young man sat down, walked me through his business plan and what he wanted to do to tackle this and in my infinite wisdom of all my years experience in banking, I said, yeah, it's not a good idea, good luck. And that was the founder of Plaid.

Maia Bittner:

I was going to guess Patrick Collison from Stripe.

Sam Maule:

That would have been even more embarrassing. No, it was Zach Zach from Plaid. Zach now writes poetry and has flowing hair and looks great and excellent company.

Maia Bittner:

But you know, I mean, Sam, that's one of the things I love about you. Like I feel like you have to be quick to own your mistakes, otherwise you just get stifled and you really never grow.

Sam Maule:

So let's narrow that in 2024, right, we're almost done. It's almost November. So when you look back at the year, let's run through it. What are some of the things you absolutely got dead wrong? I'll give you one. What's your number one? Give it to me. It's not my number one, but it's a good one. It's the housing market, and that is because, if folks don't realize it consistently, what we're hearing is we're short. About 1.5 million homes in the US. Affordable homes for the middle class is the numbers that keep getting thrown out there. And also, I believe we're at a 20 year low on homes being sold. We're back to 1990s numbers everybody. So it would be more than 20 years, but we're consistently hearing that and I got to be honest. I'm kind of surprised by that. I thought the housing market going into this year was going to rebound. I thought rates would continue to drop. I mean, my first home I bought in 1990s for about 10% and I was happy with that one. I'm very much surprised at where we're at.

Maia Bittner:

Yeah, I mean there's low inventory, there's low house sales Rates dropped a touch.

Sam Maule:

Yeah.

Maia Bittner:

It didn't seem to change anything.

Sam Maule:

I'm surprised by that right. We're bouncing around six to seven, I think, nationally. I was talking with somebody earlier today about this and I'm like, yeah, I kind of don't get it. I mean, it's not like rates are historically that terrible, but then you've got to think of I think we talked about this before the average home price is about $447,000. My first house was $63,000. My car is much worse than that now Vice car vice car.

Maia Bittner:

Well, I also think sellers are holding out because for that high right I don't know about in your market but in our market we're still down just a touch, just a couple percent from those high of May of 22 prices and so sellers are holding out, buyers can't afford it and it's just resulted in this deadlock that continues to last. I know I don't know what people are doing without any inventory.

Sam Maule:

There you go. That was my big one, or one of my big ones. What's one of yours?

Maia Bittner:

Okay, my big one is it seems to me and it seems to me that this is all of a sudden, but maybe it has been gradual it's okay to defraud financial institutions. Just culturally, as a society, we've all decided that that's okay. I mean, the most prominent recent there was the TikTok Chase ATM glitch which I saw. Chase is suing four of their customers as a result of that ATM glitch. But I think it's bigger than that. It represents a broader cultural mind shift. I think part of it is that the middle class people are getting pinched. They feel like it's unfair.

Maia Bittner:

I also blame some specific government initiatives. So I think the PPP loans I mean that program really rewarded people being opportunistic and jumping to take advantage of a program. And I think people have either they made like profited off of the PPP loans or they saw people that did and feel like they missed out. And so now when they hear about the next opportunity, they're like this is my chance. I've got to jump in to defraud someone in order to profit.

Maia Bittner:

And I worry that it indicates, you know, that people don't feel like there's opportunities to make money in normal moral and I worry that it indicates, you know, that people don't feel like there's opportunities to make money in normal moral ways. I think the government is sort of abandoning the idea of providing us with services and going more towards money right. I saw the same thing, those fires in Hawaii. The government was like sorry that your house is burnt, here's a bunch of cash right, instead of that support. But that's something that I am shocked by. I think we generally live in a pretty high-trust society and I'm so bummed to see people jumping to kind of defraud their banks, defraud other financial institutions, because it's ultimately going to result in higher costs for everyone.

Sam Maule:

Yeah, I mean, it is rather funny, it's this is that phrase that everything's a remix right, so you go back to 2008. And what we went through there and you thought you know cool. I mean, here we are under this crisis, so we're going to handle it much better, and I would. You know, it's a little bit of doubt when it comes to that, and I also blame TikTok 100% blame TikTok for people going to the stupid ATMs. Remember that story we talked about? Yeah, I think one person owes something like $300,000 in Chase. It was broke today. They're going after him.

Maia Bittner:

They're going after him, yeah.

Sam Maule:

As they should.

Maia Bittner:

I mean it's really weighted towards the one. I think it's about $600,000 in total losses that they're going after them for.

Sam Maule:

All right, I'll give you my second one. Man I bombed on this one Going into 2024, I thought Bass was going to be just rocking it Bass totally.

Maia Bittner:

Oh my God, I got that wrong. I mean, there's so many prominent companies. I haven't invested in any Bass companies and I was like shit, what a miss on my part. Fintech investor never invested in any of them. Clearly the future of how we're going to be bringing FinTech companies to life.

Sam Maule:

Yeah, I had a George Costanza moment on that. I bombed on that right. I was looking at acquisitions, remember FIS, acquired Bond right, and we're just seeing play after play and these banks coming in and remember on stage at maybe conferences like this, for years it was banks. Man, you're a smaller bank, you want to get in play. There's this thing called Bass here we go Bring your expertise.

Sam Maule:

Oh God, bring your expertise. I'm not going to name the banks. Should we name the banks? I won't do that. It'll be nice, but, oh my God, who can I throw under the bus today? What's this reconciliation thing, you know? Is that a new concept? When it comes to the players, oh boy, I mean I work. I mean you're with Chime, I'm with Move. You got it. Reconciliation's literally everything, everything. How did we lose that plot?

Maia Bittner:

And honestly, if you really want to get a regulator looking at you, you know yeah.

Sam Maule:

I bombed. That one was the collapse of bass has had ripple effects. I feel like collapse of bass sounds like a band. That's pretty good.

Maia Bittner:

Everyone I'm talking to here at the conference is talking about how their banks are making them renegotiate their contracts with that. Everyone is in the midst of this. Increased oversight from the banks, emphasized like through the regulatory partner. It has really wide ranging impacts.

Sam Maule:

Okay, what's another one of yours?

Maia Bittner:

Okay, my number two is this is the human x machine conference. I was like everyone's talking about AI. It's unknown what impact that'll have, but the obvious customer service. I was like it's going to be better customer service everywhere. Sam, I personally I am not getting better customer service. I thought AI and I thought there's so many ways you could do it right. You could use AI to automate all of your low-level contacts and then save your budget for all of the thorny issues and give people better customer support, faster hold times, all the good stuff. I feel like it's gotten worse. I feel like people have implemented chatbots without it. I feel like it's worse than before we had AI and I'm so bummed because I feel like this should just be a bank shot, easy sell.

Sam Maule:

I mean literally, if you would have told me that you know the government was going to come in and say, all right, it was easy to sign up, you need a one click to, you know, get out. And I thought, okay, that's kind of overreach, are you kidding me? And now I'm like, oh my God, screw them all.

Maia Bittner:

I mean are you kidding me?

Sam Maule:

Totally. You know what I get. Here's my annoying one. You unsubscribe from whatever email, right to clean out your email, and they keep coming in like mother. I swear to God, I have unsubscribed from this about a million times, just like you said right, trying to go through and clean up.

Maia Bittner:

I just started getting emails from Facebook. I haven't gotten any emails from Facebook in like 20 years. I don't know where I'm like. Where did these things come from? Like I'm sure I'm unsubscribing.

Sam Maule:

It's an AI bot, everybody. That's where it's coming from.

Maia Bittner:

Zombies it's impossible to kill.

Sam Maule:

All right, I'll give you my next one and I, man, I got this one wrong and I'm still. I have a theory on why I thought, going into this election cycle, AI deep fakes were going to be have massive influence on the election on either side.

Maia Bittner:

I took it as a given. I was like we're going to be overwhelmed by them.

Sam Maule:

I took it as a given and wrong. I think we just have zero trust. I think literally everybody has adopted Google's approach. If you start at zero trust, everybody's lying and we're going to go from there. I'm actually shocked that there has, and the deep fakes we've seen have been horrific Remember the flooding in North Carolina and the little girl and the dog. You're like sorry, and Donald Trump is not wading through whatever and Kamala is not in that uniform, it's so.

Maia Bittner:

I think it's just so stupid of a we had a week to go everybody, thank God. Some of the things that he actually does are beyond what I could imagine or beyond parody, so I think that's why we don't even need deep fakes. I agree with you.

Sam Maule:

You know how many AI companies that are out there on that side are like so disappointed because they really thought and then on the flip side and this is rather sad, in Florida where I live, a 15-year-old boy killed himself and he had an AI girlfriend chat girlfriend, I saw this character AI.

Sam Maule:

Yeah, after Game of Thrones, and he literally had this conversation with the AI and said you know, as he ended the conversation, he went and said I'm going to be with you and killed himself and I don't know how much. I'm not a lawyer, I don't know the validity on this and actually where we were at with that, but the idea that in 2024, we're already there with this mass number of mainly young men with chatbot girlfriends when people told me that I was like, okay, stupid, it's never going to happen.

Maia Bittner:

And it's an epidemic. Well, and I think this is kind of a reflection of AI in general, where I had a friend who was like everyone's talking about AI but I've never seen AI do something like really awesome or really incredible. I think, well, we're also waiting, but I think that's the wrong way. It's like AI is not doing things that are really incredible. They are not publishing the deep fake videos, publishing the deepfake videos. Ai is like if you had a horde of free interns, or if every lonely teenager in America had a girlfriend right, it's things like that.

Sam Maule:

It's what we used to sell RPA for the boring ass crap that we do every day. The mundane. It's going to be fantastic at taking that out.

Maia Bittner:

That's what AI is going to have impact on.

Sam Maule:

Yeah, back when I was a consultant back in the you know 2010s and all that RPA that was my go-to. I could sell RPA like it was going out of style and now we just have relabeled it as AI Totally and it's incredible. I don't know how it's working. You know, no offense to everybody, but yeah, I would 100% agree with you.

Maia Bittner:

Okay, my next. Next one. I thought NFTs would be back.

Sam Maule:

See, I'm amazed by that, really, I was never a believer.

Maia Bittner:

So were you in any of the discords or anything? Yeah, yeah, yeah, you were I float around. I mean, I'm there, I know. I just felt like NFTs had something special, the momentum I thought they'd be coming back.

Sam Maule:

So just the rage out of COVID and where we're at and how it just skyrocketed. Do you think?

Maia Bittner:

there would be more like tangible use cases. Yeah, and they got sort of like trapped in. You know all of crypto gets trapped in the pyramid scheme Kind of right. So that's rough. I thought we would have all of the blowout from that and then there'd be cool use cases and that. You know, I mean I want digital baseball cards, I want like all of that, and I really believe that concert ticket experience.

Sam Maule:

I've went to the Taylor Swift show and I've got that limited exclusive things.

Maia Bittner:

I think that is so cool. We still do not have an answer for what is a digital experience for something that's exclusive. I thought NFTs were the answer and I thought they'd be back.

Sam Maule:

Um, I have never been a believer in metaverse. Somebody still needs to convince me, I'm sorry, everybody.

Sam Maule:

There's people out there like God just gave me the finger. Seriously, where do you work at? But still, I'm just not a. I don't know. I'm not there. And I'm also somebody, by the way. Let's clarify this. We've talked about it. I live online. I'm also somebody, by the way. Let's clarify this. We've talked about it. I live online. I'm a gamer. I'm an Xbox player. Yeah, I mean, I'm there and you know what. Let's go back to AI for one second, because I've got to give you a shout out. I a former Googler. I never used Google. You have me so hooked on perplexity.

Maia Bittner:

AI Perplexity. It's the answer. It's the answer Anthropic. You guys nailed that that is easily one of the best tools I've ever used. I use it for everything, the first as soon as I have a question.

Sam Maule:

If they're here, I want a freaking hoodie or something, because I swear to God.

Maia Bittner:

How do we get the perplexities swag?

Sam Maule:

Everything I need to walk around.

Maia Bittner:

I send everything to Perplexity.

Sam Maule:

So I'm going to retract what I said about AI. You suck at customer service. Let's get better On attribution. Oh my God, perplexity. I love you so much.

Maia Bittner:

I'm curious, sam, do you watch cable news?

Sam Maule:

Not this year, because it's painful. I'm in a demographic everybody where I should be watching cable news. I just can't, it hurts.

Maia Bittner:

Aren't you? Are you in a swing state sort of I?

Sam Maule:

live in Florida. That's a swing state. Right, we're a swinger state, that's true. We're a weird state, very weird state. Yeah, we boarded Georgia. So, yes, so, trust me, cable news is a massive part of life. I have no idea where you're going with this.

Maia Bittner:

Oh, I was thinking about the AI deepfake videos, Well, and the things I see on cable news. I don't actually watch a lot of cable news. I was watching in the airport lounge on the way here.

Sam Maule:

Yeah, it feels to me to be more harmful to the American psyche than… Cable. News is… I'm going to be careful. Yes, we don't even need AI. As somebody with four kids. I mean you have very young kids. I have kids who are Grandkids, are young, but you know.

Maia Bittner:

Kids are my age. I got it.

Sam Maule:

The effect, and I'll go on a rant here, but the effect social media has had on my kids' generation, and now I look at my granddaughter and it's going to be on her and the responsibilities we have as parents and as a society to address the epidemic of loneliness. We already talked about the AI chatbot and the young man. I mean, there's case after case after case of this where we have done an absolute shitty job. So, for example, age-gating right, facebook, instagram, you take your pick, or oh, it can't happen. And then we were actually going to put laws into place and suddenly they solved it because they are smart people and they could solve it. So there's a gambling. Gambling is now legal everywhere everybody. And, by the way, the rates of depression and suicide and everything else that built on top of it god, this is the most depressing episode in the most vibrant room. We got to do better. End on something positive because we got to wrap up.

Maia Bittner:

Give me something good. I know. Well, I'm glad you bring up I mean, it's taking some heat away from AI. You're like I can't believe we've had a suicide already in 2020 for AI. But I don't think it's AI right, it's the loneliness epidemic.

Sam Maule:

It's the lack of third places. It's our faces on our screens. We've got to get back to engaging with people.

Maia Bittner:

It's these other problems. So, Sam, I hope that we can do this episode next year at Money 2020 and talk about everything that we got wrong over the year prior.

Sam Maule:

That would be fantastic. Everybody, we'd love your feedback. Sam Hall on LinkedIn great place to do it. Maia, best place to connect with you.

Maia Bittner:

Twitter, always I have open DMs.

Sam Maule:

It's the best Twitter account. You want to see a mom bringing up a young kid go on Twitter. It's hilarious Everybody. Thank you so much for listening, participating. It's been a fun year. Money 2020. Outstanding job at this conference and doing this little money pot booth. We love it. Everybody. Thank you for listening and supporting us through this. Thanks Dead on time. Gotta love it. Perplexity is my f.