Longbridge’s Bill Packer on making AI who includes seniors
Now, with more AI experience under the proverbial belt of the company, Packer gave an interview to talk about the need for curation, while Longbridge further develops its internal tools.
AI and Ageism
Packer described the need for clarity about the true dynamics for senior-friendly AI use.
“There was a study from 2024 entitled,”Is Ai Ageist?‘And really what they looked at is … comparing different large language models and saying:’ In comparison with each other, which gives more ageistic answers? “”
The authors of that study may have brought some of their own prejudices to the comparison, which was performed qualitatively, Packer said.
“I do not dispute that we should be careful in how we approach this subject, and I think we have been very attentive in this area,” he explained. “But I would also say that we have to turn it out a bit because the headlines can be different from the underlying components.”
There may also be an idea that older potential users of AI, whether it is about the reverse mortgage industry or not, can give priority to the function above form. But Packer is not that certain.
“I would like to live in an environment that is exciting and innovative, and I think most of our customers would like that, which also keeps a person in the loop,” he said. “I think Longbridge excels there, and we have been very careful because we have developed our AI ecosystem.”
Careful hand in training
A way in which the company is careful is not to allow his data to be used in the training of large, publicly available AI tools, he explained. Longbridge does not see such use where necessary.
“All our data is always on the coast, and we are explicitly about which tools we use and what is not,” said Packer. “And we do a lot of internal tests. Bridget, which we just released in the broker and the correspondent space last month, was more than a year and in development for 18 months.”
Packer has previously discussed the development of Longbridge’s “Bridget” AI tool. In April he reported that Bridget was trained and ‘very well informed about both [Home Equity Conversion Mortgage (HECM)] and ours [proprietary] Platinum products and currently learns our maintenance guidelines. “
But at that point a lot of time, attention and caution went, he said.
“We wanted to ensure that what we bring to the market is a tool that really resonates with our customers,” he explained. “If you look at our own employees, they are usually at the older end of the spectrum. We ensure that what we make does not suffer from some of these problems.”
Digital natives
Packer also shared a personal anecdote. He has been using technological tools for decades, including the first electronic spreadsheet program, Visicalc, which was released for the Apple II -Computer in 1979. He also did spreadsheets Microsoft Excel for most of the 30 years, saying that he can do tables in the course of the road [his] sleep. “
But as we get older, information can recall for this skills used regularly to open.
“I knew I knew how to do it, but I couldn’t remember how to do it,” he said. “What I did is to go to Microsoft Copilot and asked how I had to do what I tried to do. It didn’t give me the whole answer, but it gave me enough of the steps that suddenly moistened that brain cell and everything clicked again.”
Because he is not a ‘digital native’ compared to younger generations, he sees this as an example of a tool for those who may not be digital natives to compete with those who are.
“I think these tools give us wonderful opportunities to make that playing field a kind,” he said.
