Two Cornell College students are using artificial intelligence (AI) to develop a more efficient tool for financial forecasting as part of this year’s Cornell Summer Research Institute (CSRI).
Jillian Witt, a rising junior, and Liam Borer Seabloom, a rising senior, are collaborating with Associate Professor of Finance Huan Cai to integrate large language models, such as ChatGPT, into financial forecasting applications.
“AI can drive innovation, solve complex problems, enhance automation, and (improve) productivity,” Ms. Witt said. “To understand the benefits of AI and its potential drawbacks, we need to conduct this research.”
The team’s goal is to create a user-friendly app that incorporates AI while building on the forecasting methods already used in the finance industry. Borer Seabloom, who is studying finance and data science, said the team hopes to make the tool more accessible.
“We want to build an app that incorporates AI, as well as the methods that these other companies are using, and see if we can improve upon their current methods and make them more publicly available or cheaper,” Mr. Borer Seabloom said.
Mr. Borer Seabloom has been working in Python using OpenAI’s API. “We’ve been prompting the ChatGPT 4.1 large language model, which is a pretty recent model, and we’ve been able to get out easy-to-read and well-formatted information from a financial statement that it’s been given,” he said.
Ms. Witt, a finance and religion double major, is focusing on outreach and competitive research. She is contacting software developers to evaluate similar products and ensure the team’s app brings something new to the market.
“I really like working with Huan,” Ms. Witt said. “I appreciate how she’s really looking out for me, not just now, but in the future.”
Ms. Cai said the research is aimed at improving the earliest stages of company valuation using LLMs.
“Sales forecasting is actually the first, substantial step of any equity valuation,” Ms. Cai said. “We are doing the very first step to see how LLMs can play a role.”
The CSRI program runs through July 11.
Cornell College is a private liberal arts college in Mount Vernon, with a total undergraduate enrollment of 1,058 students for the 2025-26 academic year.
