A Stock Picking Machine

If you’re looking for a little AI-related news, yesterday didn’t disappoint.

The New York Times reported that the largest fund company in the world, BlackRock, will be throwing a counterpunch against all those little pesky computer-driven funds that have sprouted up over the past several years.

Founder Laurence D. Fink, founder and CEO of BlackRock, “has cast his lot with the machines,” wrote the Times.

Meaning what, exactly?

BlackRock has laid out a plan to consolidate a large number of actively managed (read: by humans) mutual funds with peers that rely more on algorithms and models to pick stocks.

“The democratization of information has made it much harder for active management,” Mr. Fink said in an interview. “We have to change the ecosystem — that means relying more on big data, artificial intelligence, factors and models within quant and traditional investment strategies.”
– via www.nytimes.com

 

With Paul Bunyan, it was Man v. Machine…with the stock pickers, it’s the “quants” vs. the bots.

And oh, the sweet, sweet irony, to re-visit now last week’s comments from former Goldman Sachs banker and now Secretary of the Treasury Steve Mnuchin, who, when asked about the arrival of impactful artificial intelligence, suggested it was 50 to 100 years out.

Uh, how about next week, Mr. Secretary??

Oh yeah, if you want a great read about the looming possibilities and threats of AI, look no further than Vanity Fair.

None other than Maureen Down goes deep into the AI Matrix with Elon Musk, Greg Brockman, and a host of other tech thought leaders to try and ascertain how far and how fast humanity should build out AI capabilities, and the consequences of going both too slow and too quickly.

A conundrum? Sure, but one the machines will be able to figure out in no time…if we let them.