Asness’ AI Twin Heralds End of Human Fund Managers

Hedge fund executive Cliff Asness says artificial intelligence is becoming “annoyingly better” at doing parts of his job. AI deployed by his firm AQR Capital Management, where I worked for a decade, is combining investment factors to build market-beating portfolios, something that used to be Asness’ specialty. “AI’s coming for me now,” he told Bloomberg Television in a recent interview.

Almost exactly seven years ago, Asness had expressed skepticism to the Financial Times, saying that big data and machine learning were dangerous because they found too many spurious patterns, and even genuine patterns were quickly competed away in the markets. However, like a good portfolio manager, he hedged his bets, saying, “We’re feeling our way. If our first few experiments bear fruit, we’ll do more of them. If we find out we’re good at this, it will become a bigger part of AQR.”