More and more algorithms running stock markets. They can only be as accurate as the people that program them.... Aivars Lode
Now the technology is being applied in industries from transport, where algorithms are being used to teach self-driving cars how to navigate busy city streets, to health care, where robots are learning to diagnose and treat patients. And in finance, increasingly, these technologies are making decisions about what stocks to buy and sell.
Marcos López de Prado has been at the forefront of machine learning innovation in finance. The New-York based Spaniard was the first-ever head of machine learning at AQR, one of the world’s largest investment management firms, before he left earlier this year to start his own firm, which sells machine learning expertise and algorithms to Wall Street.
The finance pioneer literally wrote the book on the use of machine learning in investing (his 400-page textbook Advances in Financial Machine Learning is included in the curriculum of several graduate school courses), and he was named the 2019 “Quant of the Year” by the Journal of Portfolio Management.
TIME sat down with López de Prado when he visited Hong Kong recently. Here’s what one of the world’s top quants has to say about how robots are taking over global financial markets, and his great hopes for the technology.
Ke Jie was once the world’s best player of the most complex game ever invented, an ancient Chinese board game called Go. But, in 2017, Ke was beaten by a computer program that had taught itself how to the play the game Ke had spent most of his life mastering.
The robotic victory marked a watershed moment for artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning technology—a subset of AI whereby a computer learns to perform a task without being explicitly programmed to complete it, instead learning and improving from experience.Now the technology is being applied in industries from transport, where algorithms are being used to teach self-driving cars how to navigate busy city streets, to health care, where robots are learning to diagnose and treat patients. And in finance, increasingly, these technologies are making decisions about what stocks to buy and sell.
Marcos López de Prado has been at the forefront of machine learning innovation in finance. The New-York based Spaniard was the first-ever head of machine learning at AQR, one of the world’s largest investment management firms, before he left earlier this year to start his own firm, which sells machine learning expertise and algorithms to Wall Street.
The finance pioneer literally wrote the book on the use of machine learning in investing (his 400-page textbook Advances in Financial Machine Learning is included in the curriculum of several graduate school courses), and he was named the 2019 “Quant of the Year” by the Journal of Portfolio Management.
TIME sat down with López de Prado when he visited Hong Kong recently. Here’s what one of the world’s top quants has to say about how robots are taking over global financial markets, and his great hopes for the technology.
