While not exactly investment, consider the case of an AI competing with a human to devise a progressively better high-frequency trading strategy. An AI would probably:
be able to bear more things in mind at one time than the human
evaluate outcomes faster than the human
be able to iterate on its strategies faster than the human
I expect the AI’s superior capacity to “drink from the fire hose” together with its faster response time to yield a higher exponent for the growth function than that resulting from the human’s iterative improvement.
You’re right, that is more realistic. Even so, I get the feeling that the human would have less and less to do as time goes on. I quote:
“He just loaded up on value stocks,” says Mr. Fleiss, referring to the AI program. The fund gained 41% in 2009, more than doubling the Dow’s 19% gain.
As another data point, a recent chess contest between a chess grandmaster (Daniel Naroditsky) working together with an older AI (Rybka, rated ~3050) and the current best chess AI (Stockfish 5, rated 3290) ended with a 3.5 − 0.5 win for Stockfish.
I don’t think an article which compares a hedge fund’s returns to the Dow (a price-weighted index of about 30 stocks!) can be considered very credible. And there are fewer Quant funds, managing less money, than there were 7 years ago.
While not exactly investment, consider the case of an AI competing with a human to devise a progressively better high-frequency trading strategy. An AI would probably:
be able to bear more things in mind at one time than the human
evaluate outcomes faster than the human
be able to iterate on its strategies faster than the human
I expect the AI’s superior capacity to “drink from the fire hose” together with its faster response time to yield a higher exponent for the growth function than that resulting from the human’s iterative improvement.
A more realistic example would be “competing with a human teamed up with a narrow AI”.
You’re right, that is more realistic. Even so, I get the feeling that the human would have less and less to do as time goes on. I quote:
As another data point, a recent chess contest between a chess grandmaster (Daniel Naroditsky) working together with an older AI (Rybka, rated ~3050) and the current best chess AI (Stockfish 5, rated 3290) ended with a 3.5 − 0.5 win for Stockfish.
I don’t think an article which compares a hedge fund’s returns to the Dow (a price-weighted index of about 30 stocks!) can be considered very credible. And there are fewer Quant funds, managing less money, than there were 7 years ago.