So-called generative AI is already helping to speed up mundane tasks known to crush the spirit of Wall Street juniors, hedge funds say, from reviewing reams of market research to writing basic code and summarizing fund performance. .
Over time, chatbots could help improve efficiency and offer more rewarding work to your human superiors, possibly at the cost of losing jobs. But it is still early.
At systematic hedge fund Campbell, its quant traders have spent months experimenting with using the technology behind ChatGPT to summarize internal research and write boilerplate code. However, generative AI tools have yet to change your everyday investing methods.
“They are very effective at completing code, editing it, finding bugs and fixing bugs,” says Kevin Cole, CEO of Campbell. “Our model would keep humans in the loop: an assistant to the human that would help make their job more efficient.”
AI on Wall Street is a broad church, ranging from machine learning algorithms used to calculate credit risks to natural language processing tools that scan the news to trade. Generative AI, the latest buzzword exemplified by the OpenAI chatbot, can follow instructions and create new text, images, or other content after being trained on massive amounts of data. The idea is that if the machine reads enough financial information, it could price an option, build a portfolio, or analyze a corporate news headline.
As hedge funds experiment with the latest iterations of these tools, the ultimate goal is to improve the performance of these investments. For now, the most obvious benefit is increased productivity, speeding up coding, research, and customer communications. That’s why Citadel’s Ken Griffin said in March that the company is negotiating an enterprise-wide license to use ChatGPT, betting it will automate a “huge amount of work.”