What Is Automatic Data Capture? How Hedge Funds Can Trade On Heaven-Sent Data

Delegates at Newsweek and International Business Times' data science in capital markets event were mesmerised by a video of shoe box-sized satellites, known as "cube sats" being released into the earth's atmosphere. They were then shown the speeded up footage that was being captured: giant oil tanks with floating lids, rising like tides; ships being built from scratch in dry docks; burning flares from steel mills; a picture of the agricultural yields of the entire planet. Professor David Hand, chief scientific advisor, Winton, introducing the event, pointed out that the current AI summer is characterised by what he called "automatic data capture". He said: "Perhaps even more important than big data, we can now observe what people are doing all the time, like shopping for instance. Heterogeneous data is being produced constantly, as you sit here data about you is being captured by computers."