Machine Learning - a new wave of investment management?

Machine Learning ("ML") has been a relatively niche field for decades, with interest stemming mainly from academia and the life sciences. In recent years however, the development of ML technology has started to disrupt and, in some cases, reshape industries. This is evident in the hedge fund sector, which has seen a plethora of ML funds launching, or expected to launch, in the first half of 2018. ML can generally be defined as a subset of artificial intelligence. It involves using statistical techniques on large amounts of data to learn how to perform a specific task or find patterns in order to make predictions and solve problems. In reality however, the term "machine learning" is as broad as the fields of mathematics or statistics.