Two Sigma Says Artificial Intelligence Lacks Smarts

David Siegel, a quantitative hedge fund pioneer, issued a warning to investors: Artificial intelligence lacks common sense. Siegel, who has used AI to build his Two Sigma Investments into a 37 billion hedge fund firm, said algorithms are limited by the scant amount of training data available to instruct them on how to differentiate objects in images. "Artificial intelligence today doesn't have anything that resembles common sense, and common sense is a key feature of intelligence," Siegel, 55, said at the Bloomberg Markets Most Influential Summit on Wednesday. Hedge funds are embracing a form of AI called machine learning years after Two Sigma deployed the technology and as stock and bond pickers struggle to outperform markets. Highbridge Capital Management, Bridgewater Associates and Point72 Asset Management are among firms trying to profit from machine-learning algorithms, which automatically find patterns in large batches of financial data to inform investment calls.