BlackRock MD: People are the problem when it comes to machine learning - eFinancialCareers

Forget siloed quant teams, overworked developers or the superiority of the human mind, there's one big impediment to artificial intelligence really taking off in financial services – the current staff. If AI is to gain traction in financial services, it will need to vanquish the army of financial services professionals standing in its way. At least, this is the conclusion of Raffaele Savi, a managing director and head of developed markets within BlackRock's scientific active equities team. "People are problematic, machines are easy," he said, speaking at the Newsweek conference on artificial intelligence and big data last week. "People who understand finance and economics don't think the same way as people who know a lot about computing and machine learning. We need to work together as an industry. AI is where the bulk of alpha will be on a longer term horizon."