Every Allocator Should Ask These Questions Before Hiring an AI Manager

The use of artificial intelligence in asset management is rapidly increasing — or at least that’s what asset managers want you to believe.

I’ve evaluated scores of managers claiming to use AI. Although some are genuine in their adoption, many are guilty of what I call AI-washing — professing to use AI when in fact they are merely employing traditional quantitative techniques, such as simple linear regressions, that technically qualify as “machine learning.”

These dubious claims largely target asset owners who are “eager” to invest in AI-driven funds, according to a recent CFA Institute Investor Trust Study. The survey found that 84 percent of institutional investors want to invest in funds that use artificial intelligence and 78 percent “believe that the use of AI in investment decision making will lead to better investor outcomes.”

But AI is not a monolith, so let’s begin by defining the key terms. According to Andrew Moore, former dean of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University, “Artificial intelligence is the science and engineering of making computers behave in ways that, until recently, we thought required human intelligence.”

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