'Al unlikely to replace humans in fin services'

Artificial intelligence, or AI, has had an influence in the way we invest in stocks. While it helps you narrow the list of opportunities, it has not reached a point where it can replace wealth managers, points out Shankar Sharma, founder, GQuants, in a fireside chat with A K Bhattacharya. Edited excerpts:

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To what extent is your investment philosophy dataand AI-driven?

■ My needle of investing has moved from being very traditional to becoming 80-90 per cent dataand AI-driven. That has been my transformation as an investor.

So, I was an early adopter of AI and quant-driven thinking. And again, to clarify, it’s not that I use only Al but where it comes into play. It is giving me a breadth and scale of opportunity seeking, which I would not be able to do humanly, or even with a team.

So, in a sea of 10,000 companies, for example, how do you find five, 10, 15, or 20 good ones? AI is giving me that today. Now, after that, the human part of me kicks in to further refine it down to the best five, or the best eight, or the best 10. But getting to that, it was a needle in a haystack. Now, the haystack has become much easier for me to understand. That’s how I am using AI. Thus, my investment philosophy is simply that instead of taking a small number of large bets, as I would when I was a human being, because of AI, I can take a large number of small bets and a small number of large bets simultaneously.

Will AI replace humans in investing or in financial services?

■ I think it will not happen because we human beings will prevent AI from becoming that important because it will take away our jobs. For example, if a mutual fund chief investment officer gets too much Al into his firm, tomorrow his job is in danger.

Al will have a natural check because of our vested interests and balance embedded in it. It will have a role, but to expect that everything will go from human beings and go to AI ... I don't think that will happen.

You are perceived as a contrarian. Will that change with the advent of AI?