Читать книгу Artificial Intelligence for Business - Jason L. Anderson - Страница 10

Financial markets are a hotbed for data. The data can be collected accurately and in real time for most financial instruments (stocks, options, funds, etc.) listed on stock markets. Metadata (data about data) can also be curated from analytical reports, articles, and the like. The necessity for channeling the sheer amount of information that is generated every day has given rise to professional data stream providers like Bloomberg. The immense quantity of data available, along with the potential for trend prediction, growth estimations, and increasingly accurate risk assessment, makes the financial industry ripe for implementing AI projects.

BlackRock, Inc., one of the world's largest asset managers, deploys the Aladdin⁵ (Asset, Liability, Debt, and Derivative Investment Network) software, which calculates risks, analyzes financial data, supports investment operations, and offers trade executions. Aladdin's key strength lies in using the vast amount of data to arrive at models of risk that give the user more confidence in deploying investments and hedging. The project was started nearly two decades ago, and it has been one of the key drivers of growth at BlackRock. BlackRock's technology services revenue grew 19 percent in 2018, driven by Aladdin and their other digital wealth products.⁶ Aladdin is now used by more than 25,000 investment professionals and 1,000 developers globally, helping to manage around $18 trillion in assets.⁷ Aladdin embeds within itself the building blocks of AI through the use of applied mathematics and data science.

BlackRock is now setting up a laboratory to further study the applications of AI in the analysis of risk and data streams generated. The huge amount of data being generated is becoming a problem for analysts, since the amount of data a human can sift through is limited. The expectation of Rob Goldstein, BlackRock's chief operating officer, is that the AI lab will help increase the efficiencies in what BlackRock does across the board.⁸ By applying big data to their existing data trove, BlackRock will be able to generate higher alphas, a measure of excess return over other portfolio managers, according to David Wright, head of product strategy in Europe. With good data generated by Aladdin and a sufficiently advanced AI algorithm, BlackRock might just emerge as the leader in analyzing risk and portfolios.