Bridgewater Co-CIO Sees AI Adding 'Incredible Strength' for Investors

(Bloomberg) — Over the next five years, machine learning can improve "so much of what human investors and analysts can do," said Greg Jensen, co-chief investment officer of giant hedge fund firm Bridgewater Associates.

While there are still many problems with off-the-shelf natural language-processing models, if you can combine them with data models "you can create this incredible strength," Jensen said in a Bloomberg TV interview Monday.

The current AI boom isn't like the 1999 tech bubble because earnings for soaring companies today "are actually there in a way they weren't for a company like Cisco in 1999," he said.

That bubble was all about future expectations, according to Jensen.

"What's priced into equities today, actually we'd say, are based on what's happening right now," he added, pointing out that AI-focused chipmaker Nvidia Corp. already has "incredible demand."

Last week, Bloomberg reported that Bridgewater launched a $2 billion fund run by Jensen that uses machine learning as the primary basis of its decision-making. 

Bridgewater has set aside 25 people focused on assessing how to use machine learning for investing, Jensen said.

"Having machine learning generate the ideas, generate the algorithms — that's been kind of a dream for me," he said.

Related:AI Basics: A Quick Reference Guide for IT Professionals