Ken Griffin’s stockpickers are using an internal chatbot to speed up their processes and find new info at his $71 billion hedge fund.
The tool, rolled out earlier this year, helps the firm’s legions of fundamental equity investors find hidden details in public filings, summarize research from sell-side banks, track mentions of certain key words from executives, and more.
But the human part of these flesh-and-blood traders remains mission critical, according to Umesh Subramanian, Citadel’s chief technology officer.
Speaking at a New York conference on Wednesday, he said, “We are also careful that it’s not used in the wrong way.”
“We don’t want PMs offloading their human investment judgment to AI. This is a tool to further accelerate their research process,” he said.
Citadel is far from the only hedge fund with an internal chat tool. Managers such as Balyasny, Man Group, Viking Global, and more have rolled out AI helpers to assist their investment teams. Citadel had already been using AI or machine learning in some form for roughly a decade.
But decision-making has yet to be turned over wholesale to the machines, aside from a few funds, such as Bridgewater, which is allowing AI to run a strategy uninhibited by people. Even quant fund managers — which trade markets using systematic, computer-run strategies — believe humans are still a critical part of investing.
At Citadel, employees aren’t forced to use AI, Subramanian told Business Insider in an interview.
“We don’t have a requirement to use AI, just like we don’t go around saying you are required to use Java as a programming language. That’s backward,” he said. The new tool has close to full adoption across stock-picking teams, the firm says.
While companies like Microsoft and Shopify have mandated the use of AI by their employees, Subramanian said, “Where that goes wrong is adopting AI for the sake of adoption, rather than because it’s actually needed.”
“That is a slippery slope,” he said.
