As readers have likely seen, there has been a lot of coverage lately focusing on David Ferrucci’s role at Ray Dalio’s Bridgewater Associates, and the firm’s artificial intelligence strategy. Given that we cover Bridgewater and the hedge fund industry, Bridgewater wanted to provide a statement of clarification on what the world’s largest hedge fund is doing. When ValueWalk first ran a story on this topic, the firm declined to comment on the matter (and rarely comments on strategy).
Readers can find the full statement from Bridgewater below.
Stay tuned for more coverage.
There has been a lot of speculation in the media, as well as some misunderstanding, about what Bridgewater is doing in the area of artificial intelligence, and with Dave Ferrucci. We felt it was important to clarify this.
Ever since 1983 Bridgewater Associates has been creating systematic decision-making processes that are computerized. We believe that the same things happen over and over again because of logical cause/effect relationships, and that by writing one’s principles down and then computerizing them one can have the computer make high-quality decisions in much the same way a GPS can be an effective guide to decision making.
Like using a GPS, one can choose to follow the guidance or not follow it depending on how it reconciles. It is through this never ending reconciliation process that the computer decision-making system constantly learns, and the learning compounds over time.
It is because Bridgewater and Dave Ferrucci both have long and deep commitments to this area that Dave has recently joined Bridgewater. It would be a mistake to think that this is a new undertaking for Bridgewater or that the process being used at Bridgewater is like some artificial intelligence systems that are based on data-mining rather than well-examined logic.
