Two Sigma Co-Founder David Siegel Calls AI Hype ‘Remarkable’

Annie Massa, Bloomberg News

David Siegel, co-founder and co-chairman of Two Sigma Investments LP, listens during the Power of Data: Sooner Than You Think global technology conference in the Brooklyn borough of New York, U.S., on Wednesday, Oct. 30, 2019. The event convenes leaders on the front lines taking action to move the technology industry forward. , Bloomberg

(Bloomberg) -- Two Sigma Investments co-founder David Siegel said the excitement surrounding artificial intelligence may be overblown.

“The hype is absolutely remarkable,” Siegel said at the Bloomberg Invest conference Wednesday. “I’ve never seen anything quite like it.”

When ChatGPT became broadly available late last year, it roused anxiety and spurred debate about how AI tools could upend industries including finance. Siegel — also co-chairman of Two Sigma, one of Wall Street’s most prominent quantitative hedge funds — said the main change that’s occurred recently with AI technology “is the awareness.”

Although large-language models such as ChatGPT have practical uses, their vast power in the public imagination doesn’t yet match the reality of their usefulness, he said.

Marty Chavez, vice chairman of Sixth Street and former chief information officer of Goldman Sachs Group Inc., said that AI would be unlikely to perform feats like predicting the trajectory of the S&P 500.

“There’s a really profound technical reason” that AI wouldn’t be able to do so, Chavez said at the conference. “My anxiety level is medium.”

Read More: JPMorgan’s AI Push Has Wall Street Rivals Playing Catch-Up

--With assistance from Katie Greifeld.