Will robots replace your consulting or financial career?

I was recently reading a couple of books – Rise of the Robot by Martin Ford and Humans Do Not Need Apply by Jerry Kaplan. Both books share insights on the demise of both the industrial and knowledge eras. Both books provide key themes and stark warnings about the future of automation and its potential impact on humanity as we currently know it.

Examples cited in the books:
Artificially intelligent systems double in capacity every two years. AI drives cars, runs restaurants, writes articles, creates original art, composes symphonies and builds houses – and that’s just the beginning.

In stock markets, “high-frequency trading” (HFT) systems skim vast profits, risk-free. These rapid HFT programs may fuel market chaos, as in the “Flash Crash” of 2010. Today’s “high-frequency trading” (HFT) systems complete transactions tens of thousands of times faster than humans can. In fractions of a second, HFT systems buy the stock low and sell it high, skimming the spread between prices. Some systems analyze market “sentiment,” finding subtle, fleeting correlations among diverse stocks. HFT systems may “smooth” the market, but they exacerbate the problem of wealth inequality.

A near-total replacement of the knowledge worker could happen by 2035 in addition to extinction of careers in manufacturing, transportation, and agriculture.

Some experts see opportunity – machines enhancing human intelligence and longevity, for example. Others worry about machines taking over.

What do you think?

 

We are far from this. The technology is not there yet, nor is there money to be made off of it either. We barely got self driving vehicles underway.

Someone has to be there to push the "on" button, and service the machines when they are in maintenance. There are updates need available and people who can design AI framework, test it, etc.

Robots and technology tends to create more issues than solve them :(

 

@Darkasing_619" According to the 2 books I've read, the technology has been around since the 70s and was purposefully stalled. So it is actually already here.

I can't recall in which book, but one of the books gave an account of AI development discoveries at a computer lab back in the 70s; the programmers saw the potential of this capability and how quickly it could evolve & adapt on its own - so much so that it apparently frightened the programmers. they feared their jobs becoming obsolete, so they purposefully created unstructured coding languages, making computer programs very prescriptive and finite in utility at the time. For example, code was written to solve a math problem or to play chess, but the program couldn't do anything else.

Apparently given the post scarcity era we are entering in (thanks atleastimnotabanker that's a good word), AI programming has evolved to become much more structural in design. Pandora's box was opened. Structural, genetic programming is now underway to create an almost Darwinism-like environment - computers are now adapting, regenerating new code, throwing out "bad" code all by itself. This is currently happening 24/7/365 at an exponential rate.

I wish I had answers, but I don't. The more it is discussed, the more it will be understood.

Christie Lindor Management Consultant | Author, The MECE Muse
 

AI will inevitably replace your job and if you believe the people who should know best (i.e. the ones that build the AI), this change will happen much earlier than most people expect.

Also your question about "What happens if nobody has job and to whom will companies sell to" misses the point. The concept of Supply & Demand requires scarcity of resources. With exponential advances in AI, we are quickly entering a new post-scarcity world, so the old concept of making money by selling your skills/products will no longer be valid.

As a result, there will most likely come a short period of great changes very soon. If AI takes over the low skilled jobs in lets say the next ten years (e.g. bus/taxi/truck drivers, waiters, call center operators, etc. - it's already happening today and the speed will only increase with those systems getting better and cheaper at an exponential rate) there will be millions of unemployed people who simply don't have the skills to get any other job - all jobs that they might be suitable for will also get automated in a matter of months after. Society in the US (or anywhere else for that matter) is simply not prepared for such an increase in unemployment. If you have let's say a 10-20% increase in unemployment in a short period of time, you can be very sure that no matter what currently thought safe you have, you will be heavily affected.

 

Meh, if it happens it happens. Not really worth wasting brain power on thinking about the what ifs of the situation given it is 100% out of my (and our) control. The people who develop these systems have top PhDs in top hard quantitative fields, they'll be able to automate pretty much everything eventually. They're not on my playing field so I don't think it's worth wasting energy on.

 

CanadianEnergyBanker Thanks for responding. I think a lot of people share your sentiment, particularly those with less than 15 years left before retirement. It's easy to talk about it on a forum, but it is hard work to think about it and actually start doing something with the information.

If one is planning on working beyond 2030 - whether at a firm or independently - they should think about how to leverage the power of anticipation and time in order to be prepared to maximize on the opportunities that lie ahead.

Christie Lindor Management Consultant | Author, The MECE Muse
 

There's going to be either two routes. One where this is all overstated and there's nothing to worry about. Or one where estimates are in line with reality. I think there's no need to prepare in either case because there isn't anything you can do. The same ways that lead to financial independence now are the ones that will lead to independence under AI. It is always a bad idea to have one primary source of income, especially when that is a salary. Not much changes with AI except for how true that statement will ring.

 

this is the sort of thing that gets the "bug out" community all wet and excited: if the nightmare scenario of this thing materializes then there will be no need for humans for anything as the robots can do it all themselves. I think we are a long way from that and I also think that we as a species would/should curtail their development before reaching 100% dependency. A computer can never replace the "gut feeling" you need in sales or negotiations which comes from experience and having lived that life. No computer can ever be as sophisticated as the human brain. To that end, why worry about it? even if my job will disappear it's not as if I can just wake up one morning and say hey i think I will be a software engineer now. if i could have done that I would have already so why waste energy in worrying about something I cannot control?

"I'm talking about liquid. Rich enough to have your own jet. Rich enough not to waste time. Fifty, a hundred million dollars, buddy. A player. Or nothing. " -GG
 
Artificially intelligent systems double in capacity every two years. AI drives cars, runs restaurants, writes articles, creates original art, composes symphonies and builds houses - and that's just the beginning.

This is where it gets wrong. AI isn't going to follow some Moore's Law kind of BS - it's going to plateau very soon. What will expand are new applications of AI. We'll see automation in lower pay-scale jobs.

That being said, AI cannot be the be all, end all. IMO from my observations of the work of some of the top universities and companies around the world working in deep learning, the kind of world envisioned by most of these engineers is not one in which robots coexist as equals with humanity, but rather as subservient husks without sentience. Yes, everybody agrees that machines should not be given sentience - everyone of them.

That would result in a world one notch below the one depicted in Asimov's I Robot. I'm guessing that Asimov's three laws will then prove to be the bedrock for AI boundaries, owing to their popularity amongst AI researchers.

I can't recall in which book, but one of the books gave an account of AI development discoveries at an IBM lab back in the 70s; the programmers saw the potential of this capability and how quickly it could evolve & adapt on its own - so much so that it apparently frightened the programmers. they feared their jobs becoming obsolete, so they purposefully created unstructured coding languages, making computer programs very prescriptive and finite in utility at the time. For example, code was written to solve a math problem or to play chess, but the program couldn't do anything else.

This is utter BS. AI research wasn't purposely stalled because some righteous researchers wanted to save humanity - it was because we hadn't developed the tech for the insanely high processing power required. But once people decided to utilize GPUs instead of CPUs (this is only one factor, but key), AI research resumed making intense breakthroughs. The difference was that in the 70s and 80s, research produced a huge trove of theoretical knowledge, and now it produces potential applications. OP, you need to revise your reading list - start with Asimov, Penrose and Minsky.

That being said, I'd be happy, not cautious, if a robot were around to help me when I'm old - can't really on the snot-faced progeny these days. I'm also sure that humans will still be at the top of the pyramid, so you can be assured that your consulting career is not going to be replaced by some metal hunk named Sonny.

GoldenCinderblock: "I keep spending all my money on exotic fish so my armor sucks. Is it possible to romance multiple females? I got with the blue chick so far but I am also interested in the electronic chick and the face mask chick."
 

robots will at some point replace minimum wage workers in bulk. once this happens people should be a lot more worried about whats next. even robots replacing minimum wage workers could cause some type of revolt which would push back the time-frame for more skilled labor being replaced.

twitter: @StoicTrader1 instagram: @StoicTrader1
 

The mightiest empires to ever exist, the Romans and the Mongols, relied on this thing called decimation. Perhaps we ought to think about that for once. Dan Brown-Inferno style?

GoldenCinderblock: "I keep spending all my money on exotic fish so my armor sucks. Is it possible to romance multiple females? I got with the blue chick so far but I am also interested in the electronic chick and the face mask chick."
 

I will start to consider being concerned when I have a conversation with an automated operator that does not result in me asking for a human in the first minute.

Only two sources I trust, Glenn Beck and singing woodland creatures.
 

What happens when AI creates its own version of drugs and liquor? Right now we're in a low-shit system, but once AI gets drunk and on drugs we'll be in a full blown shitcane. You've been warned...

I AM THE LIQUOR
 

That is the catch 23. Long stories get short, for the gooder of us all, we need to stop the worst case Ontario from happening. Otherwise, it will look like a tropical earthquake blew through here.

Only two sources I trust, Glenn Beck and singing woodland creatures.
 

Yes OP you're absolutely correct, more correct that I ever thought anyone could be. Companies as of last night collectively decided that they will never need financial advice, will never pursue inorganic growth strategies, and will never need to access capital markets.

Here I thought I had a solid job going into banking but guess not. Should've stopped being a prestige whore and taken than janitorial job I guess

 

Photonic transfer will be the advance that moves AI into full gear. Once we are out of binary into stacked information and out of electrons and sending information by photons, the amount of information will be staggering and the speed transformational. Now the data still has to be stored in something, but I see a 50 Year gap in how long it will take before I can buy a personal house bot!

"All men are alike in their dreams, and all men are alike in the promises they make. The difference is what they do."— Jean Baptiste Moliere
 

This is the ideal world idea of automation. We will all have income and free time to achieve the top of maslows pyramid. Art, travel, enlightenment.

This can easily be shown to be drastically optimistic simply by looking at how the vast majority of people spend their free time now - playing angry birds and trolling on yahoo message board.

People are getting dumber at precisely the time where information is freely available to everyone.

 

It's a delicate knife. Used well, you can make a fine meal with it, clean it up, wipe it down, and put it back into the block. Used poorly, you can turn the streets red with mass homicide or end up falling on it yourself.

This is a hot topic that Elon Musk bans from discussing during hot tube parties along with talking about if this life is a simulation or not (Neil deGrasse Tyson also thinks this whole game of life is one grand simulation).

For a full background, we have to observe how John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946) thought about the future during his times. This Forbes article summarizes this pretty well.

According to Keynes, we are supposed to be doing the following:

"For many ages to come the old Adam will be so strong in us that everybody will need to do some work if he is to be contented. We shall do more things for ourselves than is usual with the rich to-day, only too glad to have small duties and tasks and routines. But beyond this, we shall endeavour to spread the bread thin on the butter-to make what work there is still to be done to be as widely shared as possible. Three-hour shifts or a fifteen-hour week may put off the problem for a great while. For three hours a day is quite enough to satisfy the old Adam in most of us!"

Interested individuals can read his entire essay Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren listed in the reference below.

TL;DR: We're supposed to be chilling on a 15-hour work week because we still need to be amused and challenged. Why the extra 25 hours (40hr week) or 85 hours (WSO typical) remains is a modern day mystery. The markets are brutally efficient that's why and consumption kept pace with every incremental gain we received by our extra production. If consumption were stifled and our production exceeded this consumption rate, it wouldn't be surprising that we receive days off from the office and factories.

School of Life's How to Make a Country Rich explains our present situation pretty well:

What do I think?: We need automation to keep our prices low so that we can be fat, dumb, and happy glued to our phones or VR headsets. I'm leaning towards a WALL-E end game.

Reference: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren (1930) - John M. Keynes

 

Since you probably researched this topic well enough I'm going to ask.

If you look on US unemployment history chart (1) you can observe that it oscillates around 7.5%, with peaks during panics and recessions. During this time (1890 - 2010) there has been a lot of scientific discoveries, industrial revolution, PC was invented, internet etc. Yet all this failed to create structural unemployment, maybe some short term local lay offs, since replacing a bunch of guy's at a factory with robots is not structural unemployment it's technological modernization. So! Why do you think that automation (and I guess here you refer to AI which is faaaaar from being even close if even possible to conscious human mind) will create massive unemployment? I'm curious. Thank you.

1) https://www.economicshelp.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/US_Unempl…

You killed the Greece spread goes up, spread goes down, from Wall Street they all play like a freak, Goldman Sachs 'o beat.
 

Great question! Here's what I think:

Humans creating machines vs. humans creating machines that create themselves.

A hundred years ago, machines haven't yet started to create or learn for themselves and we were still the architects. Now, that's changing and that's the biggest difference. Machines and machine learning or AI is surprising us with their solutions. First by DeepBlue and Kasparov's defeat and now AlphaGo conquering in a much more sophisticated game. We didn't have powers like this back then and tools that challenged the intellect of its creators.

Speed of information didn't used to double at the current rate back then and information not so readily available. Retraining with less total collective human knowledge was easier relative to the history lesson of today plus getting to the current frontiers of each industry. Check Physics articles and how many authors are required now to publish the next best big discovery vs. Einstein/Feynman/von Neumann era. It's alarming that schools before college haven't really adequately adopted to prepare students to face this "drink from a fire-hose" experience of the real world.

The population game (human capital market) is about to experience a shift as well as baby boomers retire in USA and other countries experience negative population growth.

Lastly, unemployment vs underemployment. HBS grad serving Ben and Jerry's is hardly considered employment to us but to BLS it is perfectly fine! I stopped trusting the BLS number a while ago knowing how job "creation" is defined for statistics reporting purposes. Let's say you are an internal hire, deal is done, you got the job (congratulations). We still have HR float the ad online and then give it the minimum amount of time to stay up. That counts as a job created even though you just changed desks or upgrade your name plate and remain in place.

 

The reason that this is not as big of a problem as people make it out to be is simple: The population is going to decrease to the level supported by automation.

Although the disruption and loss of jobs will probably have painful mid-term effects on our generation, it will only take about 25 years for these to shake out, as old people die off, and younger people choose not to have kids which they can not vigorously support.

Income inequality will likely be exacerbated though, and continue far past this brief adjustment period. However, I do not think inequality is a real issue, rather one manufactured by politicians (like most social problems ver the last 20 years or more). Unless you can prove that the lower end of the spectrum is being actively and legally discriminated against in some way, or at least that their plight is literally and definitely worsening, not relatively worsening when compared to the most successful individuals in the world who make millions of people's lives better in dozens of ways, then I say it's total BS.

 

I really liked your point on the notion of 'Old Adam' when confronted with the idea of automation.

It is my belief that without hard work or achievement, leisure becomes mere boredom and relaxation becomes anxious idleness. It's why I think the idea of "automating away employment" is a quixotic (or perhaps dystopian) idea at best. Humans will always want to be occupied by some pursuit. It's in our nature to create, build and administrate and what separates us from other sentient life forms.

I think several hundred years from now (given humanity is around), people will look back at this era and realize we were living in the beginning of the second renaissance. Old world notions from work to marriage, to politics, to status and wealth are all being challenged and refined into an era of new perception and thinking.

Couple that with the fact the internet has given a voice to the unsophisticated and down-trodden and we see two themes broadly arising: there will be continued friction and unrest in society as the 99% can make their plight known and recognized, and because of that, a much more profound understanding of the human condition on an individual level will lead to a new sense of broad human empathy and societal reform. This is already exhibited by the millennials and Gen Z, the SJW crowd, the rise of the "lifestyle" brand, etc.

Where that will lead when combined with automation (and theoretically more leisure time) is anyone's guess. I just know that despite all the BS, it's a wonderful time to be alive with opportunity abounding for those who chase it and never give up.

 

Thanks! I read that report and had actually read it earlier in the week. A second time was beneficial! I'm not too sure I like this change. I think I'd really enjoy research -- I find this all fascinating. However, I would not like to join a division that is going to be slowly dissolved, unless of course that I am the best. For example, take Adam Parker, former Chief US Equity Strategist at Morgan Stanley. IB firms still need guys like him, correct?

What do you call an economist who forecasts? Wrong!
 

I remember reading a book about the the blockchain about a year-and-a-half ago. In that book, the authors described what the taxi industry would look like in the future when there are no drivers and the blockchain is more sophisticated. Basically, each taxi would be its own separate company, with an AI responsible for driving the taxi and taking care of any other business processes. Since AIs theoretically don't care about obtaining profit, taxi fares would be rock bottom. Taxis would also be able to communicate with another, and certain taxis will go into "hibernation mode" if the AI determines that it won't be able to cover its cost based on supply and demand trends.

If such a future comes about, it would make sense to levy a tax on robots.

 

Probably one of fhe few liberal ideas I agree with though. This is not about people being too lazy to work or trying to milk the system. This is about robots doing a lot of jobs cheaper and more efficiently than humans do. It's going to be the industrial revolution times 100. I think displacing a huge chunk of the work force without creating some sort of social safety net is just bad economics. Plus, a lot of these jobs will be jobs that can't be outsourced, so it's not like we're going to lose business because China doesn't have the tax and their cost of production is lower.

What other alternatives are there to handle a situation where such a large chunk of the work force gets displaced? I'd love to hear a free market oriented idea that works.

 

Geez. The issue is that it's impossible to determine what robot replaced a job, what robot made a job efficient, etc.

Taxing robots would add so much more regulation/lobbying efforts over semantics it would immediately nullify any fairness or efficiency gains due to an alleged distortionary incentive to hire robots over people (there are plenty of incentives to hire people over robots, too).

Right now if you hire a robot if it increases your profits you pay more corporate tax, or whoever sold you the robot pays it. We don't need to make it more complicated.

 

This is interesting. What kind of tax would this actually be? There are many ramblings about moving towards a consumption tax and eliminating the federal income tax. Effectively, under that system, there would be no way to tax robots given that they don't consume anything. Granted if costs go way down in manufacturing because of elimination of humans, then that might help, but it will forever remain inefficient later on when the world catches up.

 

Interesting sounding idea, but think it makes little practical sense.

1) Company profits are already taxed and will go up as robots replace more expensive workers. If you want an efficient tax you could just raise corporate taxes and use it for more social welfare 2) B/c a human would need to be paid $50K to do it does not mean the job is 'worth' $50K. You could potentially find another person willing to do it for $25. A tax on lower-cost production doesn't really make sense - once again, just tax profits and ENCOURAGE innovation, which will then drive more profits

 

This is the original paper: http://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/downloads/academic/The_Future_of_Emplo…

While an interesting topic, I am highly skeptical of numbers like "47%" or how they categorize certain occupations. Statistical and machine learning techniques are not magic black boxes that give answers.

The authors used some forms of economic modeling and statistics to get their projections, but of course the validity of their conclusions depends on the inputs. To make my point: refer to page 30 of the paper:

"To work around some of these drawbacks, we combine and build upon the two described approaches. First, together with a group of ML researchers, we subjectively hand-labelled 70 occupations, assigning 1 if automatable, and 0 if not. For our subjective assessments, we draw upon a workshop held at the Oxford University Engineering Sciences Department, examining the automatability of a wide range of tasks. Our label assignments were based on eyeballing the O∗NET tasks and job description of each occupation. This information is particular to each occupation, as opposed to standardised across different jobs. The hand-labelling of the occupations was made by answering the question “Can the tasks of this job be sufficiently specified, conditional on the availability of big data, to be performed by state of the art computer-controlled equipment”. Thus, we only assigned a 1 to fully automatable occupations, where we considered all tasks to be automatable. To the best of our knowledge, we considered the possibility of task simplification, possibly allowing some currently non-automatable tasks to be automated. Labels were assigned only to the occupations about which we were most confident."

Basically, one of the main inputs is the authors' subjective labels about automation. In some ways, this just seems like a fancy survey.

Anyways, I think automation is more likely in domains where rules are well defined. Like in self-driving cars where the rules are based on physics, diagnoses based on biology, accounting based on accounting rules, etc...

But for finance, since the rules often change (because we deal with people) it's harder to see how certain things could be automated.

 

@nauprillion thanks for the mention, and for sharing. In the coming years, big data and faster processing capabilities are going to do to white collar jobs what machines did to blue collar jobs, and I think that the scope of this is far larger than most people realize. Investment banking, for example, will be one of the jobs to be left to the machines at some point. (sorry @cauchymonkey). There might still be a need for people who can explain a model to a client, and there will probably be the need for people to do the relationship management jobs that MDs do now, but at some point we will just be able to tell the machine the parameters, and it will take care of everything on the modeling side.

I think people in general overestimate the complexity of their own jobs, and underestimate both the complexity of other jobs and the ability of technology to replace both. Automation will replace 99% of our current workforce at some point. Forty-seven percent seems ambitious for the next decade or two, though. It is much more likely that automation will change existing jobs to a large degree, but not completely eliminate the need for people in those roles.

I also think this particular study is highly unbelievable. A 96% likelihood that receptionists will lose their jobs to automation? I doubt it - the point of a receptionist is largely to provide a human point of contact for visitors. Looking at the other end of the spectrum, it is highly likely, contrary to this infographic, that doctors and elementary school teachers will be replaced by automation. The "Bottlenecks to Automation" section is also ridiculous. One of my friends is already working on a machine that automatically does your makeup for you.

tl;dr Yes, most of today's jobs will become automated at some point, but don't put any stock into this infographic. While interesting and thought-provoking, it is highly flawed and illogical.

 

excel modeling can definitely be automated and artificial intelligence is improving but i am skeptical of the hype.

machine learning techniques like neural networks need lots of data and not every domain has enough good data. moreover, in some areas where relationships and laws change (finance), past data may not be as useful.

for example, when fitting some quantitative model for trading a lot of the time u wont use the last 60 yrs of data since some may have lost relevance.

 

The business will always need a human element, it's just that as computers perform more of the actual trading functions, that actual human trading ability (call it skill, luck, gut, talent, experience, etc) is less of a requirement for the job. If you can program and code, know your way around complex mathematical concepts and calculations, there's no reason to worry about it in this lifetime. That having been said the worries you're having are way above your pay grade, so to speak. If you have an offer and an interest, pursue it. It's the only way you'll get answers. A great bit of what you want to know is tied into your personal belief system and nobody's going to be able to give you a 100% answer. Sorry I can't be of more help.

 

If you have a job, take it.

Here is my recommendation to you, from someone who works in automated trading: Embrace the technology- a technophobic or resistance to change is a very sure, very quick way to get laid off. Think of yourself as working for the cash equity business, not as a trader. Electronic trading is booming, high-touch trading is shrinking, though it will never go away entirely.

Make connections, keep an eye on your ass, and try to align your skills with another area you could work in. I have met a few out of work traders, some never worked in finance again, some moved to completely different areas and are still making nice money.

That being said, "traders" will always be needed. Someone has to watch the algos, and while it may seem counter-intuitive, its usually not the guys who build them- they have to go build more algos. The role of a typical trader is much different than it used to be. Instead of making moves, you are usually watching screens and adjusting parameters of some automated system. Jokes have been thrown about on our desk about how traders are just janitors of our systems (another term for this is "risk manager").

Embrace the technology and help advance it and you will do well. Like any area, the guys who stick around are the ones who are looking around the corner and trying to get there first, not the guys trying to maintain the status quo.

 

Thanks guys. This definitely makes sense. Let me ask this though: Is it realistic to go from one desk to another after a few years of trading if you want to make a move, or are you kind of stuck where you are since you are so far behind the others in another product? To put it another way, is it possible to move to another product later on, or are you limited in your opportunities?

 

I dont think its that realistic honestly to switch products basically once you do get the opportunity the later you make the switch the more difficult it will be to do.

As far as automation I would hardly call the traders overseeing the algos janitors. Sell side guys acting as agents would use the algo to break up large orders and trade most efficiently. A market making or HFT algo would serve as liquidity providers to the buyside. In the end it turns into whos algos are better, it becomes a bit of a chess match and the very principles markets operate under are fundamentally changing. Right now I would give the edge to the HFT algos because they have both the hardware and software edge but I think as time goes along different players will be able to fight back at these.

An anology you could think of it is hacking and security. As hackers find vulnerabilities security looks to plug these vulnerabilities meanwhile hackers are looking for new ways to exploit them. The markets are no different except its all one big chess match.

"Oh the ladies ever tell you that you look like a fucking optical illusion" - Frank Slaughtery 25th Hour.
 

I actually have no idea who is paid more. Its tough to tell, the "traders" are all down on the main trading floor, while we are on a side trading floor. They tend to dress better, but image matters more down there. They seem to all have big houses out in the nice neighborhoods in the burbs, but they also tend to be in their late 30's, while we are generally a bit younger. There are also cultural differences at play, down on the main floor, there is a lot more pressure to be flashy and have status symbols, more technically and mathematically minded people are rarely like that at all, aside from showing off their new gadgets.

Keep in mind, I am not working on the prop side of things- our business gets paid off commission fees. Though I have also worked in a prop group doing MM, and the traders seemed to make more, but that was a few years ago.

As far as moving desks, I would say that products that are easy to move between are already on the same "desk." IE moving from futures to options, is easy, but they are usually traded on the same desk. Same w/ most types of Fixed income, and equities as a whole. Moving from equities to Fixed Income and vice-versa... that's a tough transition.

 

I heard the same thing a nine years ago when i graduated college. Market-making is becoming more exchange-based and less OTC which makes it less profitable for dealers but algorithmic trading really has very little to do with it. On the buyside there are still very few "quant PM" jobs relative to discretionary PMs and that spread widened signifigantly in 2008 when most of the quant funds including supposedly "brilliant" quants like global alpha and AQR got destroyed. The fact that most kids on boards like this seem to think that quant funds are the best place to be makes me more confident that discretionary trading will be around for a long time to come.

 

any thoughts?

Don´t say this in a banking interview: Which superhero would you be and why? I want to be like Robin Hood, stealing from the rich and giving to the poor - me.
 

I do AI and Machine Learning on a daily basis and am obsessed with the space. This question gets asked a lot so briefly:

Sell-side AM/PWN - No chance of survival robots are smarter cheap and scale better. Retail flows will die out leaving only HNW flows which will only survive based on the strength of the client-manager relationships. Quant HF and Prop - Already the smartest people in room. The use of AI/ML is very interesting because there are deep limitations to what we can do just with technology. These guys use human abilities in conjunction with robot abilities (like centaur in chess) and produce some really cool strategies. No reduction in force anytime soon, but consolidation is possible (already happening in Prop space). Sell-side S&T - Reductions have already happened. Anything vanilla is robot. Anything more complex will not be. Should be the case for a while to come. Sell-side IB - Reduction in number of lawyers needed because legal AI is a thing. There's an unrelated reduction in # of bankers due to a general decline in IPOs but otherwise no reduction.

 

lol despite the automation of equity trading, BB desks are still littered with Cash Equity Traders and this process has been going on for awhile.

So with bonds, even though it could happen, the process would be even more lathargic, especially due to the customizable nature of bonds. You cant exactly customize 100 shares of Citi, but you can certainly customize convertible bonds with C as the underlying

 

The comment on that article were ridiculous. Some were saying that socialism is the obvious result of this because without the workers who will buy the products. Take the money from the people who own the robots and give it to the people. As far as I can tell, the more production there is, the better everyone lives will be. No one is going to make a product that no one can afford.

This trend taken to hyperbole, would leave us all artist and philosophers with an abundance of goods. Doesn't seem too bad to me.

 

great for the best of society who realize all the gains, sucks for the losers right up until the revolt that derails these utopian dreams with a heavy dose of reality

 

Meh. Depends whether you believe management, or whoever is profiting from this technology, actually redistributes capital in an equitable way. On average probably makes everything better, but more heavily weighted towards helping the already wealthy so not ideal imo. On a sidenote, fuck the Amazon drones

 

Technological unemployment is a very real threat to the median standard of living. Anyone who thinks otherwise is suffering from hindsight bias. Cognitive computing is on a completely different level than the invention of the steam engine.

The issue boils down to labor vs. capital. Those with capital will continue to do well, but at the expense of creating a larger and larger underclass.

If your looking for feedback...I think that your quote is naive and incredibly short-sighted.

Please don't quote Patrick Bateman.
 

One of the economic arguments that I usually see come up is that in using machines you also have the jobs created to make, monitor, work, and keep up the machines. While this is true, you have to compare how many are displaced to how many are newly employed. There's also that flip-side of economies becoming more service oriented...

 

Yes, but what about the money people save by buying cheaper products. That's money that can't be spent on a different good, and service entirely. It doesn't just make jobs for the robot but also other places from the more business.

 

The flip side is the people making and monitoring complex systems are usually intelligent and skilled. This will further unemploy those with the highest birthrates and least ability to retrain and reskill.

It is inevitable, but lets no kid ourselves on this creating jobs to fill those lost.

 

Why would I be trolling? Robots are taking over the trading, AI is developing and much of the work that analysts do could be made by advanced robots/computers in the future. Don't you think so?

 

Maybe, but i say unlikely...just cause a lot of what bankers do depends on intuition, likeability, attitude, mojo and these intangible things robots don't have, BUT you just never know!

Do what you want not what you can!
 
bossman:
Maybe, but i say unlikely...just cause a lot of what bankers do depends on intuition, likeability, attitude, mojo and these intangible things robots don't have, BUT you just never know!

someone didn't see bicentennial man.

Man cannot remake himself without suffering, for he is both the marble and the sculptor. -Dr. Alexis Carrel
 

I'm not saying they would do everything, but they might do some of the things analysts do today. I guess there will be other things for the analysts to do if that happens.

 

Why would it be a stupid question? Don't you think there is a possibility that AI will perform some of the things investment banker do today? I'm not saying robots will walk around in the office, just that AI will do much of the work analysts do today. However, I don't hope it will happen in the near future.

 

The actual bankers job VP+....because everyone below that is a grunt. Your question implies that in 30 years we will have robots to completely simulate human business interaction.....Do you now see why people are saying this is a stupid question? Analysts jobs may be done with robots in a few hundred years... but 30 years... Do you know how soon 30 years is?

The answer to your question is 1) network 2) get involved 3) beef up your resume 4) repeat -happypantsmcgee WSO is not your personal search function.
 

NO. I give in, assuming your serious...A lot of our work has to be specifically catered to the individual we are preparing it for; we must use our best judgement/ intuition like was said above. Not every slide you put together is perfectly sketched out for you, and even then, there is some room for some creativity/ adjustments/ autonomy. Modeling, is a very small aspect of the every day job. What about when you need to read a company's bi-laws, speak to the CFO, etc to understand a complex company's capital structure, payout of warrants/ rights/ options to build an allocation model after a company is acquired? It's not like analysts sit around all day plugging in diff growth rates their MDs give them into DCF models. What about when an analyst takes a crack at a positioning section? Drafting an S-1 - is a robot going to notice the comma inconsistency on page 7 of the box and page 39 of the MD&A? What about drafting CIMs and teasers? Yes there are templates and info is re-purposed, but there is definitely autonomy given to analysts depending on group and size of bank. Mgmt presentations, etc. Do you want me to keep going?

 

I already spent enough of my life responding to you; I am done with this thread after this. Your answer has been answered 10+ times and the truth is nobody is going to give an answer to satisfy you. The answer is no, period, done, end of story. Who the fuck is going to carry 20 org books across the country - a fucking robot? and honestly, who cares? your prob. in college, nothing is going to change by the time you graduate. Do you want to work in banking? If so, forget about this robot bullshit, and focus on your technicals/ story/ networking.

 

From what I can tell as of now, AI will simply make front office analysts more efficient and able to produce more work than before. The hours will still be long and the work intense but it will be less monotonous and you will get results quicker. There will always be a need for analysts, it's just that they'll be more efficient. With a steady deal flow you can do the math and realize that less analysts will be needed as that efficiency skyrockets, but that's going to be a long time from now and by then we'll all be higher up.

 

I have been thinking about the same thing.

First thing to go will be factory/redundant manual labor jobs. These jobs will be/have been replaced with machine maintenance/ technician jobs to keep the machines at working The thing is many jobs are not cut and dry like creating a product, there are many grey areas that humans are able to figure out/ learn that a machine can't/ will be restricted to not do.

A great model to look at is self driving cars. Self driving cars could be a game changer, but there are a lot of "speed bumps" in the way First thing is the "human" grey areas of driving. i.e.cutting into a lane when no one is letting you in, obstructions, finding parking, speeding when you can, etc.

The self driving car will be forced to drive under the speed limit, follow all traffic laws, as well as driving as safe as possible to the point where it could exponentially increase travel time.

The issue here is legal liability, the lawyers will be chomping at the bit to sue whoever programmed the car when it hits something (and it will), this is what will cause a lot restrictions on the AI.

Another issue is the car will be programmed to kill you (not in the creep matrix way). For example, if the car is going to crash into a bunch of pedestrians but could avoid it by swerving and wrapping around a pole, you are going into a pole.

One thing in the cars favor is insurance. If they can get the car from point A to point B without hitting anything statistically less than a human, insurance companies will jump on the opportunity to lower rates for an AI.

The other huge issue is hacking. Say insurance premiums forced shipping companies to go completely AI. Whats stopping hackers from putting the car in park, put it on blocks, and strip it down to the very nails holding it together?

Another issue is GPS accuracy and other malfunctions,...

In conclusion, there are many grey areas of life that AI just cannot replicate. The more grey area a job has the safer it will be.

Some that are pretty "black and white" and at risk: -Digital Research Roles, the "CTRL-F" will easily outpace the humans ability to find those words. The same can be said for a QUERY search.

-driving to an extent, Long trips that give a large window for the self driving car to get their at speed limit

  • mass production

  • This may be a surprise to you but some creative jobs are not safe. Whether you know it or not, you have probably read an article written by a machine.

some example: CBS Fantasy sports gives a weekly AI generated "update" that inserts the data such as scores and players.

hudl- hudl is the program where football coaches such as my self upload film (recording of the game), cut it up play by play, and then proceed to input various data points i.e. down and distance, gain or loss on the play, type of play, playcall, etc. Every week hudl automatically produces an algorithm created highlight reel using the data entered! It then uses a query function and is able to do it league wide!

 

1) There are very few (if any) jobs immune to automation. The only field that might be, frankly, is the arts, to the extent that people care about reading/listening/viewing art made by other people and not robots.

2) Bad, inasmuch as people will have nothing to do and no way of earning money. If automation continues as many suspect, virtually everyone will be on welfare or forced to rely on UBI.

Interestingly, Marx anticipated that capitalism would ultimately fail as it became too efficient at producing, driving profits to zero. I believe we are fast approaching that hyper-efficient singularity.

 

Both low skilled and high skilled jobs will be impacted, with the impact to low skilled being far greater. For example, I see commercial drivers becoming obsolete within 5 years. On the upper end, for example, there are data scientist' whose job is to automate other data scientist'.

In regards to is it good or bad, that is a tough call. It will benefit society in many ways but it will also increase inequality at a very rapid rate.

Robots will need to audited for accuracy by humans. This industry does not technically exist yet, but with increased automation on everything, I would logically agree with the authors of "Big Data" that legislature will be soon to follow.

Tangent, translation has arguable already surpassed human ability.

 

Here is a really good article, written a long time ago about this subject: http://www.laphamsquarterly.org/future/buying-tommorow

"Finance has given the future over to mathematics and supercomputers, which, like any other prosthetic god, bring with them the temptations of both recklessness and complacency. Our technologies belong to us; we create them, and they amplify our abilities and our reach, yet we exhibit a strange eagerness to relinquish our dominion over them, endowing them with a monstrous authority that demands our accommodation and surrender. We have made a fetish out of finance, against which proper regulation gets derided as the comedy of mere mortals—not just difficult but absurd."

 
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