Speaker: Vasant Dhar
Date: Monday, April 8, 2019
Time: 6:00pm to 7:30pm
Location: Davis Auditorium, CEPSR Building

Title: Artificial Intelligence and Data Science in modern financial decision making

Abstract: There’s a tremendous amount of interest in the use of machine learning in modern day financial decision making. Much of this interest is fueled by increasing amounts of available data and the general success of machine learning in other domains such as perception. I start by assessing the opportunities and key challenges for machine learning in exchange traded and OTC markets, and how finance problems are uniquely challenging. I describe the conditions in which we should trust automated decision making in these markets by breaking down trust into two key risk factors, namely, how often an automated decision system makes mistakes and the consequences of such mistakes. I use my model of trust to present results that show under what conditions we should trust autonomous learning systems with decision making.

Bio: Vasant Dhar is Professor, Stern School of Business and Center for Data Science at New York University. He is the director of NYU’s PhD program in Data Science. Dhar is also the founder of SCT Capital Management a , a machine-learning-based hedge fund in New York City.

Dhar’s central research question asks when we should trust AI machines that learn and make decisions autonomously based on ongoing data. His research has addressed this question in a number of areas, most notably, in financial markets. Dhar has authored over 100 research papers, as well as articles for publications such as the Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Wired, and the Harvard Business Review. He has appeared on CNBC, Bloomberg TV, and National Public Radio.