Yet at the same time, the brain cannot compete with the computer in many ways. Computers have much greater “determination” than any person, as they will work 24/7 for you. They can process vastly more information, and they can do it much faster, more reliably, and more objectively than you could ever hope to. They can bring millions of possibilities that you never thought of to your attention. Perhaps most important of all, they are immune to the biases and consensus-driven thinking of crowds; they don’t care if what they see is unpopular, and they never panic. During those terrible days after 9/11, when the whole country was being whipsawed by emotion, or the weeks between September 19 and October 10, 2008, when the Dow fell 3,600 points, there were times I felt like hugging our computers. They kept their cool no matter what.

This combination of man and machine is wonderful. The process of man’s mind working with technology is what elevates us—it’s what has taken us from an economy where most people dig in the dirt to today’s Information Age. It’s for that reason that people who have common sense, imagination, and determination, who know what they value and what they want, and who also use computers, math, and game theory, are the best decision makers there are. At Bridgewater, we use our systems much as a driver uses a GPS in a car: not to substitute for our navigational abilities but to supplement them.
Be cautious about trusting AI without having deep understanding.

I worry about the dangers of AI in cases where users accept—or, worse, act upon—the cause-effect relationships presumed in algorithms produced by machine learning without understanding them deeply.
