AI Makes the Impossible Possible: The Original Recording

0:00Now that AI makes doing the ordinary easy, what will software engineers actually do?

0:06Like are there going to be future jobs for engineers or is AI going to take all of them?

0:13And I want to answer this with a concrete example.

0:16Before the days of AI, I created a backtesting system that could backtest stocks only on

0:23open, high, low, closed data.

0:26But because of AI, I was able to implement a backtesting system that works on minute-by-minute

0:33historical options data.

0:36And the inputs to those strategies isn't just technical indicators like in the first version.

0:41It's also fundamental indicators, economic indicators, alternative data sources like

0:46Nancy Pelosi's public files or Dan Sullivan's public filings, and even sentiment from news.

0:53You can use how the headlines are, how positive or negative the headlines are, as inputs to

1:00your trading strategy.

1:02For the sentiment feature alone, it requires downloading two terabytes of data, taking

1:11each headline from the data set and ranking, is this headline good or bad?

1:17Is it about a particular stock or is it about a particular industry like artificial intelligence

1:23or biotechnology?

1:25I had to do that for two terabytes of data.

1:29It's not that I wouldn't want to do it without AI.

1:33It's the fact I can't.

1:36I don't have enough hours in the day.

1:38I barely have enough hours in the day to do it with AI.

1:41But I don't have a small team.

1:42I don't have millions or tens of millions of dollars.

1:46I'm just me, but I could build software by myself.

1:52So yes, AI is going to be used to create slop that no one wants.

1:56But AI is also going to be used to create software that would have never existed because

2:02of how high the cost to build was.