This sort of can’t last though right? The whole advantage in a hedge fund is being on the opposite side of a trend. If everyone is using AI, those returns must start to diminish quickly.
I think at the hedge funds, AI will play out similar to how quant has in the past, i.e. as a technology that will still have alphas unlockable by good usage.
High-performing funds may "beat the market" at models, data, fine-tuning, RAG or even figuring out which AI tool should be deployed for which tasks.
Interesting parallel, but as it is packaged today - "AI" looks much lighter on technical customization than quant.
What can you really meaningfully change on the large models today? a bit of RAG, some prompting - sure. But that sounds like a much lighter lift compared to the tasks done by large teams of top-tier CS grads in older quants firms.