[davidw]

> the programming challenges available in large investment banks

Agreed - they have some interesting technical challenges.

> "I wonder if we can do image recognition on spy satellite photos to count cars in parking lots to get an estimate of traffic to a retailer before they publish their quarterlies"

That, however, feels, at first glance, a bit zero-sum. Is that investment making the world better in some way?

Not that I think anything should get in the way of them doing stuff like that, but it feels a bit hollow in the grand scheme of things.

[ovi256]

Better evaluation and pricing of equity leads to better allocation of capital, which leads to value creation, which is not zero sum.

Now, if the the better-pricers manage to capture all the value they create, that is another question. But even then, they'll have to spend it sometime. A yacht builder is paid, and so on.