International Business Times and Newsweek are all set to host an Artificial Intelligence and Data Science in Capital Markets event at the Barbican Centre in London this week. The financial technology conference, which is taking place in association with Imperial College London, will be a two-day event starting on Wednesday.
The event will be attended by a global audience of data scientists from banks, hedge funds and fintech startup companies who will discuss the role and possibilities of AI and machine learning technology in financial markets. The conference will also mark the launch of Newsweek Events, a global events business aimed at exploring vital issues facing businesses and consumers across the globe. IBT Media, the parent company of Newsweek and International Business Times, announced the new events business earlier this month.
Speakers at the upcoming Artificial Intelligence and Data Science in Capital Markets event include Afsheen Afshar, Chief Data Science Officer at JPMorgan Chase & Co; Andrei Kirilenko, Director, Centre for Global Finance & Technology, Imperial College Business School; and Gideon Mann, Head of Data Science, Bloomberg.
Day one of the event will explore ways how market participants can use new and interesting data sets, taken from satellites, internet of things connectivity and financial exchange, and transform them into valuable trades generating record-breaking returns.
The second day of the event will focus on information aggregation, risk and portfolio management, and how machine learning can help revolutionise the existing data science infrastructure tools. It will also look at how global financial regulators are incorporating new technologies.
"We are in the midst of an information revolution, where advances in science and technology, as well as the day-to-day operation of successful organisations and businesses, are increasingly reliant on the analyses of data," Steve Roberts, director of the Oxford-Man Institute and professor of Information Engineering, University of Oxford, said in a statement.
"Driving these advances is a deluge of data, which is outstripping the increase in computational power available to process it. Research in data science is already transforming our ability to work with large amounts of complex financial information," Roberts added.
There is a growing consensus that AI and machine learning will have a significant impact on capital markets over the next few years. Experts, therefore, believe that a controlled and well-developed process is required to avoid disastrous outcomes that could be triggered by flawed algorithms.
According to the organisers, this week's event will be aimed at creating awareness about new technologies and developing the right framework for the use of AI in capital markets.
"The world is changing: big data, streaming data, open data, high frequency data, and administrative data are just some of the creatures inhabiting this new world of data," David Hand, Chief Scientific Advisor at Winton Capital Management, said in a statement. "Keeping up with this evolution is critical if we are not to fall behind in our understanding of the world," he added.
