My Life With AI—Part II: The Search For The Holy Grail

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If you stumbled upon this without reading Part I first, you can read it here.

I always had a certain curiosity (there’s that word again) with the idea of artificial intelligence. You can’t blame science fiction for this. It was simply the challenge. Artificial intelligence represents the Holy Grail of mathematics. It’s not simply ramming a bunch of formulas through faster and faster processors. It’s going a step beyond. It’s giving the computer a basic set of instructions, then allowing it to begin programming itself by building on top of that foundation.

Naturally, I monitored the subject. This is one reason I knew about the Boston-based investment adviser BatteryMarch, although, technically, it wasn’t artificial intelligence; it was just another example of brute force processing. For the inside dope on AI, I didn’t rely on the Wall Street Journal or even the data processing trade press. No, I paid attention to Continue Reading “My Life With AI—Part II: The Search For The Holy Grail”

Trump, Truth, and Confirmation Bias

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rorschach-fantasy-1617886_660x395I’ve been retired from active politics for more than two decades. In that time, I’ve focused on my primary business – picking winning stocks and avoiding losing stocks. It’s almost impossible to bat a thousand doing this, but I believe (and hope I’ve demonstrated) there’s a way to increase your odds.

Shortly after I left the political realm, I began in earnest to take on the financial industry establishment. (Truth be told, as readers of my initial run as publisher of The Sentinel know, I actually started this years before.) As a new firm, I had to find a position that differentiated our services from our competitors. Taking on the establishment wasn’t a rebel yell, it was a marketing imperative. Quite simply, no new business can survive if it Continue Reading “Trump, Truth, and Confirmation Bias”

Can America Compete? (Part II)

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[This Commentary originally appeared in the September 21, 1989 issue of The Mendon-Honeoye Falls-Lima Sentinel.]

Part Two – A Living Example of the Risk-Return Tradeoff

This is the second of two commentaries aimed at exploring a novel approach to determining our nations’ true standing in the world economy. Last week we looked at the risk-return tradeoff, the idea that risky investments are more likely to have higher returns (and larger losses) than safer investments.

CarosaCommentaryNewLogo_259Earlier this year, a Siberian valley explodes suddenly. The cause – a leaky gas pipeline. Low safety standards lead to a faulty job. People die. Property is destroyed.

You read about it all the time. Not-so-old bridges collapse, sending trainloads of passengers plummeting to an early demise. Third World ferries, overloaded with holiday travelers, capsize again and again. Athens and Frankfurt sport airports which appear to openly invite terrorists.

Across the globe, we see examples of why we are happy to be Americans. Not only do Continue Reading “Can America Compete? (Part II)”

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