When AI Outperformed Financial Analysts – Alex Kim
Jul 9, 2024
auto_awesome
Researcher Alex Kim discusses groundbreaking study showing AI outperforms humans in financial analysis. Topics include AI accuracy, practical implications for finance pros, combining AI with human intelligence, and future research projects in AI and finance. Podcast also touches on Alex's background, self-taught coding skills, and the importance of staying updated on AI trends.
AI outperforms human financial analysts in predictive accuracy by 60%.
Combining AI and human intelligence enhances financial forecasting models.
Human analysts excel in predicting earnings for small, loss-making firms with high volatility.
Deep dives
Alex Kim Discusses Financial Statement Analysis using Large Language Models
Alex Kim, a PhD student at the University of Chicago, talks about his interest in using generative AI for financial analysis. He shares his educational journey and explains his fascination with information processing in accounting and finance. Kim highlights the intersection of accounting and finance, emphasizing the importance of understanding how people process information and how AI and machine learning support his research.
Testing the Boundaries of Large Language Models in Financial Decision Making
Kim delves into a study exploring the capabilities of large language models (LLMs) in financial statement analysis. The study investigates whether LLMs can perform quantitative and qualitative tasks in financial decision making. By passing financial statements to the model, the study evaluates the LLMs' ability to predict future earnings changes and compares their performance with human analysts and machine learning models.
Complementarity of LLMs and Human Analysts in Financial Analysis
The study reveals that LLMs can outperform human analysts in predicting the direction of future earnings changes on average. However, the research emphasizes the complementary nature of LLMs and human analysts' predictions, highlighting areas where human analysts excel, especially in predicting earnings of small, loss-making firms with high volatility.
Utilizing Large Language Models as Supporting Tools in Finance
Kim discusses the application of LLMs as supporting tools in routine financial tasks involving textual information processing. While LLMs excel in summarizing information and responding to queries, Kim underscores the importance of human intervention for interpreting and verifying the outputs of LLMs in practical financial applications.
Future Research and Collaboration in AI and Finance
Kim reflects on the evolving landscape of AI and finance research, emphasizing the need to generate causal evidence on the benefits and costs of AI technologies in decision-making processes. He shares insights on ongoing projects exploring information processing, technology utilization, and human-AI collaboration, hinting at potential surveys, experiments, and archival research as research methods.
In this episode Glenn Hopper talks to the researcher responsible for the groundbreaking study which found that AI is better at conducting financial analysis than humans. Alex Kim, University of Chicago Booth School of Business, provides a full overview of his findings, methodology and the impact on FP&A, CFOs and finance from the attention-grabbing study “Financial Statement Analysis with Large Language Models”. The analysis, which made headlines across the world, found AI produces a 60% rate of accuracy in predictive financial performance. Human experts’ accuracy tends to fall between 53% and 57%.
In this episode Alex Kim reveals the implications for finance professionals:
Alex’s finance background – from a Master’s degree in Business Administration to a Accounting and a dual Bachelor’s degree in Economics and Business Administration- to his doctoral and PHD career
How he self taught himself coding and AI
Practically how do finance pros take the insights from this paper and use them in their day to day?
Why the model didn’t do so well with loss-making or startup companies
Improving on the performance models using a startup company data
How can you combine AI and Human Intelligence
What humans can do better than AI in financial forecasting
Future research projects into information processing for investors
How to keep up to date on the latest ground breaking research in AI and Finance
My military experience stationed with US soldiers in South Korea
My favorite Excel feature ( and why one thing about Excel still cannot be rivaled).