I’m afraid I can’t invest in that, Dave: AI appointed to VC funding board

15 May 2014

A Hong Kong venture-capital investment company made quite a stir after it appointed an artificial intelligence (AI) program to its board of directors.

The group known as Deep Knowledge Ventures made the appointment after it decided it could use the software to better predict the most worthy financial investments, as well as help lead its research into biotechnology and regenerative medicine.

The program has the same status as other human members of the board.

The AI in question is called the ‘Validating Investment Tool for Advancing Life Sciences’, otherwise known as VITAL, according to Engadget.

Developed by Aging Analytics UK, the program uses a series of algorithms to predict which companies and technologies under development would be more likely to succeed and provide a return on investment

Speaking to BetaBeat, Deep Knowledge Ventures’ senior partner Dmitry Kaminski said VITAL will remove the possibility of human error in a number of cases.

“Humans are emotional and subjective. They can make mistakes, but unlike the machines they can make brilliant intuitive decisions. Machines like VITAL use only logic. The intuition of the human investors together with machine’s logic will give a perfect collaborative team. The risk of the mistake will be minimised.”

Business people with laptop image via Shutterstock

Colm Gorey was a senior journalist with Silicon Republic

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