Ep. 42: Foresight, with WorldQuant Predictive’s James Golden

“We knew that some kind of pandemic has always been inevitable….What we didn't really predict was the magnitude of the impact, the stress on the healthcare system, shocks to markets and economies….How do we predict the new normal at speed and at scale?”Predicting the future isn’t what it used to be, especially with the inherent variables of a pandemic. For WorldQuant Predictive CEO James Golden, the current crisis means putting his company’s artificial intelligence, machine learning, and quantitative finance approaches to the test as never before.Everything today, it seems, is grist for his data mill: “EMR data, genomic data, sequencing data—all of those things are extremely valuable and tell us a lot about viral mutation, virulence, what happens with comorbidities. But there are other kinds of data: mobile phone data, transportation data, consumer signals, buying and demand curves….How do we think about creating actionable intelligence based on real data in the light of so many unknowns?”