Hong Kong-based venture-capital firm Deep Knowledge Ventures has promoted an algorithm to its board of directors, allowing the software to help make important decisions on the firm’s future. By gathering and analysing data, the system – licensed from UK company Aging Analytics and named Vital – will identify trends and subsequently make recommendations on potential investment opportunities to human board members.
Deep Knowledge Ventures, which finances firms that develop drugs for age-related diseases, says that Vital will be responsible for sifting through a huge variety of data types and strategies – from financials and clinical trials to intellectual property matters.
The development has done little to halt some extreme opinions that computers will one day control all of the business world, but there are plenty of questions to be answered.
What will board meetings look like?
Will the software receive company benefits?
Tea with milk and sugar, or without?
While tech writers and industry experts monitor the situation with interest (some merely for amusement), a leading UK academic has dismissed claims that Vital’s seat on the board will be a game changer for the role of software in business. “On first sight, it looks like a futuristic idea but on reflection it is really a little bit of publicity hype,” said Professor Noel Sharkey of the University of Sheffield. “A lot of companies use large data search to access what is happening on the market, then the board or trusted workers can decide on the advice.
He added: “With financial markets, algorithms are delegated with decisions. The idea of the algorithm voting is a gimmick. It is not different from the algorithm making a suggestion and the board voting on it.”
Deep Knowledge Ventures spokesman Charles Groome told Business Insider that Vital has already approved two investment decisions, relating to companies In Silico Medicine and Pathway Pharmaceuticals. Both firms function as computer-assistance developers who create algorithms tasked with dreaming up new drugs.
Groome’s colleague, senior partner Dmitry Kaminsky, said: “The prospect for utilising this approach in portfolio management is very attractive. We were attracted to a software tool that could in large part automate due diligence and use historical data sets to uncover trends that are not immediately obvious to humans that are surveying top-line data.”
“It’s not what you’d call AI at this stage,” Groome added, but that is the long-term goal.” While the system has made those initial investment approvals, it has not, as yet, cast its first official vote.
In common with Sharkey, most tech writers have greeted the algorithm’s promotion as something of a publicity stunt. That would certainly square with Deep Knowledge’s involvement in science-fictiony startups working on life extension and similar, cutting-edge biotech research. Speaking separately to online science journal Betabeat, Kaminskiy confirmed the company would incorporate the software into all of its meetings.
“On the meetings, investors will firstly discuss the analytical reviews made by Vital. All the decisions on investing will be made strictly after Vital provides its data. We say that Vital has been acknowledged as an equal member of the board of directors, because its opinion (actually, the analysis) will be considered as probably the most important one. So basically yes, it will be incorporated into meetings.”
However, when asked whether board meetings would feature a “bunch of humans plus one computer sitting around a table”, Kaminskiy candidly responded: “No, don’t take it literally.”