AI Reshapes Productivity: How Can Finance Serve the Next Decade?

“If you could buy only one thing today, what would you buy?”

On September 19, at the alumni roundtable forum of the 25th anniversary celebration of the Master of Finance program at Peking University's Guanghua School of Management, the moderator posed this question. Although there is no standard answer to the conversation, as artificial intelligence begins to become a productive force, “What should people do? Where should money flow?” has become a question for everyone. Around this theme, people from different industries held in-depth discussions on industry opportunities and asset management under AI transformation.

Artificial intelligence is the productive force itself

“Artificial intelligence, or large models, is the productive force itself,” said Xue Zizhao, a 2015 alumnus and industry representative in the field of artificial intelligence. Unlike the internet, which solves information connectivity, AI is becoming a factor of production across all industries. A new picture is unfolding: everyone has a 24-hour online “external brain” that can integrate professional knowledge from various fields. Benefiting from this “external brain,” an individual's talents are infinitely amplified.

Xue Zizhao gave an example: in the past, when a company's product manager turned an idea into a product prototype, it required a lengthy chain of communication; now, with AI, product managers can directly generate a demonstrable Demo, directly and efficiently bringing individual talent into play. Likewise, an organization or industry that is the first to embrace AI will clearly become more competitive.

“For students leaving campus and entering society, they need to exercise their ability to make fuzzy decisions when the direction is roughly correct and their ability to iterate quickly. Emerging industries often have incomplete information and a fast pace of development; at this time, what matters most is not rigorous reasoning and verification under complete information, but the decisiveness to tolerate ambiguity and the execution ability to iterate quickly,” Xue Zizhao emphasized.

Investment capability becomes a scarce resource

As AI reshapes productivity, how should finance allocate resources to serve the next decade? Yang Delong, a 2004 alumnus and chief economist at Qianhai Open Source Fund, and Li Bei, a 2005 alumna and founder of Banxia Investment, focused on the asset management industry.

Li Bei believes that in recent years, with falling interest rates, China has transformed from a capital-scarce economy into a capital-abundant economy. This means that financing capability used to be scarce, but now investment capability is what is scarce. At present, the concentration of the active management industry is low, and it is still in its infancy, “in a state of primitive chaos,” full of opportunities for newcomers. Looking ahead to the next decade, she is optimistic about the private equity investment industry; nothing is fixed, and anything is possible.

Yang Delong judged that “at present, more than 60% of Chinese households' family assets are still allocated to real estate, but the golden age of the property market has ended. The future should be the golden age of the stock market, and the transfer of household savings to the capital market is the general direction.”

Facing the AI wave, Yang Delong suggested that ordinary investors can gain exposure to technology company equity through the secondary market and share in the dividends of the technological revolution. It should be emphasized that ordinary investors should regard the stock market as a tool for asset allocation, not as a casino for speculation. “5-3-2” can serve as a reference for asset allocation, namely 50% in fixed-income assets, 30% in high-risk assets such as equity funds, and 20% in safe-haven assets such as gold and insurance, strictly controlling leverage and insisting on investing only spare money.

The Master of Finance program is a key master's program built by Peking University's Guanghua School of Management to adapt to and promote the development of China's financial market. In two years of full-time study, students are taught the frontier theories and quantitative analysis methods of modern finance, economics, and management, and are trained in the research ability to comprehensively apply professional knowledge to solve theoretical and practical problems, so that students not only understand the frontier development of the international financial industry but also can closely connect with Chinese practice, possess relatively strong research ability and innovative potential, and can adapt to work in financial regulatory departments, various financial institutions, and research institutions.

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