When the head of the Bloomberg terminals talks about his work in 2024, it seems that he has in mind the distant past, this is the pace of changes that are the change Generative artificial intelligence (Genai) attracted to his role.
Wayne Barlow He is the head of terminal products in the giant of the financial data of Bloomberg, the role that sees him to take responsibility for the interface that provides his customers in the global financial sector, which they need at hand.
The terminal provides subscribers, of which it has more than 350,000 all over the world – with access to all financial data and Bloomberg analytics, its message exchange systems, such as e -mail and a chat of instant messages, as well as a number of productivity tools.
Terminal users can also access Bloomberg News, third -party news, as well as structured and unstructured financial data from content, such as corporate financial results.
“I am responsible for the interface that gives them all this,” says Barlow. “The terminal software is similar to the Internet, and many pages can turn to information, with the ability to configure it for their own needs with things such as observation lists.”
Barlow was in Bloomberg for almost 20 years. He spent most of this time in the engineering department, creating software before managing business and products, as today.
He joined Bloomberg in 2006 from US Investment Bank Bear Stearns, where he worked for six years.
Barlow's technical powers are returning to his first work after the university in “several forgotten Digital equipment corporation (Dec)He tells Computer Weekly, agreeing that he is a “right technician.”
Explosion genes
Today, Barlow applies his technological experience for using generative artificial intelligence (Genai), which raised the potential of AI for business to a new level.
According to Barlow, Bloomberg began to use machine learning about 16 years ago, when he applied technology to process news articles to provide customers with targeted information. Since then, Bloomberg has been applying AI to his software, where he believes that he can provide users with the best experience.
Today, Denai “raised the possibilities,” says Barlow. “The things that we felt were impossible before, now.”
• Read more about the strategy of AI Bloomberg in this Interview with Amanda Stent, Bloomberg head of the strategy and research of AIField
It was about three years ago, when a team of researchers and the director of technology (CTO) in Bloomberg published an article after creating its own Big Language Model (LLM) “To get deep experience in technology.”
“This allowed us to think about how we are going to apply [GenAI] On our product line, ”says Barlow.
His first set of Genai products was focused on “individual documents”. For example, in January 2024, the company released its first external Genai product, a tool for summing up the call transcript. Barlow says that later a number of subsequent observations appeared, and all of them were focused on separate documents.
Genai also summarizes news articles. “For what, libs are longer than a certain number of words, we give [users] A quick resume, and if they are really interested, they can read a full story, ”he says.
Bloomberg simultaneously worked on the methods of applying Genai to several documents.
“We know that customers have very low tolerance for errors, so we want to make sure that we can give them very accurate summation according to several documents, and we will explore different ways to do this, for example, a tight Vector search systems– says Barlow.
These systems can use statistical models to understand related words. For example, if you are looking for AI, he will also understand that he should look for links to machine learning.
It was a state of art at the beginning of 2024, when people looked at these databases, Barlow says Computer Weekly.
“I went to Virginia Tech, expecting to become a mechanical engineer. My room was a computer scientist. I helped him and others with their Fortran programming tasks and realized that programming was where my abilities and interest were. Instead of studying mechanical engineering, I received a computer engineering degree “
Wayne Barlow, Bloomberg
He says that Bloomberg worked closely with clients about projects regarding many -domain opportunities. “With a development with several documents, we worked in a very close partnership with our clients. We went out and received reviews, and we made sure that we had performance, but this happened is a really great change in Agent AI.
One BARLOW project project is currently operating at the stage of the late beta version, will allow customers to ask questions specific to Genai, and not a simple semantic search system or an index system with synonyms.
“This is an agent system that will come out and try to find all the documents in all these different collections that best answer the question and then give a short presentation,” he says.
The pace of change not observed from mobile
Barlow cannot recall the time when the pace of changes was just as fast, although he says that the arrival of the network, smartphones and everything that came with them was a similar way of significant explosions.
“I'm not sure that something was at the pace of AI today,” he says. “I think this has changed this is that there is a lot of competition between suppliers. There is enough competition, but not too much, so you see many suppliers of these LLMS, and they will jump with each other. ”
Barlow says that there are not only expectations around the software and LLMS themselves, but also equipment that controls this opportunity with achievements in the field of chips and graphics.
He adds that everyone makes bets that the technology becomes cheaper. “When I speak cheaper, I don’t necessarily mean just the amounts in dollars – I also mean the use of energy.”
The career of Barlow could be two if he had another neighbor at the university. “I went to Virginia Tech, expecting to become a mechanical engineer. My room was a computer scientist. I helped him and others with their Fortran programming tasks and realized that programming was where my abilities and interest were.
Barlow also took an internship in the military research laboratory in Washington, the district of Colombia, where he worked in Virginia, where he worked on infrared modeling of missiles. He says that it “sounds more fun than it really was.”
