The founder of Bridge Water Fund talks about decision-making in the AI era: principled thinking should be parallel to AI and human insights are still irreplaceable

Ray Dalio, founder of Bridgewater Associates, recently published a long article sharing his thoughts on the investment decision-making system in the AI era and emphasizing that human insights still have irreplaceable value in financial markets.<br /> Dalio believes that investment is essentially a competitive environment with "close to zero-sum value-added". When a certain piece of information is widely recognized, its investment value often drops rapidly. Therefore, even the most advanced AI systems are not enough for investors to completely rely on or blindly follow. What truly has a competitive advantage is still unique human understanding and in-depth insight.<br /> Based on Bridge Water's development experience over the past 50 years, Dalio proposed that decision-making should be based on a system of principles with clear logic, understandable and verifiable. He said that the so-called principled thinking does not rely on intuition or empirical judgment, but systematizes decision-making standards, records the core principles by analyzing situations and causal relationships, and uses historical data to verify them as much as possible, and ultimately transforms them into a computable and automatically executable decision-making system.<br /> He also pointed out that the formation of principles cannot rely solely on data mining or directly asking questions to AI, but needs to be based on logical deduction and understanding of the operating laws of the real world.<br /> Dalio described this process as a "collaborative game" between humans and AI. Under this model, AI gives systematic suggestions based on established principles, while humans think independently based on their own principle framework. The two sides continuously optimize the decision-making system through comparison, discussion, and verification of logic.<br /> He believes that truly valuable principles should be able to withstand testing across time and regions, in different historical cycles and different market environments. If a certain principle fails, the causal relationship behind it needs to be re-studied and revised continuously.<br /> Dalio said that he has applied this method to his family office to make full use of the new generation of AI technology and plans to continue to share relevant methodologies with the outside world. He also reminded market participants that as AI technology continues to develop, whether it can effectively combine artificial intelligence with principled thinking may become an important watershed in future competitiveness.