I think the biggest job of the next generation, like this is what I would do if I was figuring

out what to study and train in, is predictor.

Like we've seen examples of this, we saw the movie Moneyball where they used data about

baseball players to predict which baseball teams would do the best.

I used to write algorithms for the stock market to use data to try to predict how stocks would act

and we're going to talk about that more today.

And people use data also now to analyze the genome to predict what diseases someone might have

and on and on. But the technology has gotten so good, so fast, I'm happy to talk with

the two authors of the book, The Age of Prediction, Christopher Mason and Igor Telchinski.

Now, Igor is interesting from the financial perspective.

He has a $7 billion hedge fund which analyzes millions of pieces of data around the world

to predict stocks. To predict simply what's going to happen with stocks tomorrow or an hour from now

or 10 seconds from now. And Christopher Mason uses data from the human genome to study what diseases

we can start curing, what sicknesses someone might have or what traits someone might grow up with.

So I want to know, what is the state of this industry? Like how much can we really predict?

How can we get better at it? What are the limitations? And then we just had a fun time while I

pitched different ideas. So here's Igor and Chris, authors of The Age of Prediction.

This isn't your average business podcast and he's not your average host. This is the James

Altiger show.

You know, Chris, I'm amazed at all the things you were able to discover about people by analyzing

their genetics. Yeah, basically it's a predictive algorithm that's in every cell. So you have bits of

DNA, RNA proteins and you leave these everywhere you go. So I think of the forensics chapter you're

...