In this episode, Ned chats with Alexander Fleiss, CEO of Rebellion Research about most things AI and financial planning as well as other fun topics like food trucks and NASA astronauts having a fear of heights. Speaking of Rebellion Research’s beginnings, Alexander tells us that his friend, Judea Pearl, whose work on machine learning in 1991 had largely inspired Rebellion’s original deep learning system. The company also integrated a facial recognition deep learner that was meant for a dating app into their stock prediction system. Rebellion was the first pure AI hedge fund on Wall Street almost 15 years ago, and the only machine learning economic predictor that forecasted the global financial crisis in 2008. As such, economic predictions remain the heart of their portfolios. In the last year, Alexander and his team has been developing an app that would combine their robo-advisory offerings with their research on machine learning and other educational aspects. Rebellion often produces research topics ranging from flying cars to drones, as they follow technologies and events as the world turns. Since 1996, Rebellion’s machine learning has found that the investment alpha has been driven by aspects such as global macroeconomics, fundamentals, value, momentum, and growth. Speaking about gamifying the investment sector, Alexander believes that as markets become more gamified, people won’t be as anxious, but rather more prepared to face the crisis. Looking at history, Alexander believes that America’s domestic spending pattern is heading towards a post-market surrealist timeline, mirroring what the Roman Empire had experienced around 200 AD.