Quants use AI to cut through murk of ‘sustainability’

Separating the wheat from the chaff is fundamental to ESG investing. Machine learning can do that

Can artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms help firms to invest more ethically? A group of quants are convinced of it.

Investing in companies aligned with one’s ethics – known as ESG for environmental, social and governance – has become a hot area, especially in trying to lure in ‘woke’ millennials. But the field is knotted in dilemmas: corporate facades of piety, gaming of the ESG label, wildly disparate scoring methods and data that is disheveled at best, nonexistent at worst.

“Historically