While algorithms have historically dictated the actions of data and computers, artificial intelligence has flipped that on its head, according to Gurvir Grewel, U.S. specialist in global equity at William Blair, during a session at the Canadian Investment Review’s 2025 Global Investment Conference.
Data through the internet and everything that’s being collected are now dictating the algorithms, he noted, which has led to a fundamentally different way of computing. “In the new paradigm, these algorithms are called AI and it’s probabilistic.”
The strengths of the new paradigm, he said, include the vast amount of data that can be put into these algorithms and the ability to capture the complexity of the world that’s fed through this data “[AI] allows us to inherently address and use the complexity that we all face in our daily lives.”
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The ability to capture the complexity of the real world and to make decisions for economic activity is no longer a monopoly of the human mind alone, said Grewel, but how will this impact investors?
“So much of what we do is about pattern recognition,” he noted, adding the edge for humans is the ability to speak to a chief executive officer, ask questions and probe them, but eventually the algorithm will ingest all of the news and be able to speak to a CEO via a video.
In addition, AI will improve and become cheaper, he said. “If you want to employ it internally, there’s this natural spectrum of capabilities within the people that are employed in any organization. AI can leverage to the very best . . . and it’s going to be absorbed far, far more than any individual mind can.”
However, one of the challenges for investors is that AI is a general purpose technology, said Grewel, using electricity as a similar example. “The general purpose nature of electricity is also why it’s valuable, because of all of the things around it. . . . This is the problem with AI. We need to build a lot of the things around it to make it useful.”
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The drive to invest in AI is the competitive advantage, he said, noting the decision not to invest can equate to a loss in market share and lower returns, as well as being late to a competitive investment. “If you have weak competitive advantage and you decide to invest in AI, which a lot of businesses will ultimately do, you create a new product or you improve efficiency. But if you create a new product, you’re most likely going to maintain market share at lower returns or there’s no change in your margin structure because the efficiency is passed over to your consumer. And this is the nature of investing in technology all the time.”
A lot of companies will be forced to invest even though they might not be able to show a financial return for it, said Grewel, adding there’s an inherent asymmetry with technological change. “Historically, it’s always been easier to understand the losers than to pick the winners.”
Finally, he described the private versus public markets asymmetry, noting a lot of companies that are trying to build the products to complement AI are staying private for longer. “They’re going to capture a lot of the value before they become public. So as public equity investors, we have to be very precise with how we express our views of how best to invest in AI.”
Read more coverage of the 2025 Global Investment Conference.