Legendary billionaire investor Howard Marks, cofounder and cochairman of Oaktree Capital Management, has spent decades navigating financial manias, sea changes in interest rates, and the shifting pendulums of investor psychology. But his latest encounter with artificial intelligence left him experiencing a profound level of awe—and a deep existential realization about his own storied career.
When Marks prepared a memo on whether AI was a financial bubble late last year, he viewed the technology with a healthy dose of skepticism. Like many, he initially assumed AI models were little more than glorified search engines, capable of retrieving and regurgitating data without true comprehension. He wondered whether AI could actually break genuinely new ground, or if it was merely restricted to statistically recombining the thoughts of humans. And so, as he explained in a follow-up note to clients on Feb. 26, he talked to “some interesting techies in their thirties and forties.” One of them suggested he ask Claude.
