Curious if AI is playing any role.

Some hypotheses that comes to my mind:

1. A well funded player has built a statistical model of the statistical models of some hedge funds.

2. Industrial espionage.

3. Tools back-doored by developers (as seen in "Office Space").

4. Reversion to the mean (positive results of the model were largely randomness combined with a small sample size).

It's worth noting that many nation-states would have incentive and resources for hypotheses one and two.

My answer --- quantitative analysis is pseudo-scientific BS based on one big flawed assumption --- that statistics can be used to logically predict markets.

Sound familiar?

Apply similar techniques on a broader, more generalized scale and you get AI.

More precisely, the assumption is that past indicators can predict future outcomes. Stats are just the vehicle to execute on that assumption