Désirs humains et désir des machines : l’exemple de la gestion d’actifs

Scientific research in the financial industry has generated an external reflection about itself, in the practical everyday lives of financial practitioners, taking the appearance of a range of technical devices, standards and regulations, and computer-based management tools. These new developments have reshaped the culture of practitioners, leading them to modify their actual experience of risk according to new rules driven by technical innovation. This change can be described as a form of life, a concept derived from pragmatist philosophy. In this article, we look at the changes that the machinery of finance has brought to the lifestyles of practitioners, using the example of asset management, where the CAPM model is everywhere. We show how CAPM tools have revolutionised the risk culture of portfolio managers, a revolution that has been strengthened by artificial intelligence. We then argue that the technical content of CAPM should be interpreted as a script defining roles, leading to a theatrical enactment of management. The new form of life that develops from this theatricality raises the question of the autonomy of the manager's own desire in relation to the desire of the machine whose design is expressed by the algorithms.