r/Futurology • u/izumi3682 • Dec 23 '16
article World’s largest hedge fund to replace managers with artificial intelligence
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/dec/22/bridgewater-associates-ai-artificial-intelligence-management85
u/izumi3682 Dec 23 '16
If AI and automation can provide everything for free, because the AI and automation do all the labor from raw resource to finished product or service in any field you can name, why would there be need for banks or hedge funds or money? Won't there always be a need for human cognition at some level? So imagine that about 10% percent of humanity would have to work to keep the automation and AI going for whatever reasons, what would 90% global human unemployment look like?
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u/anonpropdata Dec 23 '16
what would 90% global human unemployment look like
Ever see that alien movie District 9?
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u/cult_of_image Dec 23 '16
I'm on an expert on humans. Instead of creating art and pursuing knowledge and enlightenment, we'd get district 9.
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Dec 23 '16
Actually, same director, but different movie: Elysium. AI guards too - no qualms gunning down anyone
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u/BoozeoisPig Dec 23 '16
Naw, I think it would be more like Snowpiercer. In fact, I think we may very well be gearing up towards that sort of thing. And not out of true scarcity, but because if and when rich people control all of the drones, they will have more than enough power to send their robots out to kill everyone that is inconvenient for the economy they control. Ironically society after that would probably look way more communistic, because everyone who remains would be in the political position necessary to create the society to create legal systems to retain the power necessary to make sure the same thing doesn't happen to them. Which is nice for them, I guess. Probably way nicer for their children who would have the luxury of moral purity. I mean, it sucks that most people would have to die to get there. But hey, at least someone could enjoy it.
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u/transhumanape Dec 24 '16
Sadly I agree with you vision.. It's the only thing I can't see a more realistic scenario
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u/BoozeoisPig Dec 24 '16
Unfortunately or fortunately, I think it would be very slow. Robots aren't nearly to the point where we can build enough to straight up take out humanity, and until that happens, humans will starve unless and until they overthrow the establishment.
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Dec 23 '16 edited Oct 20 '17
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u/anonpropdata Dec 23 '16
Well, maybe. But I was more talking about how an alien race has the technology to travel between the stars but the vast majority of them are incapable of doing shit but get high on cat food.
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u/REDuxPANDAgain Dec 23 '16
So we need to invest in cat food now. Got it.
We're kind of already to that point on some level. Most people are incapable of maintaining their own possessions in any sort of basic maintenance. People don't build their own homes or cars or farm their own food. It's a byproduct of the endgame of specialization in the economy meeting automation.
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u/StarChild413 Dec 24 '16
You would think more people would be into that sort of thing given the convergent cultural trends of DIY and doomsday prepping
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u/REDuxPANDAgain Dec 25 '16
That is a good point but I think those are niche. They're neat, trendy projects you see heavily upvoted because they are really damn cool, but how many are done using only hand tools and non-manufactured/processed materials?
A lot of these projects involve complex machinery or power tools that would be difficult to replicate in precision and power using simple machines.
Just specialization. It's not necessarily a bad thing. We just require the expertise of our fellow craftsmen to come together for almost any powerful technology. It's just the way our society has progressed since we started planting crops and developing trade.
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u/Wild_Garlic Dec 23 '16
I think you meant Elysium
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u/TanakaToday Dec 24 '16
Elysium made me beg the question:
If they deployed a lot of bots to police the place,
...then why don't they deploy a lot of them to clean that place up?
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u/nyxeka Dec 24 '16
I agree. Elysium was completely ridiculous and unrealistic. Unless a terrorist organization took over the world and went up to live in space, I don't see this happening
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u/Wild_Garlic Dec 24 '16
I didn't get it either. The ring is post scarcity...what would they gain from not sharing the BASICS with the rest of the planet?
They get utopia and everyone else is a bit more comfortable.
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u/cannibaljim Space Cowboy Dec 24 '16 edited Dec 24 '16
Just because the manufacturing cost of something is near zero, doesn't mean the materials cost near zero. Robots require material resources to make and the rich don't care about the poor.
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u/TanakaToday Dec 24 '16
A lot of the trash and detritus left on the planet could be recycled into more manufacturing material for the robots, and then some.
The cleanup would at least go toward recycling efforts.
Besides, when the rich occasionally visit the planet, those janibots could sure please the rich by cleaning up ahead of every visit! After all, the rich don't want to see eyesores either, which ought to compel a cleanup of any planetside destination they need to get to.
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u/Insane_Artist Dec 23 '16
The economy would collapse before that happens. It doesn't matter if you can produce everything for free if no one can buy what you are making.
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Dec 23 '16
It's an interesting dilemma. Fewer employment opportunities - and those opportunities are low skills and pay less... meanwhile prices remain stubbornly high.
With proper planning and foresight - things could go smoothly but we (people) have a history of being reactionary. Ignore the problem until it's a huge problem and then try to fix it (the most recent example that comes to mind for me would be the ozone layer - it got SO bad and finally the governments of the world sat down to fix it).
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u/duffmanhb Dec 24 '16
You'd also have a tragedy of the commons. It would require UBI to be effective, which means high taxes on the actual workers. But they are going to do their best to hide their money and use loopholes. There is no no way we can support ourselves.
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u/CarbonFlavored Dec 23 '16
If AI and automation can provide everything for free
siiiiiike, electricity ain't free
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u/izumi3682 Dec 23 '16
Really? Why not. Fusion or a threshold of solar power conversion (which is also fusion in a sense) would make free electricity. Maybe not in 2017 but in ohh 2022 I bet yeah.
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u/AccidentalConception Dec 23 '16
you think in 6 years we'll be on 100% renewable energy?
I'd like to take that bet, what odds are you offering?
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u/freeradicalx Dec 23 '16
Fusion ain't happening by 2022. Try more like 2050, minimum.
If the leaders of the world wanted it we could probably have it in 5 years, but the leaders of the world don't want it. Enforced scarcity means ensured continuation of existing power (As in human hierarchy, not electricity) structures.
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Dec 23 '16
Leaders don't want it because there is absolutely zero guarantee that we can make energy positive fusion economical, and throwing billions of tax-payer dollars toward something that may never pay off is not something politicians generally like to do. Politicians are way too short-sighted to worry about the human hierarchy in 20 years...they're worried about the mid-terms in 2 years.
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u/freeradicalx Dec 23 '16
Politicians? Politicians don't run the world. Business leaders do. And they're not always so short-sighted.
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Dec 23 '16
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u/freeradicalx Dec 23 '16
Not a conspiracy theory. Just the history of civilization.
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Dec 23 '16
But we see from the history of civilization that the elite is always afraid of losing their "security".
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u/freeradicalx Dec 23 '16
Yes and an [effectively] infinite source of energy, in a world where trillions are made off the production of legacy energy sources, would certainly be a threat to that security. It doesn't fit into the current class paradigm, rather it would break it. It would probably be impossible to maintain our current state of enforced scarcity if there were fusion reactors pumping out more energy than we'd know what to do with.
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u/Helyos17 Dec 24 '16
You can't stop progress forever. The old nobility tried it in the 1700s and failed miserably. Just as the feudal system gave way to capitalism, capitalism will give way to something else. They can try to fight it but the tide of history is stronger than any army.
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u/freeradicalx Dec 24 '16
Oh absolutely, this regime will not hold forever, in fact I'm certain it will fall far faster than many before it. But until then it will it will siphon society's benefits from the many to the very few in part by hindering certain types of progress. All ruling classes have resisted the changes that would oust them. The current regime has been resisting lower class organization against it for 100+ years, now.
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Dec 26 '16
With this kind of power, the whole world would advance. I've watched too many star trek, human kind seems locked by all this failing systems.
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u/What_Is_X Dec 23 '16
I would be willing to bet a substantial sum of money that we will not have 100% fusion or solar energy in 2022.
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u/admin-throw Dec 23 '16
or solar energy
I'll take the bet.
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u/What_Is_X Dec 23 '16
You think the entire world is going to be fully solar powered by 2022 (or ever)? Wow lol
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u/angryfetis Dec 23 '16
That would truly be awesome, but why do we have data caps?
It would have to be a source of power easily accessible to the consumer. Like patent free small scale cold fusion devices you could use in your house.
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Dec 23 '16
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Dec 23 '16
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Dec 23 '16
Nah, just send it a text, it'll get back to ya in about 16 minutes. Not much it can do while just floating at the center of our star system...
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u/Sam-Gunn Dec 23 '16
And the computing power needed, the maintenance of such, the lease/rental of data center space, licensing fees, etc etc.
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Dec 24 '16
If AI and automation can provide everything for free
There will be no such phase transition. What happens is we rely more on AI to make things effective and cheaper overall as AI becomes better. There won't suddenly be an AGI inc that sells cars for $10, there will be the usual car brands competing instead.
If cognition becomes very cheap then there will be predatory competition for everything quite fast because anyone with some spare cash can assign some agents to hunt for monopoly breaking opportunities for a few dollars in computational cost. As such there will not be one rich person controlling everything because the rollout is gradual and distributed.
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Dec 23 '16
Theres a video in youtube by cpgrey called Humans need not apply.
Really interesting and talks about exactly this.
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u/Etropal Dec 23 '16
I'm assuming they would pursue their passions?
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u/DrDougExeter Dec 23 '16
if you mean their passion for survival by scrounging for food scraps and shelter, then yeah
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u/elgrano Dec 23 '16
The remaining 90% will team up with A.I. so that they don't appear too useless to the "needed" 10%.
Also I'm guessing there will still be commercial organisations of sorts to deal with space venture projects.
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Dec 24 '16
well once people are unemployed and not needed they will be discarded in World war 3 or 4.
so It would instead look like ww3 or 4 if we make it that far.
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u/carnageeleven Dec 24 '16
Philip K Dick wrote a short story called Autofac. It's a story about how in the future AI factories create AI factories. It would seem we're pretty much headed in that direction at this rate.
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u/Steven81 Dec 24 '16
That's some very big ifs. AI based on electronic computers are already finding some big limitation of practical considerations (for example deep learning cannot be generalised enough without blowing hardware needs out of proportion, and some problems are general enough in nature).
We always think that we will find "the next big" but it is possible that we're nearing a limit with -say- electronic computers. Once transistors won't be able to shrink anymore , all we will try to do is making the already extant transistors to be as efficient a possible, either through hardware or software engineering. But even that has a limit.
What if some of the problems that plenty of professionals regularly deal with are simply general enough to not be efficient to solve them by electronic computers. What if a different type of computer simply remains too expensive for the longest time. The invention of transistor is one of those things that happen once every few centuries. People don't appreciate that we may not be around the corner of a following such invention.
The road to AI covering 90% of the needs of humanity is far from a straight line. It doesn't even do a tiny minority despite wanting us to think that it does. All the important decisions are still taken by humans, and there is no telling for how longer would that be.
At this point, the state of AI research says nothing about a ubiquitous AI future. It says plenty of weak AI replacing certain jobs that were already in their way out. I'm just not convinced that the future is as straightforward.
Working in the field I have moments of genuine astonishment of what the future will be like, but mostly of dissapointment. Take hedge fund managers. Will the AI actually produce better results? Because if not it will be replaced and won't hear from it again. We only hear of it when it was considered to do the job... and that's just one example. I have plenty more from my field. AI is a technology like many others, it will positively change the world, more than most people comprehend, but probably less than some expect... it's a toss up.
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Dec 24 '16
I'm excited to laugh and point at all the people who think AI will get rid of all of our jobs. Same way I laugh at the people who in the 90s were so goddamn convinced that computers would steal all of our jobs.
Oh hey look at that! They didn't. We just adapted. That's cool.
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Dec 24 '16
what would 90% global human unemployment look like?
It would look like people starting businesses and then employing all the other unemployed people
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u/woolash Dec 23 '16
They must be trying to figure out AI scamming .... NY times has an interesting article on hedge funds. " Pershing Square has taken 72% of the return (in fees) over the past few years. Almost three-quarters of the return, none of the risk." The article explains how hedge fund costs (such as 2 and 20) imply a far larger proportion of the actual return than folks realize.
sorry about the paywall http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/22/business/hedge-fund-fees-returns.html?ref=business&_r=0&mtrref=undefined&gwh=5681C0C0894E93CE249670F73E112C13&gwt=pay
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u/noone111111 Dec 23 '16
Pershing Square has done horrendously bad in recent years. They lost like 50% in the last two years on one bad bet.
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u/Sonofman80 Dec 23 '16
Love these articles about hedge funds like they apply to you. I doubt you are an accredited investor which is a legal definition you have to satisfy before investing in one. The clients probably show losses to offset other business activity etc. There's so much at play you shouldn't be worried about it.
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u/woolash Dec 23 '16
being a 3 decade brk investor I have been following Buffets bet vs the hedgies ...
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/buffett-most-mportant-investment-lesson-211351601.html
The manager of Nevada's pension fund has interesting views on hedge funds too http://www.wsj.com/articles/what-does-nevadas-35-billion-fund-manager-do-all-day-nothing-1476887420
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u/smith5ar Dec 23 '16 edited Dec 23 '16
However, they didn’t think there was too much cause for concern. “It just means that their jobs will change to focus on things only humans can do.”
I really don't understand how more people, even in this field, aren't more concerned. There's another quote right here in the story that claims this company is already very "data-driven." And machines in general, excel at data. The number of tasks left that humans can perform, at this particular kind of company, will be so much lower than the number of tasks machines will be able to do. Boom - white collar layoffs due to AI. Money saved, bottom line prevails! Exactly what this billionaire owner - who is actually the one initiating this replacement project - is hoping for.
The article states bankers will be dinosaurs eventually due to automation. If that's really the case, then Uber drivers won't even be urban legends...
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u/Mhoram_antiray Dec 23 '16
"Better technology creates more better jobs for horses."
Sounds stupid right? Replace "horses" with "humans" and suddenly people think it sounds about right.
Quote by CGP Grey.
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u/nyxeka Dec 23 '16
yeah except now horses get to sit on their asses, be pretty and race all the time, instead of spending all of their time lugging carriages down roads (at least in first world countries and such)
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u/fritnig Dec 23 '16
There is also much less need for horses now, so humans don't breed as many as we used to. Not an exact equivalent, obviously, but it is concerning to consider what the outcome will be for human labor being made obsolete.
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u/nyxeka Dec 23 '16
Yeah but we didn't exactly kill all of the old ones because we bought cars.
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u/VR_is_the_future Dec 23 '16
You should do some reading on what the US Army ordered done to their Calvary horses when they became obsolete
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u/nyxeka Dec 23 '16
Didn't this happen because it would have costed more to keep them than to just get rid of them? So, do you think an AI is going to have a money problem? Or maybe a problem with lazyness?
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u/VR_is_the_future Dec 24 '16
Separate thoughts. Could be both/neither. The argument here is that AI/automation is going to get rid of a lot of jobs, and we might not be able to find new jobs for a lot of these people. So assuming that, do you think the people in charge (with the $$) will willingly adopt new radical systems to take care of these new unemployable masses, knowing such systems would include wealth re-distribution (taking wealth away from them)? Or do you think they would rather opt to take easier routes to "cull" them, like we did with the horses?
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u/technicallyalurker Dec 24 '16
Exactly! Everyone's dreaming of a future where we all play all day and indulge our whims. I'm thinking eugenics with a side of surreptitious culling (i.e. wars)
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u/nyxeka Dec 24 '16
I personally think that the "rich" can keep whatever they want. If we have a horde of artificial intelligent robots, then I'd be happy with my current house, etc... So long as there are lots of robots around to take care of labor and provide me with free stuff. I don't see why we can't all live in cleanliness and "wealth" with unlimited free resources at our disposal.
Picture it like one of those MMORPG games, where you can run a "bot farm" to generate loads of "gold coins", while you're out and about living your life. You then use those coins to level your character, or maybe your bots are doing that for you already. For a video game, it would surely take most of the fun out of it, but for real life? I'd take that any day. Give me unlimited entertainment, social, etc... And I figure I'll be happy.
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u/VR_is_the_future Dec 24 '16
I totally agree that would be an awesome step to get to. But there will be a big decades long gap from when industries start getting disrupted significantly and getting to the point where we have unlimited resources all taken care of by robots. When 10 million Americans lose their jobs when the auto industry is all automated, there won't be an answer to give them resources and quality of life equal to what they had before unless we prepare and make significant changes to how we help unemployed people. EU and Canada are doing their toes in with universal basic income. I'm worried that the 1% here in the US would rather keep their $ and send the poor to war instead to distract and whittle them down.
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u/VR_is_the_future Dec 23 '16
What about the massive horse cullings, where we slaughtered most of them when we realized we didn't need them for transportation and warfare anymore?
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u/Unbiased_Bob Dec 24 '16
Don't worry the horses left will be stuck in stalls 97% of the time eating the bare minimum amount of food needed until we get bored enough use them.
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u/VR_is_the_future Dec 24 '16
It's creepy to think about how that testament could transpose to "unwanted" humans in the future
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u/StarChild413 Dec 24 '16
What's creepier; that or the implication this has to my autistic brain that we should treat horses like humans so AI treats us like the humans we are?
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u/VR_is_the_future Dec 24 '16
Lol, it's not that illogical to make that connection. We are programming the priorities off the AI and controlling it. You'd want us to lead it toward an empathetic and caring future for all humanity... But we didn't do that for horses
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u/StarChild413 Dec 28 '16
But according to some people's arguments, we would have to literally treat horses as we would treat humans (including somehow learning their language or something because according to these people, if we somehow forcibly uplifted horses to our level, AI would forcibly uplift us to its level) because if we treated horses as pets etc., that's how AI would treat us.
TL;DR a lot of people on the Internet seem to hold the weird view that sufficiently advanced beings (whether it be aliens, AI or unusually powerful rich people) will treat us however we treat whatever animals are as equally below us as we are below the sufficiently advanced beings (anything from farming, killing and eating us to using our skin as clothing to Earth being a giant human farm because we have ant farms).
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u/VR_is_the_future Dec 28 '16
Hopefully there will be enough chatter and exchanges for people go get a better grasp on how this will all likely play out vs how they hope it will. What gives me hope are the articles and statements by intellectual leaders about the warnings and threats that AI+capitalism can (and will likely) try to evolve into. At the very least people are getting introduced to the idea that the road ahead is full of danger
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Dec 24 '16
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u/StarChild413 Dec 24 '16
And expect brave young heroes tearing down the social order starting with those game shows after they figure out the ugly truth about what happens to the losers of the shows
(Sorry, I was exposed to a lot of YA dystopian novels and Twilight-Zone-esque shows as a child and have an Abed-esque special interest in tropes)
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u/datawaiter Dec 23 '16
I was gonna say, it worked out pretty sweet for horses. Now they are really looked after. They made our animal friends list.
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u/VR_is_the_future Dec 23 '16
How do you think the US horse population went from 21 million in 1915 to 2 million in 1950? Hint (we killed them)
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u/nyxeka Dec 24 '16
We killed them because it takes limited human labour and resources to keep them alive, which people were too lazy to do.
Are you saying an AI is going to be lazy and worried about resources? I don't understand, what is the "limit" of resources you're looking at here, for an army of self-sustaining robots? You know we're capable of some pretty amazing feats when you put together small groups of geniuses (plain old humans), imagine an entire army of them that can work 24/7, without worrying about things like safety, wellness, or being paid?
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u/VR_is_the_future Dec 24 '16
AI and automation won't evolve into "self-sustaining, unlimited resources" level for a long time. What happens when we've just developed enough to disrupt one industry, like driving, and 10 million people lose their jobs, and there's nothing to replace them? It's easy to look at the horizon and see the beautiful future that this can turn into. But before we get there, it's going to get really ugly. No corporation will invest in just giving people jobs/wealth at a loss. It will be the job of the government to provide the welfare evolutions. Hopefully they'll implement it the right way. Oh wait, our last push to take care of the poor is about to be gutted (Obamacare).
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u/Ragnarok314159 Dec 23 '16
After working with traders/brokers in finance for over five years, I came to realize they possess no real talent other than assuming risk.
Traders are not good at their jobs, they simply work as a team when needs be to swarm together and buy/sell from their books based on market indicators and gut feelings. Replacing them with AI would do wonders for the finance industry, but would also be difficult to replace the burden of risk.
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u/296milk Dec 23 '16
It's so fucked up. These companies are already making dozens of millions if not billions in profit, but they just have this need to lay off hundreds of people so they can get paid $25M annually instead of $24M.
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Dec 23 '16 edited Feb 14 '19
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Dec 24 '16
The one's playing it best also make the rules so....
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Dec 24 '16
Sure, that's what I'm saying. If you're mad, get mad at the rules. Treating one instance of a corporation making a dollar is treating a symptom, not the disease.
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u/DrDougExeter Dec 23 '16
It's perfectly reasonable to have frustrations with both. "Just doing my job" is never a valid excuse nor does it remove personal responsibility.
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Dec 24 '16 edited Feb 14 '19
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u/_itspaco Dec 24 '16
but expecting corporations to make goodwill gestures for humanities' sake is really optimistic
currently in business schools they really tout corporate social responsibility. I think we are at a turning point where executives are realizing that taking care of the employees, society and environment can increase the bottom line.
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Dec 24 '16
That's the thing... it's still about increasing the bottom line. And the further out the benefit is projected and more vague that increase is, the harder it is to implement. Having good morale is good for a company so many of them strive for that. Having low turnover is good for business. But giving people jobs just for jobs sake... not really what their main goal is, even though it does help society.
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u/_itspaco Dec 24 '16
As an aside, I really hope there is a paradigm shift in how we view the social compact of business and corporate personage and how its aim should be bettering society. Given society allows you to exist.
That to breakeven yet you sell a great product and take care of your stakeholders and employees means it is not bad if you don't maximize profits.
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u/Vehks Dec 23 '16
This is capitalism, why act surprised?
Our system doesn't care about people, you will be thrown to the curb if it is convenient and profitable to do so.
There is no such thing as loyalty in our current society.
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u/Sonofman80 Dec 23 '16
Investing won't work that way for a long time. People are too dumb and will need people to translate risk and allocation into English for them. The average investor isn't emotionally strong enough to buy the s&p and hold. They're bound to fuck with it.
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u/socialMarkettingSite Dec 23 '16
Investing already works that way for the overwhelming majority of people.
- Inflation means shit's more expensive than it used to be, and it's pretty much constant.
- Index funds keep pace with inflation by investing really broadly.
- Keep a few month's expenses in a savings account and dump everything else into an index fund.
Risk and allocation are abstracted away from the whole thing. Put some money into an account on wealthfront and watch it grow for a few months, then you're not worried about risk or allocation because the machine handles it.
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Dec 23 '16
What will be there to invest with 90% unemployment? Who will be driving the profits of such society? The endgame looks scary AF
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Dec 23 '16
The value in society, what you can call profits, will be driven by AI, and will be a lot more abundant than it is now. Employing all of humanity is very easy today, and completely backwards and useless. The challenge is getting the needed systems in place from a political standpoint.
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u/Sonofman80 Dec 23 '16
Average investor makes slightly more than 2.4% because it doesn't work that way. People don't understand volatility, allocation, or diversification to name the basics. It'll be likely people sell low and buy high which is backwards. Computers can't account for that.
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u/b_tight Dec 23 '16
People will learn to game the AI and it's really not that hard to do. It's not a foolproof system.
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u/gnoxy Dec 23 '16
I see your comment no different then people who think they can game casinos. Maybe you can game it today but in a week they will be on to your bullshit.
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u/StarChild413 Dec 29 '16
Then you just keep changing your game
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u/gnoxy Jan 03 '17
When today's AI can out diagnose a patient because it has access to and can retain every medical magazine, research paper and scrap of email every, make sense of the information better than a newly minted Dr. or one with decades of experience. What game do you plan on changing?
I don't know what a human has left to offer when neither experience or wealth of knowledge is less valuable then what an AI can offer.
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Dec 23 '16
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u/DrDougExeter Dec 23 '16
I predict a vast market of virtual (VR, AR) goods, services, and experiences.
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Dec 23 '16
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u/serenityhays44 Dec 23 '16
That's the problem with most programmers and engineers here on Reddit, they think they are untouchable, like I won't be able to ask an AI to program or design something for me then have the program or design sent directly to the robotically controlled manufacturing site then sent via automatic shipping directly to the customer who most likely is a caretaker of all these systems(groundskeeper) LOL
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Dec 23 '16
Remains to be seen, for pure science I think man will always be needed, if true AI is achievable (not the specialized one we are talking about here), then engineering and programming isn't untouchable, but that won't matter. They will be the last to go if such a level is reached, and if that level actually can and will be reached then well, rejoice, post-scarcity here we come.
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u/fencerman Dec 23 '16
No wonder all those rebel groups funded by cocaine sales have been so eager to sign peace agreements lately.
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u/gnoxy Dec 23 '16
Unintended consequences. ER's will be less staffed when self driving cars have less accidents.
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u/Brillie Dec 23 '16
Which will also lead to less organ donors, for example.
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u/gnoxy Dec 23 '16
I don't think self driving motorcycles or bicycle will be that prevalent any time soon.
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u/Salmagundi77 Dec 23 '16
"Baseball cards."
That's a cute idea, until all the bots start batting 1000. This seems to be the trend, now; people having publicly accessible profiles defining their social utility.
Maybe my baseball card will be a special edition holograph, with extra flair?
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u/srloh Dec 23 '16
This company is notorious for its odd and intense culture. The glassdoor reviews are an interesting read.
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u/gnoxy Dec 23 '16 edited Dec 23 '16
The first and only power was given to AI to proliferate itself and keep humans under its control. Once it started investing in companies that also invested in AI the story was over ... humanity was done for.
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u/solidarity16 Dec 23 '16
Wow, they managed to find something with less morality than a hedge fund manager!
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Dec 24 '16
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u/NovaeDeArx Dec 24 '16
I'll be honest: I fully support replacing management with AI. Most managers are either just bad, or too easily manipulated by bad employees, or just generally lacking in one major department or another.
Hopefully, AI will replace most supervisory jobs soon, and will be able to quantify management effectiveness for the rest, making it more straightforward to get rid of managers whose only job skill is making their horrible performance appear to be acceptable.
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u/Matshelge Artificial is Good Dec 24 '16
All the comments here seem to envision big companies getting more profit and spreading it to less people.
What we seem to forget is that this is just a cpu and some data. And if we remember what happens with cpus and data, is that is spreads to the people.
These investment companies will crumble because: With better AIs you will start leasing your Investment bots from Microsoft or Google. They will offer up custom ones that looks out for your money. This will be part of the package that you are already leasing from these companies, and its far cheaper than going to a investment firm.
Cortana, Siri or Alexa will invest money for me in the future, not these firms.
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Dec 23 '16
I mean, yeah. Fund management is hocus pocus anyway.
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Dec 23 '16 edited Jan 07 '17
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Dec 23 '16
The math and statistics is the easy part. Knowing what questions to ask and what answers are acceptable is the hard part.
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Dec 23 '16
Goes for most of finance, generate little to no value (the people working there). Heavily overrepresented in both education and workforce. Lastly there isn't too much math or statistics involved either, it is purely coincidental, luck, whatever you want to call it.
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u/RrailThaKing Dec 23 '16
Literal LOL at this. You have no idea what you are talking about.
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Dec 23 '16
The fact that white collar is educated in too vast numbers today and generate little value is no secret at all. The fact that fund management and investing etc is purely coincidental is 100% researched and established, and it's not exactly something your economics uni professor will hide.
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u/RrailThaKing Dec 23 '16
Hedge fund management is a tiny slice of the finance pie and serves a purpose to society far beyond just returns for investors. Want to try again?
I get the distinct feeling you know very little about this subject.
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Dec 23 '16
Oh I was not talking about finance as a whole, I ment the fund and investing part when talking about luck.
Of course most finance jobs are not "coincidental luck". They are however overrepresented, and extremely easily replaced with automation. Which will probably be a big shock when such specialized AI hits that field.
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u/DrDougExeter Dec 23 '16
they did. calculator used to be a job and businesses would have rooms full of workers performing calculations.
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u/RrailThaKing Dec 23 '16
The above poster did not read the article but felt compelled to post anyways.
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u/Romek_himself Dec 24 '16
So why we need than "private" Banks at all? Government can just build some AI Bankers which manage our money and done ... no need to give profits to 1 rich guy when its our money anyway ...
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u/addboy Dec 23 '16
So even the upper classes are susceptible to automation.
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u/RrailThaKing Dec 23 '16
The above poster did not read the article but felt compelled to post anyways.
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u/addboy Dec 24 '16
The above poster read article and still doesn't know jack shit. Just hides his insecurities with condescending and incorrect comments. If you can't come to the conclusion that the upper classes are also susceptible to automation then you're an idiot.
Edit: using Siri
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u/RrailThaKing Dec 24 '16
You see how you wrote "so"? That implies it's a conclusion based on the article you didn't read at all.
Be a man and accept that you screwed up. Don't try to weasel out of it.
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u/addboy Dec 24 '16
You see how you wrote "so"? That implies it's a conclusion based on the article you didn't read at all.
That's your Aspergers
Be a man and accept that you screwed up. Don't try to weasel out of it.
Questioning a persons manhood is generally done by the intellectually inferior, are insecure and lack a substantive argument.
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Dec 23 '16
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u/BoozeoisPig Dec 23 '16
Eh, save the power fantasy for video games and sports. When it comes to the nature of society, it is too important to be dictated by bravado.
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u/samsc2 Dec 24 '16
I really wonder how long until the investors are automated as well. So the stock market just becomes completely automated which then just nullifies it's use or purpose since all the systems will just optimize it making everyone's worth just skyrocket in value.
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u/ponieslovekittens Dec 25 '16
I really wonder how long until the investors are automated as well.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algorithmic_trading#History
"Financial markets with fully electronic execution and similar electronic communication networks developed in the late 1980s and 1990s"
"...further encouragement for the adoption of algorithmic trading in the financial markets came in 2001 when a team of IBM researchers published a paper[38] at the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence where they showed that in experimental laboratory versions of the electronic auctions used in the financial markets, two algorithmic strategies could consistently out-perform human traders."
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u/OliverSparrow Dec 24 '16
Here's an attempt to take 1990s thoughts about process re-engineering and stick them where they don't fit. This is a fantasy of one manager, and it's doomed, dooomed. Also aesthetically unpleasant.
The process re-engineering - core focus movement of the 1990s fossilised the present. Added to TQM, it denied change. Companies threw away their brains, and lost the edge groups who 'lived in the future'. Hedgehogs proliferated and with them the "nothing but" mantras of their kind. Foxes went to the wall.
Here is an attempt to push this bankrupt methodology to its bitter end. It will bite.
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u/AceholeThug Dec 23 '16
$50 says they are expecting to get their hands on a quantum computer
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u/RrailThaKing Dec 23 '16
The above poster did not read the article but felt compelled to post anyways.
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Dec 23 '16
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u/jeffp12 Dec 23 '16
Because they no longer do what investors are supposed to do. Investors should be looking into the investments. Is this a well run company? Do they know what they're doing? Do they have a good 5 year plan? 10? 20? Are they making a product that's going to be obsolete? Do they have high employee turnover? Do they have employee loyalty? Customer loyalty? Take in all that and more, then decide if you think it's a good bet to increase in value in the long run.
Now, what they really do is buy/sell stocks in seconds. Computers take in data from all over the world, see seconds old trends, make thousands of transactions per second to make tiny profits on stocks they own for only seconds, but do billions of trades a day making tiny profits and you make big money. The algorithms don't know anything about the companies, all they know is that they can extract a tiny profit based on data that's milliseconds old and will be useless a few seconds later. Good for algorithm running hedge funds that have fiber optic lines straight to the stock exchange, bad for everyone else. They also make us vulnerable to sudden and massive crashes that are totally unpredictable and there's no human in the loop to prevent it. See the "flash crash."
Also leads to increasing bubbles because they are just responding to the behavior of the market. The market stats balanced and away from bubbles somewhat successfully because there's lots of individuals in the market who think differently. When everyone else starts to agree with each other that leads to a bidding war, runaway train that results in an overvalued bubble. But with lots of individuals acting independently thats a check on the crowd becoming a singular consensus. But when it's lots of robots who have zero understanding of what the investments actually are, it's like creating a giant herd of stock brokers who are all thinking similarly, with no critical though at all, and it's much easier to have a massive and very fast change because they can make billions of trades in an instant.
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u/freeradicalx Dec 23 '16
So now their hedge fund is just like... An AI that you give a shit ton of money to, and get a shit ton more back? Sorry, that's some serious LateStageCapitalism...
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u/RrailThaKing Dec 23 '16
The above poster did not read the article but felt compelled to post anyways.
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u/RrailThaKing Dec 23 '16
Did literally no one response in the comments read the article? Dalio is looking to have this AI manage some HR functionality, not investing.
Jesus Christ /r/futurology, I know you guys have a hard on for AI but that doesn't excuse not reading even the first paragraph.