It's fascinating to read Richard Dooling's account of how artificial intelligence destroyed the financial market. It looks like the AI guys on Wall Street succumbed to the same hubris that most academic researchers fall prey to.
The Wall Street geeks, the quantitative analysts (“quants”) and masters of “algo trading” probably felt the same irresistible lure of “illimitable power” when they discovered “evolutionary algorithms” that allowed them to create vast empires of wealth by deriving the dependence structures of portfolio credit derivatives.What does that mean? You’ll never know.
Actually, I do know! I had a job offer to work on financial AI but decided against it because I didn't want to move to New York. I bet I could have made a lot more money, but hey, I could have just lost it all too! With the connectedness of it all, I might be able to get into this from St. Louis these day.
But anyway, who would have guessed that Skynet would come from Wall Street and not the Pentagon?
More discussion as I learn more.
