We can blame it on the machines…”the machine made me do it” will be the mantra that Gen Z decries when it all goes belly up. Even now the “quants” or quantities analysts are scratching their heads trying to perfect the code in what could be thought of as stock bots, these bots or “algo trading” algorithms are seemingly at the helm of the stock market, buying and selling bytes of pseudo wealth in financial super computer networks. You can read all about how these machines have crippled our nice and cozy growth cycle in the Sydney Morning Herald article, Rise of the machines and also in the New York Times article of the same title; that’s what I’m essentially paraphrasing and it ought to give one a sense of uneasiness and perhaps a queasy feeling in the hip pocket.

Not that I really have an uneasy feeling about machines taking over, I’d be happy to hand it all over to “Skynet” to handle the day to day running of my affairs. Although having said that, the possibility of doom is ever present, as Artificial Intelligence and Technology advances, the progression could eventually ensure that we become obsolete and that the exponential growth in machines intelligence will in affect make our own seem more akin to that of a pest. Our presence in the blink of a binary digit could be deemed superfluous and with the flick of a switch machines may decide to eradicate this “pest” to be left to inherit the Earth; to more or less take over where we left off (they couldn’t do any worse than we have) – I know it’s all so “Matrix” but don’t let that persuade you one way or another. I guess the appeal of the Transhumanists who are ready to embrace technological enhancements by morphing into part machine is to be aligned with this higher being and maybe as a protective measure to side with the machines – to get in before the wholesale eradication of humanity by the God-Machine once it becomes self aware. Laying Terminator/Matrix fantasies aside, I have no objection in principal to improving and enhancing humanity with our own creative enterprises although I’d have to think twice before willingly incorporating technology as part of my physical self. But, then again, whose to say if the opportunity arose I wouldn’t just say “fuck it! let’s tweak that mother fucker.” Like, if you can’t beat em, join em!

We still have a ways to go methinks, considering the dismal results these algorithms have proved in the financial markets. But then again, it could be that the fault wasn’t so much in the coding but the idea of “easy money”. For all I know the codes worked perfectly and it was just greed and downright deceitful manipulation that brought it all undone, because the buck had to stop somewhere and once stopped the dominoes were obligated to fall. Having nowhere else to go, it back tracked along the trail already paved.

It won’t be long before the stakes are upped and perhaps derivatives of these trading algorithms are developed in the human biosphere and certainly it is already happening, however, I think the money markets are more privileged to utilise and develop Artificial Intelligence and advance it at greater speed than academia but that is just my opinion and not based on anything but speculation. Of course the military are keen developers in devising better ways to kill and rule however eventually the trade secrets of the “industrial-military” complex will trickle into the consumer market where the playing field will be further divided. The wealthy will have first dibs at enhancement and a whole new class system will be born. The Nietzschean “over man” will finally become more than doctrine which Nazi’s used as justification for genocide, it will become the reality of the elite and a way to further control the slave job market. What else is new though, as much as we like to think our society as egalitarian or equal it has never been that way and more than likely it never will.