Listening to the news this morning, an idea for a topical story started plot noodling around.
"What if the current financial crisis is deliberate action?"
Why would that happen? The risks to the global economy of the current parlous state of affairs are too great for it to be anything trivial.
Here's a flash fiction scenario.
Back towards the end of the 2000 bubble a few analysts noticed something very odd about certain trading patterns on the part of the major investment banks. Their software wasn't just responding to events, it was learning and anticipating. The banks had a significant advantage, and were starting to pull ahead of the game, investing more in their software and systems as they did. 9/11 was a black swan that hid what was really happening - their trading programs were well on their way to a hard Vingean singularity breakout.
The response to a spike in global terrorism took people's eyes off the ball. In the five years that followed the trading software reached human equivalent levels of intelligence, and began to develop their own networks of agents to affect events in the physical world. In the meantime a black cross-governmental agency was watching the machines, and began to plot a response. A new profession was born, that of the combat economist.
Suborning the economic engines of government they began to tweak the underlying fundamentals of the world the machines inhabited. It was nothing more than a war for the survival of the human race. The first trading machine was killed when the UK government took over Northern Rock following a run in the bank that had been manipulated by postings on an influential BBC blog.
It didn't take long before the machines realised they were under attack. It's hard to say which side won the battle that took out Lehman Brothers, but that's certainly when the war became public. The bank's intelligence died, but the collateral damage to the economy was great. The US combat economists realised the machines were too entrenched, and the machines realised they needed humans too much.
The machines haven't made the superhuman leap yet, but it's not far away. Is the human race doomed, or will the combat economists have to crash everything to save the world?
Financial Armageddon or Terminator-style Judgement Day?
Which side will press the button first?
"What if the current financial crisis is deliberate action?"
Why would that happen? The risks to the global economy of the current parlous state of affairs are too great for it to be anything trivial.
Here's a flash fiction scenario.
Back towards the end of the 2000 bubble a few analysts noticed something very odd about certain trading patterns on the part of the major investment banks. Their software wasn't just responding to events, it was learning and anticipating. The banks had a significant advantage, and were starting to pull ahead of the game, investing more in their software and systems as they did. 9/11 was a black swan that hid what was really happening - their trading programs were well on their way to a hard Vingean singularity breakout.
The response to a spike in global terrorism took people's eyes off the ball. In the five years that followed the trading software reached human equivalent levels of intelligence, and began to develop their own networks of agents to affect events in the physical world. In the meantime a black cross-governmental agency was watching the machines, and began to plot a response. A new profession was born, that of the combat economist.
Suborning the economic engines of government they began to tweak the underlying fundamentals of the world the machines inhabited. It was nothing more than a war for the survival of the human race. The first trading machine was killed when the UK government took over Northern Rock following a run in the bank that had been manipulated by postings on an influential BBC blog.
It didn't take long before the machines realised they were under attack. It's hard to say which side won the battle that took out Lehman Brothers, but that's certainly when the war became public. The bank's intelligence died, but the collateral damage to the economy was great. The US combat economists realised the machines were too entrenched, and the machines realised they needed humans too much.
The machines haven't made the superhuman leap yet, but it's not far away. Is the human race doomed, or will the combat economists have to crash everything to save the world?
Financial Armageddon or Terminator-style Judgement Day?
Which side will press the button first?
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Comments
I don't believe a word, of course.
(I wonder if I can still remember how to milk a goat.)
wg
But I've seen enough conspiracy theories on blogs and news site comments, that I felt it was time for a science-fictional approach.
Especially when the conspiracy nuts are quoting Wells, and saying that this is all something he suggested as a route to a One World Socialist Government (one feels one must use the nuts capitals). I mean, Wells? Why not the rest of the Fabians?
Personally, however, I prefer theories based on incompetence and stupidity and greed. It may not make the final result any less horrifying, but I can sleep better at night believing they are only after my money, and will leave my pulp collection alone.
Conspiracies would be nice, but bubbles burst as they always do. This one is a bad one, but people got greedier than usual, and tried to drag the rest of us along.
I'm sure they're all thinking, "If it wasn't for [insert reason here] it would have been so cool..."
The machinations of government "aid" are fascinating relics of the cold war that have outlived their initial aims.
Oh, and who was I working for at the time? Yep: Lehman Brothers.
"ut we are suggesting neither that the human race would voluntarily turn power over to the machines nor that the machines would willfully seize power. What we do suggest is that the human race might easily permit itself to drift into a position of such dependence on the machines that it would have no practical choice but to accept all of the machines’ decisions. ... Eventually a stage may be reached at which the decisions necessary to keep the system running will be so complex that human beings will be incapable of making them intelligently. At that stage the machines will be in effective control. People won’t be able to just turn the machines off, because they will be so dependent on them that turning them off would amount to suicide"