Stock trading robots

Signs of an approaching technological singularity: Robotic trading systems.

A rapidly increasing amount of the trade on the exchange markets are now automated. There are people that make a living from short term investments (day traders), and they complain that it is harder and harder to read the signs. And so they can no longer make a profit.

To be able to make transactions at millisecond level, the computers need to be located in the same room as the "stock market computer" itself. As there are many stakeholders interested in this, they all want as short latency as possible. To make it fair, all such computers have the same connection with the same length of the cable.

This is yet another business taken over by computers. Is it good or bad?

Robots and AI

Some people, interested in the future, can't stop thinking about the development of robots and general artificial intelligence. But I think most of them got it wrong, and that it is not going to happen that way.

There will never be human robots, except for marginal needs. If a robot needs to be completely general it would be designed as a human. But the idea of ​​making general purpose robot is wrong. People do not think about it, but everyday life is already full of specialized robots. I have several: one that cleans the dish, one who washes clothes, one that makes coffee for me, etc.

Do we really need general purpose robots? I don't think so. The day it will be possible to make "real" robots, we have already integrated our world with the virtual, and you can't distinguish between them anyway.

I believe it will be the same with general artificial intelligence. Some are obsessed with the idea of ​​making a general AI, smart as a human, that will then create the next, even smarter. One problem with this concept is to define "intelligence". There are already a lot of specialized AIs. Why should we make one that mimics a human mind? And if we create one, do we want it to be human? That means we have to give it the basic human goals, which are a will to live and a will to breed. Without those, it will not have emotions, and so it will not at all be human.

I think it will go the same way as for robots. The day we succeed, then we have already succeeded in making a copy of a physical brain in a computer. The need will be marginal.

So what about the Technological Singularity then? I don't think it depends on the presence of human-like robots or human-like AI. The Singularity is about accelerating progress, which is perfectly plausible with specialized AI.