It is ‘nearly unavoidable’ that AI will cause a financial crash within a decade, SEC head says::undefined

  • spudwart@spudwart.com
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    1 year ago

    Is it because replacing employees with AI results in a never-ending cascade where your stupid system doesn’t keep consuming because AI don’t consume and won’t get paid?

    Or is it because using AI will result in the climate to continually become more inhospitable?

    Maybe it will be because AI will be used to create more and more believable misinformation that results in WW3?

    • RickRussell_CA@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      OK, it is addressed in the article…

      He’s specifically talking about the use of AI in finance, and that an algorithm that runs amok in a particular sector:

      in the after action reports people will say ‘Aha! There was either one data aggregator or one model . . . we’ve relied on.’ Maybe it’s in the mortgage market. Maybe it’s in some sector of the equity market

      I’ll throw out a microeconomic example. About a year into the pandemic, the price of used cars started going up… a LOT… in a short time. One of the reasons for the sudden changes in used car prices was that major used car resellers were using algorithms to set buying and selling prices for cars. While supply chain pressure on the new car market was unprecedented, and it trickled down to used cars, a facilitating cause is that the used car price-setting algorithms didn’t really have any humans in the chain checking to see if the numbers they were kicking out made a lick of sense.

      So you had companies like Carmax and Carvana buying used cars for $X, and then a month later 5X, then a month later 10X, because they were programmed to just up the offering price until they reached target stock levels. Sometimes they were buying 3+ year old used cars for more than the current price of NEW cars of similar trim level. Carvana’s numbers got so whacked that it nearly sunk the company.

      Now imagine that kind of a runaway algorithm in stocks, bonds, real estate, etc. It’s 2008 all over again.

      • eek2121@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Honestly hoping something like this happens in residential real estate, if it isn’t happening already. Housing is well overdue for a correction.

        You can’t tell me that most people can afford a $400,000-$700,000 mortgage. Median incomes don’t support that price point. Median household incomes might support the lower end…barely. So I am starting to wonder just who is buying/selling all these houses. When I see a $600,000 “average” house last 3 days on the market and then sell for $760,000…I have questions.

        • Cryophilia@lemmy.world
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          Median incomes don’t support that price point. Median household incomes might support the lower end…barely.

          I swear if I ever marry it will just be to combine finances so we can actually buy a house and stuff

          • eek2121@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            I am married with a household income in the 200,000-300,000 range and we can’t afford anything here.

        • eatthecake@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          I’ve been reading that nobody can afforrd to buy houses for at least a decade now and the price just keeps going up so clearly people can afford it.

          In my blue collar, median wage earning workplace the vast majority are homeowners and having an investment property is seen as normal and expected., it’s the new baseline for doing ok. They have dual incomes, two cars, and overseas holidays every year. They are migrants who had no bank of mom and dad and they prefer to send their kids to private or carholic schools.

          They are not poor, but if you believe what you read on the internet they should have zero kids and be living paycheck to paycheck.

          • eek2121@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            I bet every single one of them bought prior to the bubble and rate increase that started during the pandemic.

            You are outta your mind if you think they are dropping $100,000-$300,000 for a down payment on a house, only to turn around and pay $3,000-$6,000/mo for a mortgage.

            Those properties you see being sold are wealthy folks using them as investment vehicles.

      • ShittyBeatlesFCPres@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I traded in a 2014 Toyota hatchback to Carmax and got an Audi A3 when the algorithms went haywire. It didn’t cover the whole cost but it was a silly enough trade that I thought for sure someone would call me and say it was a computer error.

          • ShittyBeatlesFCPres@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            No, they actually called and paid me $100 to make the swap at a lot about an hour away. I wasn’t gonna argue my way out of an upgrade so I was like, “Oh, yeah, I can drop it off wherever.” The dude who details the cars after you drop them off definitely wasn’t worried about it. He thought it was funny his bosses fucked up.

      • treadful@lemmy.zip
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        1 year ago

        While that’s really interesting, there was a lot more at play than a pricing algorithm. It was a culmination of a lot of things, starting with Cash for Clunkers that had a huge impact on the used car market. Then there were a ton of supply chain issues during COVID that squeezed the new car market. Probably some other factors I’m not aware of, too.

      • I_Fart_Glitter@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        My 2013 Prius got totaled around the peak of this. I wanted to just replace it with the exact same model, because it’s a good car. It would have been cheaper to buy brand new one at the time. I got a new electric car instead and with the $7k tax rebate ended up spending less than I would have to buy a 9 year old Prius.

      • clutch@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        He has a good point as this monoculture of systems and models would very greatly amplify any market imbalance and defects, at a speed human bank managers would only realize when getting notified of their impending bankruptcy

      • insomniac@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        It was pretty bananas for a minute. The Mazda dealership offered us 5,000 more than we paid brand new for my wife’s Mazda 3 in 2018. I told the salesperson that it makes no fucking sense and he couldn’t explain it either. Didn’t go for it for a bunch of reasons but it was really odd.

      • Peaty@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        My mom’s 2020 Fit at the top trim level sold new for roughly 20k. Her lease buyout price was 1/2 the cost of an entry Fit in the same year with 30k miles (going for 25k at the time)

    • AggressivelyPassive@feddit.de
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      1 year ago

      Currently, I would rather guess it’s the usual bubble popping. AI has attracted billions of investments and will likely pull in even more, but it’s already foreseeable, that hardly any of the investments will turn a profit. So we’ll end up with a third dotcom bubble.

      • Leate_Wonceslace@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        1 year ago

        AI isn’t a bubble. The futurist/Rationalist/transhumanist communities were saying what’s happening now would happen in a few years about a decade ago, and our predictions are that the next phase is AI taking over all labor through sophisticated automation. We’ve been trying to warn everyone about this since the advent of Google Deep Dream, but sure stick your head in the sand again and let the world burn around you; it’s worked so well so far.

        This comment will probably get bombed, but w/e. 🤷‍♂️ Go ahead and be ignorant and angry at me, I’m used to it.

        • AggressivelyPassive@feddit.de
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          How many times has that been predicted already? Three, four? Look at the history of AI, it happens every few years.

          Anyway, you’re implying a dichotomy here. World domination or pipedream, but that’s not the case. The dotcom bubble was without a doubt a bubble, but much of the underlying technology was used a few years later, just without the hype and fanfare.

          AI will probably find its uses, and has the potential to eliminate a lot of jobs, but the current iteration of AI businesses is utter garbage. Even something as comparatively simple as Microsoft’s Copilot is currently losing money - roughly as much as it costs to use. Yet, there are billions upon billions being poured into useless start-ups that will never produce anything of value in a profitable manner.

          What exactly happened to self driving cars BTW? Weren’t those totally on track of what experts predicted?

    • Tar_Alcaran@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      I’m thinking yes, plus AI margin trading running into a tragedy of the commons where they collectively run the stock market into the ground and there’s no reset button on that.

  • seaQueue@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    So do I collect my economic Bingo winnings after the 4th or 5th major crash of my adult lifetime?

    • Death_Equity@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      You win the chance to afford to eat human or expired cat food you found on the body of someone you shot over a pair of worn boots.

    • rwhitisissle@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I’m afraid your bingo winnings are going to be confiscated by the government in order to pay for more golden parachutes for the CEOs whose decisions led us here.

    • Andy@slrpnk.net
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      Yeah.

      It’s a casino, and a lot of these folks are no smarter than a retiree rubbing troll dolls on their favorite slot machine.

      The solution is to realign markets to human needs. The is no productive benefit to high speed trading. There is no benefit to stock by backs. We need to reign in most of the nonsense that these financial services institutions do.

    • seaQueue@lemmy.world
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      Sorry, the best we can do is a small marginal tax increase on income over $1M and a 50¢ bump to the minimum wage.

      • edgemaster72@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Better spread out that wage increase over a reasonable period of time, like 10-25 years. Wouldn’t want to burden the precious job creators out there.

        /s

      • Restaldt@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        50¢? Whoa now you arent trying to send us down the road of commies now are ya?

        Better cut that raise in half at least

  • alienanimals@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Fuck Gary Gensler. Dude tries to influence the market just to line his own pockets.

    He should not be the head of the SEC.

    • Bleeping Lobster@lemmy.world
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      Would you mind furnishing that statement with some links, articles, or some info to back it up? Iirc he’s ex-Goldman Sachs but he seems to be making moves that hedge funds / market makers do NOT like. Vs the previous guy who just let them do whatever they wanted.

      If you want to see the actual baddies, look at the ‘self regulating’ agency which has gone to great lengths to hide swap data, and the company which enforced ‘position close only’ on a large number of stocks (kicking off the infamous GME saga). Hint: it wasn’t Robinhood. Robinhood was just one of many brokers who were instructed to set multiple stocks (not just GME) to ‘position close only’ aka no buying, only selling.

    • Death_Equity@lemmy.world
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      That is the job description of any regulator.

      “Line your pockets with money from the people and entities you are supposed to reign in to protect the rest of the people who are subject to their actions so that your benefactors can prey on them.”

  • skozzii@lemmy.ca
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    1 year ago

    The crash is already in motion and it was not AI that caused it. This is just getting us ready for who to blame when it crashes.

    Many stocks have been far oversold and there is no way to reset it without the rich losing it all.

    This is how they will reset it and protect the rich.

  • Blackmist@feddit.uk
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    They’ve been fucking with automated trading for decades though, unless you’re going to try to convince me that there’s a human investing in a trillionth of a company for a hundredth of a second at a time.

    It’s already caused “flash crashes” before. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_flash_crash

    The idea of investing in companies because you believe in them and want a share of their profits is sound enough I guess, but what it’s morphed into is nonsense. The result is a system where you have trillion dollar companies that never actually turn a profit in favour of “growth”.

    • urist@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      Wow, they tried to blamed it on one autistic dude trading from his parent’s apartment in London?

      1. WTF
      2. He was the most powerful man in the world for 30 minutes according to them, lmao. Why can’t my personal issues give me super powers?
      • Blackmist@feddit.uk
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        I love how they always mention the autism, as if being a mathematical genius is a common symptom, rather than just being able to remember every episode of Naruto.

        • Restaldt@lemm.ee
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          Hey did you know the specific heat of water is 4.184 j/g°c because i learned that once in a physics class more than a decade ago and i still remember.

          I am not a physicist and the memorization of that fact does not help me. Thanks brain.

      • Bleeping Lobster@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Bingo. The super-rich love a financial collapse, it gives them a golden opportunity to turn disaster capitalist. All those foreclosed homes & businesses available at a knockdown price, nom nom nom.

      • Cryophilia@lemmy.world
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        I need to get off lemmy. Too many teenagers on here with their "burn it all down"s and "trust me, I have a super easy solution to a giant complex problem that has been plaguing humanity for generarions"s and "the bad guys are actually good guys, lol I’m so edgy"s

        • SpiderShoeCult@sopuli.xyz
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          now now, no need to be dismissive of other age groups in this matter. I’m sure there’s plenty of non-teenager people that think the same way too. on the internet, nobody knows you’re a 74 yr old extremist

      • Peddlephile@lemm.ee
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        So, how do we engineer a situation in which the richest suffer most? End of capitalism?

  • teamevil@lemmy.world
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    Pretty sure that crash is more the fault of the greedy shits who think it’s normal for 4 folks to own 50% of the country while 50% owns 2% of the country. Don’t need AI to tell you that system isn’t sustainable.

  • 👍Maximum Derek👍@discuss.tchncs.de
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    1 year ago

    Financial expert predicts that (what is already) the longest bull market in world history will end within the next 10 years? And the thing that the world’s largest companies are investing the most in might play a roll in that?

    Bold.

    • Lexi Sneptaur@pawb.social
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      1 year ago

      Shock, awe, hysteria. More “AI” fear mongering headlines to boost the stock prices of tech giants. Yawn.

  • Naatan@lemdro.id
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    Heavy doubt on this one.

    There is still so much misunderstanding on the state of AI and its potential based on current technology (spoiler: reduce your expectations significantly). How can you expect anyone to make predictions with such misunderstanding.

    That said it kinda seems like a financial crash is already happening, regardless of AI.

    • Altima NEO@lemmy.zip
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      I think it’s tech illiterate people being amazed by chat gpt and shit, not realizing just how janky and limited it’s actual "artificial intelligence"actually is.

    • Veltoss@lemmy.world
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      I don’t know why everybody keeps downplaying where AI is already at and the speed at which it is improving. It can already disrupt multiple industries with where image, voice, and LMM AI is at right now.

      • Naatan@lemdro.id
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        For me personally it’s not that I want to downplay it, it’s that I want to balance the scales. I see far more over-estimating of AI happening than downplaying.

        The current form of AI is great as a tool and sadly there are definitely jobs out there that are nearly completely replaced by this tool. But that scope isn’t about to change much based on where we are currently at. Many jobs require actual intelligence to make judgment calls, and the current form of AI just isn’t going to cut it here as it has no real intelligence.

        Of course, that won’t stop dumb business leaders from still trying to use AI here, but that’s an error in judgment that imo will correct itself over time.

      • Naatan@lemdro.id
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        I’m not dismissing its usefulness for those scenario’s (see my response to Veltoss below). But people tend to way over-estimate what it is capable of.

        Generating an office layout? Yeah absolutely, because that’s largely based on prior art, no real innovation required. Though as you noted you’ll almost certainly need to “steer” the AI because there’s so many variables and permutations that it cannot realistically come up with a perfect solution without real intelligence. It’ll require iteration from “someone” no matter how advanced it gets.

        But AI as it exists right now won’t replace let’s say your office manager, who would probably be given the responsibility of planning the office layout. Because their job entails making lots of intelligence based judgment calls. That said; given they will get more AI powered tools to do their job there may be fewer jobs available overall because now your office manager at some big office won’t need an assistant anymore.

        Note I am not saying that AI affecting our economy isn’t happening or won’t happen. I’m merely saying that any predictions people are making should be met with a heavy amount of doubt, because there is so much misunderstanding out there.

          • Naatan@lemdro.id
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            1 year ago

            But that’s plain fantasy at this point. The current form of AI is fundamentally not intelligent. Advancement of the current form of AI won’t change that.

            The current form of AI is like the speech center of your brain. On its own it does not constitute a brain, nor will it ever “evolve” to be its own brain.

            So the current form of AI may end up forming a small part of the whole, but that whole is as of yet still a fantasy.

              • Naatan@lemdro.id
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                1 year ago

                In this context I’d imagine you meant what the technology could evolve into. But what I’m saying is the technology is fundamentally incapable of being intelligent.

                I imagine you think of “the technology” as just artificial intelligence in general. I’m talking about the actual technology in todays “ai”. The inner workings.

  • Destraight@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    The SEC means: Security, and Exchange Commission. In case anybody like myself hates abbreviations, and have to look it up on Google to see what it even means

    • Lemminary@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Thanks, TIL.

      Also, I don’t even know why tf people downvote helpful answers like these. Bonus shit points if they also turn around and criticize Redditors for behaving a certain way. Ffs, man. /rant