Robots and casino finance

There is a hoary thread in the sci-fi genre that “A robot may not harm humanity, or, by inaction, allow humanity to come to harm.” (Isaac Asimov)

So we picture robots as machines with arms and eyes and voices which walk about stiffly doing our commands. We do not picture them as servers in the back office in Berne, moving money and credits about, bringing financial doom on persons on Main Street.

“Casino finance” is a term that is used by Capra, Luisi, Posner, Weyl and some others to talk about what happened in 2008, when these computers ran amok and did actual damage to humans. The easy answer is to program them to do no harm. The difficult question is how. The most difficult question is who will have the will to do so?

:- Doug.

Published in: Conversations | on May 31st, 2016 | No Comments »

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