Last month, everyone in Korea paid attention to the Go battle between Go master (world champion) and Alpha Go (artificial intelligence). Go is a Chinese traditional game (for details, please refer to the link: https://goo.gl/8G7yin). Artificial intelligence in chess game invented approximately two decades ago. However, the reason why people paid attention is that the number of case for Go is larger than the number of atoms in the Universe. The go's number of case is 2.08×10^170, while all atoms in the universe are 12×10^78. Therefore, the artificial intelligence could not win over humans because winning strategy is not in calculating all probability.
The result was Alpha Go's victory. Alpha Go, developed by Google, won four games out of five games, and this news shocked the world. Alpha Go could win but because it won based on its machine learning skills without calculating all cases existed in the game. People start to believe humans just face new era.
People believe that the artificial intelligence will transform humans' life in the future. One part that will experience a huge change will be finance industry.According to this article (http://goo.gl/4e7Sc8) at BBC.com, the Wall Street already started to use robot in their investment. The reporter, Michelle Fluery, claimed that "Machines are now responsible for most of the activity on Wall Street." The current machines seem to calculate what the current possible profits by considering limited factors. However, what if someone further develops the artificial intelligence that can learn a whole world economy situation, all participants of stock market, participants' investment tendency and so on? Based on potentials that Alpha Go shows in the Go match, such learnings seems possible in one day.
Then, what would happen in finance industry? If such finance expert artificial intelligence supplies to everyone, will there be meanings for financial industry? What would financial industry look like if there are neither winners nor losers because of the artificial intelligence?
Then, what would happen in finance industry? If such finance expert artificial intelligence supplies to everyone, will there be meanings for financial industry? What would financial industry look like if there are neither winners nor losers because of the artificial intelligence?
What is your opinion about artificial intelligence in finance industry? Please feel free to share not only your opinion, but also your imagination. I know there are some articles that say the artificial intelligence only can replace limited area for finance industry, but who knows?
As someone who watched one of those Go games, this is a fascinating topic. On the 4th round, AlphaGo seemed very lost when Lee Se-Dol placed his white stone at 78, which was out of AlphaGo's calculation, and this led Lee into the victory. Though AlphaGo eventually won and allowed Google to have $48.9 billion increased market cap, it still showed that there are some limitations in artificial intelligence. However, as stated above, it definitely proved the potential of artificial intelligence industry as a next bonanza.
ReplyDeleteAccording to Huffington Post, a Staff.com co founder Rob Rowson predicted that bookkeepers and accountants will be extinct by the year 2028, especially due to artificial intelligence software. (http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/8-jobs-that-will-go-extin_b_8010878.html)
This made me question if all those lucrative jobs in finance sector will be able to stay without being replaced by these softwares which make no mistakes, and are much faster and accurate. But I believe humans are humans because we can be creative and have flexibility to solve a problem when faced a new problem, just like AlphaGo showed.
Finance sector people would be happy to find a new gold mine, but should start worrying about their near future whether they will be able to stay in the industry, after they make enough with artificial intelligence.
I've read a lot of papers about the future impact of robots on the job market. Professors, lawyers, doctors, and many other "skilled" workers perform creative work. But they also perform more mundane tasks as well. If the mundane tasks can be separated from the creative, robots can do them. Not only that, but the professional can be paid less because he/she does less.
ReplyDeleteI don't necessarily know if lower wages would be the result of moving some artificial intelligence into these fields. Take doctors for instance. If they replace all of their mundane tasks with AI, then that will just clear up more time for them to do the more complicated things only they can do. In that case they are now treating more patients and working more efficiently. In this case doctors could be paid more, especially if it is still a fee-for-service profession, although there would probably be fewer jobs available.
DeleteI agree with Spencer. As technology has improved throughout the ages, lower skilled, mundane tasks have been eliminated, which allows humans to perform more skilled labor. Since this technolgical advancement is in the form of AI, we can't say for sure how this will effect the job market, though time and again there have been technology scares, but humanity has persisted and continued to innovate.
DeleteI found an interesting article about Sweden becoming a cashless society. This issue is more focused on the near future rather than AI replacing skilled/unskilled jobs. According to the article, bills and coins now represent only 2 percent of Swedish economy compared to 7.7 percent in the U.S. In 2015, only 20 percent of all consumer transactions have included cash payments in Sweden. These happened because of increased use of credit card or apps for payments. Using cards is still a number one method of payment, but the use of apps like apple pay or android pay is gradually rising. Some argue that a cashless society will marginalize older generations and those who heavily rely on cash payments, but an interesting fact is that government hasn't done anything because electronic transactions are more efficient in collecting taxes. If the electronic transactions are completely integrated into the world making it the cashless society (it's an extreme example), perhaps it's efficient to use bitcoin.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/27/business/international/in-sweden-a-cash-free-future-nears.html?_r=0