Financial Singularity

Robots. They are at once creepy and fascinating, scary and awe-inspiring, potentially dangerous (looking at you, I, Robot) and totally exciting. Robots can do more and more things every day, from assembling cars to “dancing” around our living rooms. Advances in artificial intelligence, or AI, are making robots more capable all the time.

But what would happen if AI advanced to the point where computers made all of our investment decisions for us? That point, friends, would be what the experts call “financial singularity,” and it would basically indicate that computers have become smarter than people when it comes to investment strategies and decisions.

Fascinating? Yes. Creepy? Also a lot of yes.

But don’t go heading off the grid just yet. Even the most confident AI experts say this won’t be possible until at least 2030. The less-confident don’t think it’ll happen at all. We don’t know who’s right, but in the meantime, it looks like plain old people are still going to be responsible for making investment decisions, at least in the short term.