(The Atlantic) – In 2010—well before the rise of ChatGPT and Claude and all the other sprightly, conversational AI models—an army of bots briefly wiped out $1 trillion of value across the NASDAQ and other stock exchanges. Lengthy investigations were undertaken to figure out what had happened and why—and how to prevent it from happening again. The Securities and Exchange Commission’s report on the matter blamed high-frequency-trading algorithms unexpectedly engaging in a mindless “hot potato” buying and selling of contracts back and forth to one another.

A “flash crash,” as the incident was called, may seem quaint relative to what lies ahead. That’s because, even amid all the AI hype, a looming part of the AI revolution is under-examined: “agents.” Agents are AIs that act independently on behalf of humans. (Read More)