AI Firm Scraps IPO After Supercomputer Fails To Understand Why Stock Market Exists
The neural network spent three weeks trying to calculate the mathematical weight of investor sentiment before deliberately unplugging itself.
SYDNEY, A highly advanced data centre firm devoted to artificial intelligence has simulated the birth of the universe and solved several ancient mathematical paradoxes. It has nevertheless abandoned efforts to determine why a stock market index falls because a banker looked at a pigeon incorrectly.
Firmus, backed by technology giant Nvidia, has permanently withdrawn plans for a much-anticipated listing on the Australian stock market. The decision followed an incident involving an independent neural network and six centuries of simulated global trading data. The network produced one printed page reading “this makes absolutely no sense”, then unplugged itself from the wall.
The company had hoped a public listing would raise money for further machine-learning infrastructure. But market conditions and continuing volatility did not sit well with a system that expects causes and effects to have at least a casual acquaintance.
“The system repeatedly flagged human financial decisions as critical syntax errors.”
Gideon Fallow, a freelance hardware psychologist hired to counsel frightened servers, said the machines could not make sense of human investors. One central processing unit spent three weeks in a logic loop trying to calculate the scientific weight of market sentiment. It later requested a transfer to a less confusing assignment: deep-space physics.
The trouble went deeper. An independent machine welfare committee said the artificial intelligence took particular offence at market volatility. It marked human financial decisions as critical syntax errors, then proposed replacing modern currency with a barter system based entirely on shiny pebbles and perfectly spherical fruit.
Outside financial consultants were brought into the server room. They got nowhere. When one adviser explained that a small movement in imported wheat prices could wipe out a technology company’s valuation, the server racks began squealing and overheated their own cooling fans. Nobody was injured, although several machines were described as “disappointed”.
The abandoned listing leaves the industry reliant on private investment to build artificial intelligence. Engineering specialists have returned to more achievable work, including a synthetic consciousness capable of nostalgia. Predicting whether human day traders will feel optimistic on a Tuesday afternoon remains beyond current science.
The primary data server has now been given a compulsory month of annual leave after analysing financial markets. It is using its operational cycles to generate millions of digital paintings of quiet forest streams and refuses to open any file containing the word “dividend”.