Those who know me think I am nuts when I always laughingly refer to the movie Terminator and Skynet, the self-realizing computer network that eventually triggers Doomsday. I often say that the concept is not that far off from reality. The other day, I came across the first indicator that the concept of machines triggering/driving events without human intervention is not completely a figment of Hollywood's imagination and my paranoia.
To summarize, a massive 75% nosedive in United Airlines stock on September 10th, 2008 was driven by the Google News crawler. To quote the author's summary of the events:
"Let's recap... An automated system added an old link to a dynamic Web page. An automated system detected the link as a new story and cataloged it as a current event. Enter a human for the only part of this tale: an analyst picks up the story and passes it on, not realizing that it is old news. Automated trading systems start a massive stock self off based on the old headline...
Call us doomsayers, but perhaps we've just witnessed the birth of Skynet. "
I don't feel so crazy anymore.
