Algo bots and the law : technology, automation, and the regulation of futures and other derivatives

Author / Creator

Scopino, Gregory A., 1971- author

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Online

Physical

Summary

"This book is about how the technological advances in automation and artificial intelligence (AI) that have fundamentally changed the nature of the U.S. markets for futures contracts and other deri...

"This book is about how the technological advances in automation and artificial intelligence (AI) that have fundamentally changed the nature of the U.S. markets for futures contracts and other derivatives are necessitating, in some areas, changes to the legal and regulatory framework for these markets. To arrive at policy solutions to address the ways that AI systems are altering the markets, this book examines how algorithmic robots-algo bots, for short-have largely taken over trading in the futures markets, analyzes how regulators have responded to these changes thus far, and explores what steps policy makers should take in the future. But before diving into any of those topics, allow me to put the societal impact of these advances in computer science technologies in a broader context, beyond finance and derivatives. Technology has changed our world so much in recent decades that it even has altered the types of things that we take for granted. For example, I went to high school at a time when students would say, "I wrote my term paper on a computer." The last part of that sentence has become assumed. If a student boasted of writing a paper on a computer today the reaction would be, "No kidding! How do you send your friends messages? With carrier pigeons instead of texts?" The same is true for spelling and grammar. In the days before widespread use of word processing programs, only humans could review and correct text for spelling and grammatical errors. Nowadays practically everyone uses word-processing software that comes with spellcheck and grammar review. As a result, the first reaction of a university professor who receives a student paper riddled with spelling and grammatical errors is likely to be, "How lazy! This student handed in a paper without even running spellcheck." Indeed, most university professors today probably would not accept hand-written research papers from students, and even the use of typewriters is largely a thing of the past. In short, references to "writing" academic papers, news articles, and, frankly, just about anything, has generally become synonymous with using a computer to do so. When someone tells you that they are working on writing something, in most cases, the use of a computer is implied or assumed"--

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