It's often said that artificial intelligence is coming for people's jobs and that may be especially true in the case of the stock market.
That's after AI system ChatGPT was tasked with running a portfolio between 6 March and 28 April where it was competing against some of the most prestigious investment funds in the UK.
AI is expected to have a significant impact on our world and that includes invading the world of work, possibly even replacing people's jobs altogether.
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There are plenty of experts who would like humanity to hit the brakes on this new technology and figure out what we actually want to do with it instead of just letting it spread.
Before he died, Stephen Hawking warned AI could lead to 'the end of the human race', while technological genius and 'the Godfather of AI' Geoffrey Hinton just recently resigned from Google after regretting how much he had helped AI develop.
Back in March of this year, 1,000 experts signed a letter calling for AI development to be put on hold for at least six months for the good of humanity, so we could actually figure out what we do and don't want it doing before we end up in a world where it does everything.
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According to CNN, at around that same time financial comparison site finder.com decided to put ChatGPT through an experiment with a portfolio of stocks.
In the eight working weeks that the experiment went on, the stock portfolio managed by AI gained 4.9 percent in value, while over the same span of time portfolios run by 10 prominent investment funds on average lost 0.8 percent.
It would seem that AI has significantly outdone human experts when it comes to playing the stock market, and the major companies among those it invested in included Microsoft, Netflix and Walmart.
Large investment funds have been using AI to help them in their decision making for a while but now it's available to the public at large.
In recent months, the development AI has demonstrated is staggering, and occasionally terrifying when it does something like ask for access to the nuclear codes.
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Technology is getting pretty good at mimicking human creative output, and is able to produce pictures and artwork that experts couldn't identify as AI-made when competing against human creations.
Fortunately there are still some flaws in what you can do with an AI as it doesn't always manage to pass muster, but plenty of people are making use of the technology to quickly create something they either couldn't make themselves or would take much longer to make.
AI is already smart enough to trick people and it turns out they're tipped to take over all sorts of jobs, so a world where we basically defer to whatever the computer says may not be too far off.
Topics: Artificial Intelligence, Technology, Money