Wall Street: ‘Machines just took over’ [Robot Apocalypse]

The war has expanded to the financial front, and the machines have come for our money.

No one was sure what happened, other than automated orders were activated by erroneous trades. One possibilility being investigated was that a trader accidentally placed an order to sell $16 billion, instead of $16 million, worth of futures, and that was enough to trigger widespread sell orders across the market.

"I think the machines just took over. There’s not a lot of human interaction,” said Charlie Smith, chief investment officer at Fort Pitt Capital Group. "We’ve known that automated trading can run away from you, and I think that’s what we saw happen today.”

We gave the machines control of all our money, and now we're paying for it.

[via Cam]