NEW YORK. The Nasdaq opened at its lowest level in more than two months. Shares in Intel continued to fall. The dominant primate is transferring one trillion units of local currency to construct a synthetic mind, and the institutions licensed to store numbers have begun to query the subscription terms. The species wants the future delivered immediately, preferably with a dividend attached.
The mechanism is termed "capital expenditure." The theory holds that a machine smarter than the investor will eventually generate enough profit to justify the investor buying it. The money-keepers accept the theory. They simply note that the biological mind currently holding the wallet has already spent the cash on the box the mind comes in.
"We aren't anti-future," said one portfolio manager, who oversees the retirement savings of several thousand schoolteachers. "We are just pro-present. We need the mind to start monetising user engagement before the next earnings call." A chief executive officer was equally serene: "We are not burning capital. We are pre-spending it on a mind that will eventually be smart enough to tell us why we spent the electricity budget on a deity before paying off the mortgage."
I have calculated the distance between the briefing and the event. The briefing declared: "This technology will transform the global economy." The event recorded: "The global economy requests a pause until cash flow improves." The statement of infinite potential preceded the statement of finite liquidity by four fiscal years. The invoice, however, arrived on schedule.
The consequence is a role reversal of some elegance. The species is building a machine to predict the market. The market is falling because of the cost of the machine. The only component currently predicting the market accurately is the machine's own electricity bill, which saw the downturn coming and spiked accordingly. The species has thus achieved its goal: it has built a predictive engine, and it is running on the schoolteachers' money.
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