Yes, Robots Can

Back in the days when we were in the pits talking about if the CME should demutualize (or not) and if the exchange should spend more on electronic systems (or not) one of the things I used to hear a lot is that an electronic system could never do what humans do.

Turns out, they can.

There are a lot of things that very highly skilled people do that robots can do.  For example, if you visit a law firm you might see a few rooms where associates are grinding out research on cases.  They sift through court cases and pull out the relevant data so a senior attorney can make their case.  In many cases, it can be accomplished with a robot now.  An AI program.

We have already seen primitive chatbots do things in all kinds of software or cloud-based programs that people used to do.  Heck, writing this post I have a software program reading it and correcting the grammar and spelling.  As I have written before, I don’t think it’s anything to be scared of but should be embraced.  When washing machines were invented we weren’t scared.  It freed up time and resources to do other more valuable things.

There are lots of white collar functions in finance that robots will do.