Will Machines Take Over Finance? -

I've been interested in artificial intelligence (AI) – the concept that humans can design a machine that thinks for itself without explicitly provide instructions (or a "program") -- since the early 1970s. As an undergraduate math major, I wrote a program designed to learn to play the game of Monopoly (checkers was too easy, chess was too hard). The program "knew" the objective, the layout of the board, the rules of play, and the content of the three stacks of cards that drive the game. It could handle up to 8 players. It wasn't very smart, but it had one great advantage -- it could play thousands of games against itself, remember the outcomes, and analyze why it had won (someone always wins) or lost using some simple algorithms. After a few weeks it was virtually unbeatable against one or more humans.