Millisecond Trading - Money for Nothing
It's ironic that reducing latency by 60ms can in any way present a profit potential relative to, for example, predicting the distant future. One would expect that using millisecond trading to stealthily amass giant portions of shares while executing finely-tuned control of other computer and human trading systems in order to maximize the elasticity contrary to what the computer really wants to do, such as buy into a company that's going from a low valuation to a high valuation (or vice-versa) do to insurmountable real-world influences, such as a new product that has a provable advantage over competitors product pipelines, would be far more lucrative.
However, we're really only tapping into what we know computers to do well, which is do things really fast, and also to statistically work on things that humans can't in timescales that humans can't. The amount and speed of math is being used to make predictions of incredibly low real value but at a very high rate. Essentially we're using computers to sift through information of little to no value compared to a hypothetical case such as buying into tech companies at the bottom of a recession (oh, we need strong AI to do that well) when even a system that was borderline moron at everything else would be so greatly benefited by this one, large-time-scale prediction at even a marginal accuracy, so long as the answer was categorically correct, that millisecond systems would be largely abandoned to a front-line role, executing those strategies without giving away one's high-value prediction.
No, we're still at the place where making those systems faster, increasing the domain of actionable short-time-scale interactions, pays off.
To be fair it's entirely likely that such future prediction systems are in place and are making predictions. However, if such a system were in place, it would find many greater markets than simply pushing money around. What about product design, customer service, marketing research, generating viral marketing content, or automating any number of other processes that a somewhat strong AI could? What about managing projects and connecting people?
The truth is that millisecond trading is a huge drain on our computational and intellectual know-how precisely because it's pidgeon-holing the technology into what we know computers are good at and developing nothing of the strong-AI that would be useful in practically every other field. It's a drain on mathematicians, programmers, system operators, security experts, etc etc etc. It's a distraction into a game that produces huge monetary returns and no social value. Perhaps the only value is coming in the form of improvements to the Linux low-latency kernel lines and hopefully broad improvements to the Linux kernel.
The rich get richer by hiring the smart to produce nothing while amassing lots of money. We should have more dignity. After all, it's quite frequent that products of vast utility to humanity make far more money than millisecond trading operations. We spend $3.2 globally on food. We spend vastly more on things that are of utility.