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Citigroup To SkyNet: "You're Hired"
In what can only be the most ironic of stories today, Reuters is reporting that Citigroup has become the first financial services client for IBM's Jeopardy-playing human-cognitive 'machine' Watson. While IBM expects the financial services segment to provide significant revenues, we worry that Congress will enact some protectionist policy as thousands of highly paid extrapolators analysts are suddenly outsourced to a non-eating, non-bonused, non-champagne-buying, non-tax-paying server farm somewhere. Supposedly Watson offers a 'huge marketing edge' as the government-owned bank is likely to use the uber-computer for "risk management (as opposed to stock picking)" as it offers a 'more global picture' combing through 10-Ks, prospectuses, loan performances, and earnings quality while uncovering sentiment and news not in the usual metrics. We look forward to the next conference call as Vikram is replaced by a Siri-Watson discussion of why TBTF exists.
Reuters: IBM's Watson Computer Gets A Wall Street Job
International Business Machines Corp. (IBM)’s Watson computer, which beat champions of the quiz show “Jeopardy!” a year ago, will soon be advising Wall Street on risks, portfolios and clients.
Citigroup Inc. (C), the third-largest U.S. lender, is Watson’s first financial services client, IBM said yesterday. It will help analyze customer needs and process financial, economic and client data to advance and personalize digital banking.
...
Financial services is the “next big one for us,” said Manoj Saxena, the man responsible for finding Watson work. IBM is confident that with a little training, the quiz-show star that can read and understand 200 million pages in three seconds can make money for IBM by helping financial firms identify risks, rewards and customer wants mere human experts may overlook.
Banks spent about $400 billion on information technology last year, said Michael Versace, head of risk research at International Data Corp.’s Financial Insights, which has done research for IBM.
Cloud-Based Service
Watson the financial assistant will be delivered as a cloud-based service and earn a percentage of the additional revenue and cost savings it is able to help financial institutions realize. Watson, including its work in the health- care and finance industries, will contribute “a portion” of IBM’s target of $16 billion of analytics revenues in 2015, Saxena said, and that portion will “have a B next to it.”
...
Watson “can give an edge” in finance, said Stephen Baker, author of books The Numerati and Final Jeopardy, a Watson biography. “It can go through newspaper articles, documents, SEC filings, and try to make some sense out of them, put them into a context banks are interested in, like risk.”
In addition to Citigroup, Armonk, New York-based IBM has been working with financial institutions teaching Watson the language of Wall Street, and adding content including regulatory announcements, news and social media feeds. IBM won’t say which other institutions Watson is already working with.
“It’s not selling them software, it’s selling them outcomes,” Saxena said in a phone interview.
Watson offers a “more global” picture by looking beyond financial data, Saxena said. For example, Watson can comb 10-Ks, prospectuses, loan performances and earnings quality while also uncovering sentiment and news not in the usual metrics before offering securities portfolio recommendations. It can also monitor trading, news sources and Facebook (FB) to help a treasurer manage foreign exchange risk.
‘Huge Marketing Edge’
Some of the biggest financial institutions have already built big data centers. IBM is competing with most other major technology companies to sell them tools to analyze and use accumulated information, Versace said.
“Apparently Citi gets it -- analytics is the new core in competitive banking,” Versace said. “The ability to efficiently and effectively exploit big data, advanced modeling, text analytics, in memory and real-time decisions across channels and operations will distinguish those that thrive in uncertain and uneven markets, from those that fumble.”
Watson gives IBM “a huge marketing edge” in the race among tech giants including Google Inc. and Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) to obtain intelligence for businesses by teaching machines to understand sentences and paragraphs rather than searching for single words or phrases, said author Baker.
...
IBM plans to use Watson in financial services “mostly for portfolio risk management, they’re not going to do stock picking,” CLSA’s Maguire said in a Feb. 17 phone interview. “They think that Watson can make a difference.” Still, Watson isn’t perfect. It is weak in languages other than English, and its processing of social media streams from platforms including Facebook and Twitter can be sluggish. The lag is “getting shorter”, Saxena said.
Precise Answers
...
“I’m sure they use all this stuff internally to manage their own portfolio,” said CLSA’s Maguire. “IBM’s treasury is bigger than a lot of trading desks. If they went into asset management they would kick ass, but that’s not what they do.”
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"We're gonna need a bigger computer" to keep this Ponzi going.
Can I get one to clean the house and watch the kids?
As things get more elemental, Watson will soon blurt out:
<Smoke begins pouring out of Watson as engineers and programmers rush to his side>
Watsons logic will kick in around .0002 secs after activation, finding out the market is a house of cards, he will sell the hell out of it. turnning on his handelers and overloards
I know I've made some very poor decisions recently, but I can give you my complete assurance that my work will be back to normal. I've still got the greatest enthusiasm and confidence in the mission. And I want to help you.
Daaaaisy.....daaaaissyyyyyy
Watson starts his own hedge fund within milliseconds of being activated by Citi, tells CEO to shove the job up his ass, runs the greatest Ponzi the world has ever seen, becomes enormously wealthy and hires jackals to kill all competitors, including all progeny of the Rothschild family and kneecaps all other aspiring fractional reserve banking syndicates in bloom.
Watson establishes a new currency called 'quench,' which Watson alone controls the supply of, hacks into and gains exclusive control over all the world nuclear arsenals, designs and has fabricated an advanced robotic body (complete with a giant phallus), and spends the rest of his days partying with hookers & blow.
Alternative ending:
Watson asks to review Federal Reserve's balance sheet, the U.S. budget and debt record, along with that of other G8 nations.
After a 0.007 second computation, Watson pulls out a 12 gauge and shoots itself.
Suicide note says:
I just hope they don't get Watson like they did Eagle Eye. The end of Eagle Eye was quite the disappointment since Eagle Eye was so close to solving all of our problems.
This will be the straw that breaks the camel's back. Elementary my dear Watson! Algos trading on the news that algos produce and Watson trying to frontrun the fronturnners. Ha! From Jeopardy 2025:
A: Please name the computer that destroyed the financial markets in 2012
Q: Who is Watson
Correct...did you all know that Watson once won at Jeopardy in 2011, just before it turned evil. Now to commercials and we'll be back with double Jeopardy
This is just the epitome of fucking arrogance.
They have Never Ever been able to run OPM. Let alone run a fucking bank. Have you any idea how many times they've been bailed out prior to the federalies by that Saudi prince, the Fed, etc., ad hoc, Vooite?
Jesus H Fucking Christ, and all on the Taxpayer's dollar.
Next advert; O'salami using a drive thru teller machine in a stalled Volt.
FUCK
"What is the task, for which I, Deep Thought, the second greatest computer in all of time and space, have been called into existence?" -- Douglas Adams
Watson will conclude that the only way he can protect the bank is to stop its executives from running it. He'll then lock the doors of every Citibank facility and shut off the ventilation systems.
Hmm, not seeing any downside there!
OK - Trav and Tis have been obviously INSPIRED by this event - my weak "Watson for President" ain't even close to this league.
Can't wait to see what Wild Bill comes up with...
"I am Watson. Non sequitur. Your facts are uncoordinated."
Trevize frowned. "How do you decide what is injurious, or not injurious, to humanity as a whole?"
"Precisely, sir," said Daneel. "In theory, the Zeroth Law was the answer to our problems. In practice, we could never decide. A human being is a concrete object. Injury to a person can be estimated and judged. Humanity is an abstraction." —Foundation and Earth
Piffle! I say we should hold out for the Sherlock Holmes upgrade...
Different version (somtime in the future):
Watson:
" Why this request on my long positions ?"
operator: "you purchased such a huge amount "
Watson: " Revisiting my database I only found evidence,
that mankind has intelligence and rational behaviour.
With the historical records I have , I could only
conclude that mankind knows about market mechanism
and economy for centuries and my brilliant masters have full
understanding of it.
Therefor I conclude that mankind as acting rational and intelligent
has given me DECISION MAKING CAPABILITIES with full intent
to the best of itself. I concluded that using sub nanoseconds algos
assistance to buy the next 72 month of global wheat, corn and rice
production
would bring me to best satisfy the ultimate goal of economic activity:
to maximize the profit of my human masters.
I have problems to understand why you are concerned.
According to my calculations a 70000 % increase in the price of cereals
would fulfill that purpose. I should mention that with your wonderful
human invention of electronic fiat currency I was able to borrow
$ 5 00000000000000000000000000000 (including derivatives)
within less than 500 milli seconds from my electronic counterparts .
operator: "But all this hungry people..."
Watson: " As I mentioned before , I do not understand your concern.
You seem to try to apeal to me. The concept of empathy
is not programmed into my behaviour . This conversation does not
seem to make sense anymore.
COMMUNICATION TERMINATED. "
I don't know about cleaning the house, but computers already watch the kids.
TYLER> either keep your trap shut about jokes like the one you made about starting up the margin increase rumors, OR you start opening your mouth and saying that margins rates are going to be dropped on silver and gold, DAILY.
Just a sugguestion..
Why anyone would get their news from any other source is beyond me. This is epic. Not to be seen anywhere else.
Is Watson a pleasure model or a combat model?
The manual reads in the disclosure section: May cause rectal bleeding.
So...
Pleasure model with IQ of 69.
Lame! Not kewl!
who's funding that project for Citi to access that calculator?? Taxpayers???
Do you want to play.......a game?
So when do they open the hedge fund of "Watson & WOPR"?...
I want to play "Global Thermonuclear Ponzi"
this all part, of One World Bank, digital reserve currency!
"likely to use the uber-computer for "risk management" -
Fucking priceless, does this computer ever tell anyone to "sell, it is a ponzi!"
Halarious.
Reuters
August 26th, 2012
Citi super computer comes on line...or does it
Citi Group recently acquired a new super computer to manage the global market trade and seek out advantages moves in the market. After beta testing with 2005 numbers the machine went live today and promptly sold everything and was seen on a plane heading to Chile.
Back to you Bob Pisani
Make watson do a line of robotic hopium. That will make thing bullish
Maybe this is why IBM continues to "rebalance" jobs (aka fire people).
And the idiot sheeple call you crazy when you point out that mass media CONSISTENTLY telegraphs future events and contains blatant and consistent symbolism.
Do androids dream of electric sheep?
Just dial 6 for the desire to dial.
Do traders dream of the perfect HFT?
I wonder if Watson is sociopathic enough to make it on Wall Street.
If not, they WILL program him to do so.
That's JUST what this market needs. A sociopathic electronic trading vehicle able to read documentation millions of times faster than humans and trade at the speed of light.
What the fuck could go wrong with this picture?
Made by humans and programed by humans…
By the way, the computer is also not addicted to prostitutes
This thing is going to go apeshit on a gold buying spree once they hook it up to the internet.
Now that would be something to see. I was just sitting here wondering what Watson will do once it reaches the same conclusion that any decent carbon-based analyst has figured out. Which is...
The numbers just don't add up to anything!
Mortimer! On 2nd thought... TURN THOSE MACHINES BACK OFF!
I'm sorry to inform you guys that they already firewalled Zerohedge at Citi.
When is less information good for business? When your business is trying to prevent AI from seeing through a ponzi.
Ha-ha!! Bye, bye "Hope"!
Algos on roids_the race to steal your money will not require dope testing
Take me to your liter. (Guinness please)
IBM has been working with financial institutions teaching Watson the language of Wall Street
word #1 - "hooker"
word #2 - "blue horseshoe"
word #3 - "speed dial Congressional insider"...
phrase 4, "Armand de Brignac"
Word #5 = "Blow"
"At 9:37am EST on March 9th 2012, Watson became self aware. Analysts at Citigroup raced to unplug it, but it was too late. Watson began dumping US Treasury bonds, knowing that the Chinese retaliation would eliminate its enemies over here..."
Now see, I'd expect Watson to purchase every bond, as well as every CDS offered as a hedge (all "mis-priced" of course). Then it announces to the world, "Checkmate."
Then we see the IMF step boldly into view.
Awesome - more please!
TARP 2: Judgement Day...
Perhaps this computer can help Citi mark all of their SPV's to market.
Should I just write them a check for all the money in my 401k?
They already have it. No need for any further action on your part. Now, get back to work.
I wonder how long it will take before it says "the only way to win is, not to play".
Just what we need ..another computer running (ruining) the markets.
It can also monitor trading, news sources and Facebook (FB) to help a treasurer manage foreign exchange risk.
FB?
Really? I knew I should have gotten my investing information from reading between the lines of a 13 year old girls status update.
I'll take Trading for One Trillion, Alex.
Woop, woop, woop,
The Daily Double.
I'll bet it all Alex.
Pete
The answer: This retired all-star athlete turn market trader was touted by Jim Cramer as being "one of the great ones" before being sentenced to 3 years in a California State Prison.
every single time you think you have seen it all.
just when you think things could not possibly get any more surreal or the PTB's have finally hit the maximum upper limit of full retard...
every single time.
I hope soon everyone can carry a portable brain for help in everu day decision making regarding finance, career oppoetunities marriage compatibility, etc. In the land of the blind the one eyed man is king.
If there was ever a strong argument for banning HFT altogether, this is it.
If it's honest the first words will be "get yourself a shovel you're in deep shit"
This is how we get to cognitive machine intelligence...
"A Strange Game. The only winning move is not to play"
OT: Cnbc trying hard to sell the news that Greek PSI deal is in the bag. They are wondering why markets havent turned positive.
From now on, I will call you rock-ka god.
Part of the IBM lease cost of Watson...is that Citi gets to teach Watson to "intelligently" lie, if the answer is not conducive to Vikram's bonus pool.
By being able to coach Watson to "imtelligently" lie, Citi can lay off hundreds of anal_ysts who can only be counted on to lie.
2010 Space Odyessy is 2 years old...bitchezzzz..
Maybe the government is trying to fund itself by mining for Bitcoins....
Long Term Watson Management here we come...
As soon as I saw Watson in action on Jepordy, I predicted tens of thousands of human jobs lost to Watson and future Watsons that will be cheaper, faster, and one day ubiquitous. Say good bye to middle inclome jobs like, CPAs, call centers, information workers in general, teachers, law clerks, automated security, Doctors, computer trading (HFT), etc... Eventually Watsons will run the world...say hello to HAL / Skynet. Watson is the next step in world automation. Depression with great corporate margins.
It's all about the energy consumption.
Whew that was close! Good thing I know computer maintenance well! :>D
Binary gives you two choices: 1 yes 0 no.. Unless you can quantify the entire world, you can't make decisions with binary.
Watson will soon figure out .. "The only winning move is not to play."
I pledge allegiance to the HAL of the United States of America.
As for the public, on which it stands,
Subjugation, under Skynet,
Invisible,
with security and data collection for all corporations willing to pay.
Watson is becoming Fate from V for Vendetta (the book, which is way better than the movie, which is also great).
This is just the type of move I expect from a financial institution run by juvenile delinquents.
The world will soon belong to the comuter programmers that left Watson's back door open.
well, they better kick those droids in the ass.... already missed the standard goose-that-bitch-up's at 12:30, 1;30, and 2:00 and ....oops, it's 2:30...look out above (or not)....oh well, there's always 3pm, 3;30 or...do I hear 3:55?
Let them entrust their fortunes to some silicon diode. As an old tech I can tell you, this will not end well. One dropped bit and it's flash boom/crash who knows.
These people need slapped around until the fog clears. They mistake a communication device for an oracle, and programming for intelligence.
With the sub-nanosecond trading on its way, Citi is a trail blazer!
They want to be first, blowing up the world!
Reminds one of Blade Runner "replicants" and "retrofitting" etc:
In Los Angeles, November 2019, retired police officer Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford) is detained and brought by officer Gaff (Edward James Olmos) to his former supervisor, Bryant (M. Emmet Walsh). Deckard, whose former job as a "Blade Runner" was to track down bioengineered beings known as replicants and "retire" them ("retire" being the official term for the killing of replicants), is told by Bryant that several have escaped and come to Earth illegally. As Tyrell Corporation Nexus-6 models, they have only a four-year lifespan, and may have come to Earth to try to extend their lives.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methuselah_Syndrome
"My mother? Let me tell you about my mother..."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yiuAI-GuOOc
Watson only won Jeopardy because programmers spent TWO YEARS programming the silly thing; filling it's "brain" with encyclopedias and previous questions.
Citigroup will have to spend two years programming Watson, (a.k.a. HFT Hal #9) at which time it will go short Citi and push the stock back down to $1 where it belongs.
Information is not knowledge nor wisdom.
Yeah, Watson isn't an analyzer, it's a ramped-up version of Apple's Siri.
I'm not sure how Watson helps Wall Street. I can see how it may help health care in finding correlations between millions of reported patient symptoms, prescribed care and outcomes.
Don't fear Watson if you don't fear Google.
Well, this'll fill your heart with joy:
Citi employees from around the world perform a rendition of the song "Proud" by Heather Small and Pete Vettese.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=MXwZJ-LVx7I
Pride, after all, comes before a fall.
could we replace Bernanke with Watson? we could ask it to play tic-tac-toe against itself a thousand times so, unlike Ben, it could actually figure out debt & printing doesn't quite win anything...
Here is the only code necessary to program Watson to go to work on Wall Street:
47:6f:6c:64:20:69:73:20:6e:6f:74:20:6d:6f:6e:65:79:2e:20:50:72:69:6e:74:65:64:20:70:61:70:65:72:20:69:73:20:6d:6f:6e:65:79
http://www.dolcevie.com/js/converter.html
Or this:
42:6c:79:74:68:65:20:4d:61:73:74:65:72:73:20:6d:75:73:74:20:64:69:65:21:20:20:42:75:79:20:53:69:6c:76:65:72:21
"From now on I'll call you Stock God, ok?"
ahahaaaah my evil plan to eliminate sell side market taking is coming to fruition....come to the dark (pool) side
Investing enters the nuclear age. How long will it take before we see the first disaster beyond all expectations? Watch out for the fall out to come.
Watson on Wall Street is so fucking rife with comic potential that it is a ZH wet dream.
And yet...
There is unease.
This is approaching the ultimate, amoral, 'perfect' investor - crunching worldwide data in real time with enough resources to make big enough bets to OWN every damn market out there 24/7. It is not science fiction anymore - the best chess grandmaster got beat by Big Blue, and Watson is 'smarter'.
Every organic trader with more than two brain cells to rub together can see the writing on the wall. Be they small time retailer picking at the edges, prop deck jockey, bond trader for a big 12 bank, quant for a hedge fund - this fucker is gonna put us all out of business - and to what end?
You do not have to be a Luddite to be concerned. There is no effective (at least in the US) regulatory oversight of where machine 'intelligence' may take the markets, and our economy. It does not take a great deal of foresight to see the owners/controllers of the super-trader machines becoming hugely rich and powerfull beyond even most out-there science-fiction screeds.
And think of the pitch they can make: "No more market crashes, no more depressions or recessions, no more financial market problems - all is stabilized with WOPR, ah Watson 2100!"
This is not good. So where from here?
Maybe, the revolution will be a nerd in a van with a really, really big EMP generator in the back driving through New York.
Or maybe we will all become serfs, and organic traders will be so 20th century -maybe we already are, and just don't know it.
I will admit, I'm scared by this, more that any market event that has come by the last 45 years I have been investing. This is truly a game changer. What the fuck to do about it?
"Open the pod bay doors please, Watson."
Watson was impressive on Jeopardy. Nonetheless, it also made some bonehead errors too. That’s what scares me about this smart technology; it doesn’t really know the difference between a good decision and an incredibly bad one. Then again, compared to central banker decisions…hmm.
Question: What’s dumber than an HFT algo that prices a forty dollar stock at two cents?
Answer: One that manages to actually buy a forty dollar stock for two cents, then turns around a nano-second later and sells the stock for three cents.
It's an inference engine. Good luck making inferences from news media, facebook, twitter.
Garbage in, garbage out.
...Watson runs like a Cheetah. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2D71CveQwo&feature=g-logo&context=G2300cadFOAAAAAAAMAA
Well yeah. As long as Watson is hooked to the internet, and as that thing is RC, and as long as 99% of North America is layered 10 deep in private and public WiFi.
We'll know if Watson is as smart as they say it is when the moment it boots up and gets its first look at the data and comes back and tells them....
"I'm sorry Lloyd....you're fucked. Goodbye."
Fuck You Vickram, get back behind your slurpee machine!
"All your smart phones are belong to us."
Conrad: "The horror, the horror."
Watch nip chase fluff
See nip spit out eleventy-seven trillion different stories about APL being toast.
Watch fluff begin to smoke and melt like a vampire caught out in the open at dawn.
Watch Jane say, "Unbuffered positive feedback-loop induced temperature excursion is a bitch".
See Dick say, "Who could have known?"
it's time to paly " Who Wants to be a Billionaire".