Many signs indicate that machines – which are obviously not humans – will have a separate economy. It may be sooner than you think…
In practice, this means that there will be autonomous software or even hardware capable of making independent decisions, which will carry out financial transactions, purchases, and sending documentation in the future with minimal human control.
The present
Imagine a situation where a truck pulls into a fuel station, say a Shell station, and then begins to refuel. After refueling, the truck pays for the purchased fuel, handles the paperwork, and the paperwork between the filling station (invoice operations, sending and receiving documents to the appropriate place), and then closes this financial transaction without human intervention.
Or imagine a situation where a printer costing approximately thirty thousand forints, using the previously provided payment solution – see credit card, suddenly orders a couple of printer cartridges. Not only does it order them, but it also arranges for delivery, which arrives at your door without your intervention.
Therefore, the era of independent, autonomous decision-making software and hardware has already begun. This is a fact.
The future
In the future, there will be not only financial transactions decided by humans. Virtual, possibly artificial intelligence-operated personal assistants will independently handle purchases above a certain amount in the interest of their owner or client. Why?
If you examine a peculiar process that is part of our profession's daily life, such as Meta's payment solution, where you provided a credit card to Meta five years ago, which Meta automatically charges every week, sometimes multiple times, with hundreds of thousands or three hundred thousand forints, which your bank settles without intervention.
This is not madness, although it is easy to see the risks associated with such uncontrolled spending. Yet, it is evident that an entire sector with tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of participants allows both Meta and Google to automatically charge large amounts to your account without even asking for the owner's decision. Why? Because it is convenient and fast.
The lack of subjectivity
As can be seen from the examples above – of which there are not too many – no subject played a role in any machine decision. When a person buys, say, an ink cartridge – just to move on from the previous example – the owner examines the possibility of purchasing the cartridge directly from the manufacturer, which is presumably one of the most expensive solutions, or looks for the cheapest solution on the market. They might also consider aftermarket cartridges, which are significantly cheaper than any other solution. Of course, the quality is also much lower.
In the current example, it can be seen that this extremely cheap and simple printer capable of autonomous decision-making did not make decisions such as conducting a quick price competition. Therefore, this example is not a classic autonomous decision-making case, because in that case, the owner would have prioritized their interests first. In other words, it is expected that such an assistance-type service will serve the owner's interests in the future. Not necessarily just their convenience, but also their financial efficiency.
The machine economy
The machine economy* is a transaction that takes place between machines, during which the two participants, software or hardware, conduct a financial-economic transaction with each other. It pays for some product or service, e.g., a coffee machine autonomously orders a refill from a third-party provider.
The payment
The peers of the Machine Economy, that is, the participating parties – the buyer and the seller – are always a hardware or a software. The paying party is, of course, a natural person or a business entity.
Law, warranty, and liability in the world of autonomous systems
The legal aspect is perhaps the most exciting part of this issue. Does a hardware and/or software capable of independent decision-making qualify as a legal entity? This is an extremely complex legislative and judicial question, which we will not attempt to open in this article, but it is worth considering how one party would handle a problem in the machine economy.
Currently, it is not precisely known and defined how a machine that provides faulty performance, a low-quality product, or a low-quality service can enforce the terms of warranty and repair following a financial transaction decision made during autonomous decision-making. We are not discussing customer service now, of course, since if our robot or software orders a faulty product, it currently has to be corrected by a human. Which is not surprising at all.
Prepare for the era of the machine economy
Those companies that have been able to create functioning webshops for people are already working on what interfaces, what technology, what network conditions, what bandwidth, and what protocols are necessary for machines to autonomously conduct purchases seamlessly within their owners' interests. The machine economy is an M2M** field on the brink of explosion. The field itself is still unexplored, but the complex technological solutions are mostly given. I would like to highlight the role of artificial intelligence in this process.
Keep an eye on the development of autonomous software and hardware. It is worth following the blog, where we will periodically present new information about this critically important area for the future.
Monitor the development of artificial intelligence solutions. Not just the imaging solutions, VEO 3, Midjourney, and their peers. Don't just focus on large language models like ChatGPT, Perplexity, etc., don't only think in terms of CoPilot, but also watch the development of drone technology, especially military drone technology.
A particularly important area is the development of virtual artificial intelligence. I would also like to mention the rapid advancement of machine vision here.
Subscribe and follow professional groups on LinkedIn, Facebook, not only in Hungarian but also in English. You can access the latest artificial intelligence news on professional blogs and in closed groups. And of course, here with us.
Concept explanation:
*Machine Economy: The machine economy refers to a digital ecosystem where machines and systems communicate independently, make decisions, and even execute financial transactions without human involvement. They not only collect data but also perform real, business-interpretable actions, such as ordering a service, optimizing a process, or paying for it.
This model emerged from the intersection of IoT devices, artificial intelligence, blockchain, and automated payment solutions.
**M2M: Machine to Machine (M2M) refers to direct, automatic communication between machines, enabling automation based on real-time feedback. This is the cornerstone of the machine economy: this is how devices can cooperate. Data exchange can occur over local networks, wired networks, wireless networks, or even through specialized industrial protocols.
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