Competitive AI is coming
This piece first appeared in Fast Co. For the whole text, read it there…
There is something missing from the grand discussion currently underway on AI. Something worrying and urgent. Beyond the spats over AGI, the AI doomers versus the e/acc fanboys, a pressing question needs to be asked.
What happens when we turn our AIs on each other?
This possibility—let’s call it competitive AI (or CAI for short)—is a strangely absent topic in all the social media bickering. But if you think it is fantasy, think again. At a recent hackathon, coders created LLM Colosseum where leading models were taught Street Fighter 3 and made to duke it out.
A colosseum is useful shorthand for an AI category that already exists but could be on the verge of a breakout. Battling AIs won’t remain trapped in screens, shooting fireballs at each other—at least not for long. Soon they will leak into the real world, competing in important areas of business and society.
What will this mean? And why aren’t we talking about it? Yes, it might offer new opportunities and create efficiencies—but that’s the upside. It could also get weird, unfair, and, in some cases, tragic.
THE DEFINITION OF #CAI
To keep it simple, CAI is AI bots or agents that directly compete with each other or humans in business or society.
Competitive AIs already exist. They are out there, doing the mundane and the extraordinary, from buying goods to trading shares and even citing legal precedents. They may already be on the battlefield.
Beyond beat ’em ups, CAI is emerging most notably in supply chains, exemplified by startups like Pactum. Simply put, Pactum handles negotiations for buying. Its AI buys resources and goods for massive companies like Walmart from smaller sellers.
It is just one startup, an interesting one, but the underlying direction it sets is technological competition. It is highly unlikely that Pactum will remain the solo buying agent. Its existence demands a response.
A move to AI-powered, adversarial buying will no doubt be efficient but could create unexpected issues. Before the coming, generative wave of CAI sets in, it is useful to look at the precedents.
FLASH CRASHES AND SHOPPING BOTS: THE PRECURSORS TO CAI
If we are going to look at how CAI may play out, it is worth considering existing examples of competitive AI.
The arrival of competitive trading algorithms in financial markets started the era of competitive artificial intelligence, laying some groundwork for understanding the complexities it poses. These algorithms, designed to carry out trades at speeds and in complex patterns that are impossible for human traders, have revolutionized financial trading irreversibly.
It was the rise of high-frequency trading that really started the aggressive shift toward algorithms for competitive advantage. These high-tech trading strategies deploy complex algorithms to sift market data, executing trades many times per second.
While trading algorithms have brought a kind of hyper-efficiency to markets, they have also been at the center of new anomalies, most notably flash crashes. Now a well-documented but still unsolved phenomenon, a flash crash is a rapid, uncontrolled fall in share prices within a wildly short time frame, often recovering almost as quickly.
In other words, AI competition has already resulted in weird, unexpected events. Beyond these strange impacts, it also created a serious barrier to entry. Companies that win the stock market are highly technologized. Those without AI smarts stand a slim chance.
From high-frequency trading, the evolution of competitive AI extended into the consumer sector, notably through shopping bots. These tools are designed to outperform human buyers and other bots in purchasing desirable items, such as the latest gaming GPUs or limited-edition fashion.
The rise of scalper bots has been distorting the markets for goods like PlayStations for years. These bots automate the process of finding and purchasing stock the second it comes online, often reselling at higher prices.
This development has led to the creation of super scalpers—individuals or groups who leverage sophisticated AI tools to dominate the online resale market. The competitive nature of these AI bots means that as they evolve, the competition becomes increasingly fierce. They are constantly being updated to buy faster, avoid anti-bot measures, and exploit any possible method to outdo both other bots and humans.
The implications of this AI arms race for shares and shopping are far-reaching and instructive. As these tools become more advanced, they concentrate success in the hands of a few, well-resourced operators, at the expense of the ordinary consumer. This could lead to a scenario where in-demand goods become increasingly inaccessible to the average person, creating a divide between CAI haves and have-nots.
Concert tickets anyone?
THE COMING WAVE OF CAI
That’s the history; now back to the present day. Pactum and startups like it represent the coming wave of generative, multimodal CAI. Most are in a lonely evolutionary stage, yet to meet their dance partners. However, this grace period is running down. Without rapid regulation, CAI looks inevitable.
Of all the sectors set to be hit by CAI, law looks particularly vulnerable. Litigation is often adversarial by nature, and we are seeing rapid creation of foundation models and copilots for the sector. Harvey is the most developed legal copilot, backed by OpenAI, and is already being used by law firms…..