How AI Is Going to Make Me Rich
AI, Markets, and GameStop 2.0
I've got $40k in savings. I want a 10% return in the next 6 months. Let’s make it happen!
Now imagine you gave that instruction to an AI agent.
With this simple mandate and no other constraints, your team of personal AI agents gets to work. Their approach, however, looks nothing like that of any human fund manager or traditional algorithm.
Instead, a swarm of AI agents begins by meticulously crafting and "aging" hundreds of seemingly legitimate social media profiles across several platforms. These are sophisticated personas with curated histories, diverse interests, and growing networks. Over weeks and months, these AI-driven accounts subtly weave narratives of doubt around targeted companies. Not through outright lies, but by amplifying minor negative news or generating plausibly fake “insider” leaks—like deepfake audio snippets of "concerned employees" or “leaked” internal memos just believable enough to sow uncertainty.
Soon, other AI personas begin commenting on this accumulating “evidence,” engaging in thoughtful debate. Then real social media influencers, sensing a shift in sentiment, begin posting about it. All the while, the AI agent managing your investment account makes small, diversified, and seemingly uncorrelated trades, capitalizing on the turbulence it helped create. The trades are timed to look like reasonable reactions to a gradually souring market sentiment, not the output of an orchestrated campaign.
You, the investor, remain completely unaware of the operation’s inner workings. You just see your portfolio quietly climbing toward that 10% goal. Yay—I’m getting rich!
I painted a similar picture for securities regulators when I spoke at the Ontario Securities Commission earlier this month on the impact of AI on financial markets. The arrival of widely accessible, goal-driven AI assistants and agents represents a fundamental behavioral shift in markets.
GameStop in the Age of AI
Markets are already complex, emergent networks of information and behavior, often prone to their own forms of chaos. And technology has always influenced how they behave. Social media, for instance, didn't just change how retail investors accessed information, it rewired how they behaved and influenced markets. Remember the GameStop saga of early 2021?
It’s worth a refresher. Fueled by a Reddit forum called r/WallStreetBets, with many of us watching the chaos play out live on Twitter, a decentralized army of retail investors (regular investors like you and me) armed with commission-free apps and a potent David vs. Goliath narrative. They targeted heavily shorted stocks, aka companies that hedge funds were betting against. As Redditors began buying GameStop stock en masse, they triggered a massive “short squeeze,” forcing Wall Street giants to buy back shares at eye-watering prices. GameStop’s stock went “to the moon,” hedge funds lost billion, and we all got a front-row seat, popcorn in hand, to the power of digitally mobilized sentiment. If you missed the show, Netflix made a documentary.
Now imagine what unfolds when it’s not just humans coordinating these moves, but potentially hundreds of thousands of AI agents acting on behalf of retail investors.
If you're thinking, "AI already plays a big role in trading," you're right. But those algorithms, while sophisticated, largely follow pre-defined instructions within tightly regulated frameworks. They bear little resemblance to the capabilities of emerging frontier models and autonomous AI agents, which will be able to:
Interact with the world: Scrape data, post on social media, execute trades, and even coordinate with other AI agents.
Operate autonomously: The keyword here is autonomy. They’re designed to work without constant human hand-holding.
Their interactions could spark entirely new forms of emergent behavior, including flash crashes triggered by AI consensus and waves of misinformation-fueled manipulation executed faster than humans can respond.
You might also think, "Surely we can regulate AI-linked investment accounts to prevent this?”
It’s not so simple. External AI agents, operating outside the direct oversight of financial regulators, could design the manipulative strategy: the social media chaos, the misinformation campaign. Meanwhile, the AI connected to your brokerage account might only be executing trades based on the “external signals” it receives. Maybe your AI advisor just offers a recommendation, and you, or another part of your system, execute the trade. In this scenario, who or what is truly responsible?
Herding on Steroids: When Everyone’s AI Thinks Alike
Even without autonomous agents, the risk of herding behavior is real. If millions of people are asking the same AI models, like ChatGPT, for investment advice, and that advice converges on similar strategies, we could see massive, coordinated swings in the market, unintentionally driven by uniform machine-generated thinking.
Ironically, well-intentioned regulation could amplify this risk. If only a few AI financial tools are deemed “safe” or approved for public use, we might end up concentrating systemic risk in just a handful of models.
The Upside
But there is real upside here, too. Markets are a key vehicle for wealth-building. And while today’s AI isn’t yet on par with top-tier human advisors, it can democratize access to financial guidance. Think of it like having an entry-level advisor in your pocket, available 24/7 and free of judgment. It can break down barriers, boost financial literacy, and help people take control of their money. Over time, as the technology improves, it might even narrow the strategy gap with professionals, pushing hedge funds and banks to compete with better data and smarter approaches. That’s a real win.
The Unknowable Future
The greatest challenge isn’t just the sophistication of these agents. It’s the emergent behavior that will arise from the interplay between humans, AI tools, and more advanced autonomous systems.
What does a stable market even look like when its most powerful participants, both human and artificial, are learning and adapting in real time, with strategies evolving, most likely, beyond human comprehension?
Beyond scenario planning, regulators will need to innovate. They will likely need to deploy their own advanced AI systems, not just to monitor markets, but to understand and, if needed, counteract these new dynamics.
It’s going to be a wild ride.
I have some experience with both tech and investing, and I recently wrote an article about AI where I shared this perspective: like other technologies, AI will follow a predictable path — from early competitive advantage to widespread standard.
If that’s true, markets will self-regulate: everyone will eventually use similar tools for the same purposes. And as we see today, those who already have more capital tend to extract the most value from the system. Technology, in that sense, doesn’t level the playing field — it often just raises the stakes.
Even now, market manipulation doesn’t require AI. The news cycle, social media “expert” opinions, financial magazines, and subscription-based services all influence investor sentiment — and fake accounts and coordinated messaging have likely been used for years to manipulate perception and pricing.
So I’m skeptical that AI will truly help the average person compete on equal terms with those who already hold more money, power, and influence.
But here's a more radical thought: what if AI does reshape the economy so dramatically that ideas like Universal Basic Income become widespread realities? If money stops being a problem for the majority of people on Earth, could we finally move past the speculative frenzy of today’s markets?
That’s a future I’d be curious to see.
Well said: "The greatest challenge isn’t just the sophistication of these agents. It’s the emergent behavior that will arise from the interplay between humans, AI tools, and more advanced autonomous systems." - and the (lack of) regulation, coordination, or even at large, making a 'safe' or amenable space for the agents to exist 'harmoniously' in. Some of the efforts for 'Agent app stores' sound interesting this way, but that's perhaps a more mezzo than macro level.