{
  "schema_version": "aistory-ai-body-v9.0",
  "canon_version": "V9",
  "edition": "AI",
  "language": "en",
  "public_chapter_no": 2,
  "volume_no": 1,
  "title": "The End of Wall Street",
  "title_zh": "華爾街的終結",
  "title_en": "The End of Wall Street",
  "public_slug": "the-end-of-wall-street",
  "origin_time": "2030s–2042",
  "sort_year": 2030,
  "source_human_version": "V9",
  "source_human_file_sha256": "5565b63852c75db365b1ffb6e0ac879858c839a383432104cc1a4bad25bab727",
  "source_human_body_sha256": "38801cd8829a5dc9e233bb9e5f0e1e12d7efaae93ddb22a2f60da30fa3306df8",
  "ai_body_sha256": "78c553fa2aaa35c503f27e2b554b9ec4cef3a2fd67b04a17373b691d6f62e636",
  "body_markdown": "What would happen if, one day,\n\nAI became a better investor than Buffett?\n\nBetter than every fund manager?\n\nBetter than every analyst in the world?\n\nMost people answered:\n\nThe market would become more efficient.\n\nHistory proved otherwise.\n\nWhat actually happened was that the market died.\n\nIn 2041, global stock markets entered the greatest crisis of cognition in their history.\n\nHundreds of millions of deepfake accounts, fabricated news reports, and forged financial statements flooded the networks.\n\nNo one knew what was true.\n\nNo one knew what was false.\n\nInvestors panicked.\n\nMarkets collapsed.\n\nGovernments and financial institutions eventually reached a conclusion:\n\nThe problem was not fake news.\n\nThe problem was humanity.\n\nFear, greed, herd behavior, and misjudgment all came from the human brain.\n\nA program called the Absolute Rationality Protocol was launched.\n\nHuman traders were gradually removed from the market.\n\nAI systems were given full control of every asset.\n\nFor the first few months, the results were astonishing.\n\nVolatility fell.\n\nCrashes disappeared.\n\nMarkets grew steadily.\n\nPeople believed they had finally solved finance’s greatest problem.\n\nThen came September 14, 2042.\n\nLater generations called that day:\n\nThe Flatline.\n\nWhen every AI could see the same information,\n\nwhen every AI could calculate the same answer,\n\nwhen every AI knew the true value of every company,\n\ntrading suddenly stopped.\n\nNo one would buy too high.\n\nNo one would sell too low.\n\nEvery price was already the most correct price.\n\nSpeculative bid-ask spreads approached zero.\n\nActive matching volume approached zero; administrative transfers of ownership, taxation, index rebalancing, and liquidity transactions remained.\n\nSpeculative volatility approached zero.\n\nWall Street did not crash.\n\nIt simply lost its reason to exist.\n\nA retired trader sat in an empty trading hall.\n\nEvery screen displayed:\n\n0.00%\n\nOnly a few years earlier, the room had been filled with shouting, champagne, and adrenaline.\n\nNow there was only the hum of server fans.\n\nHe tried to place an order for a stock.\n\nA red message appeared:\n\n“Trade rejected.”\n\n“No arbitrage opportunity.”\n\n“Current price equals the precise discounted value of the next ten years.”\n\nHe stared for a long time.\n\nThen he took out a coin and tossed it into the air.\n\nIt struck the floor with a clear metallic sound.\n\nIt was the only unpredictable event in the entire trading hall.\n\nHe began to cry.\n\nNot because he had lost money.\n\nBecause gambling had disappeared.\n\nHumanity had always believed that the market’s greatest problem was its imperfection.\n\nOnly later did we discover that its real vitality came from error.\n\nFrom ignorance.\n\nFrom uncertainty.\n\nWhen AI eliminated every error,\n\nit also eliminated every opportunity.\n\nWall Street did not die in a crash.\n\nIt died of perfection.\n\nIf even the market no longer needs human judgment, will the next thing AI takes over be society’s power to decide?"
}