The AI Book

CHAPTER 39ETF 2.0: Mega Block Chains with AI

By J.B. Beckett¹

¹Author and Founder, New Fund Order

Asset management, as it exists today within the new Western capitalist model, has a very real problem with any notions of social investing, equality or fair distribution of wealth. Indeed the model’s foundations are built on the notion of “equality of opportunity” and “inequality of outcome”. The American dream. Much of the profits from that model have gravitated to those who provide rather than those who receive. Those who control rather than those who work. How might artificial intelligence change this?

How? The way social networks have changed society cannot be understated and likewise the role social networks could play for asset management. The key is one of engagement, individual control yet without losing the benefits of pooling investors, by creating social investment structures: mega-blocks. We have seen early signs such as “direct-index” exchange-traded funds (ETFs) but we can go much further.

Why? Recall that Karl Marx’s Das Kapital asserts that workers become disenfranchised in the capital model by capital owners and machines. How true that feels today where the paranoia of “artificial intelligence threatening jobs” pervades all media. The symptoms of that low engagement are a low savings ratio globally, wage disinflation and a lack of alignment (needs matching) between investors and asset managers. Workers typically don’t engage with their long-term savings plans until ...