title: Abrupt rise of new machine ecology beyond human response time.
abstract: Society's techno-social systems are becoming ever faster and more computer-orientated. However, far from simply generating faster versions of existing behaviour, we show that this speed-up can generate a new behavioural regime as humans lose the ability to intervene in real time. Analyzing millisecond-scale data for the world's largest and most powerful techno-social system, the global financial market, we uncover an abrupt transition to a new all-machine phase characterized by large numbers of subsecond extreme events. The proliferation of these subsecond events shows an intriguing correlation with the onset of the system-wide financial collapse in 2008. Our findings are consistent with an emerging ecology of competitive machines featuring 'crowds' of predatory algorithms, and highlight the need for a new scientific theory of subsecond financial phenomena.
authors.affiliation: Physics Department, University of Miami, Coral Gables, Florida 33124, U.S.A.
authors.forename: Neil
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Johnson
authors.forename: Guannan
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Zhao
authors.forename: Eric
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Hunsader
authors.forename: Hong
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Qi
authors.forename: Nicholas
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Johnson
authors.forename: Jing
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Meng
authors.forename: Brian
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Tivnan
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