Machine Independence

Machines have always done things for humans. The more interesting shift is what happens when they begin doing things without us.

Machine systems are moving beyond tools that simply respond to human instructions. Increasingly, machines can observe conditions, make decisions, initiate actions and interact with other systems with progressively less human involvement.

That changes the question from what can machines do? to what happens when machines become independent economic actors?

A machine that can identify a need, select a supplier, negotiate access, make a payment and consume a service is no longer simply automating a human task. It is participating directly in an economic system.

This matters because much of today’s economy assumes a human somewhere in the transaction. Customers are people or organisations. Products are designed for people. Contracts, identity, payments, sales processes and even websites generally assume that a human is on the other side.

Machine Independence challenges that assumption.

The interesting opportunity may therefore be much larger than replacing human work with machine capability. We may be watching the emergence of an economy in which machines increasingly operate, decide and transact independently of humans.