The terrifying AI catastrophe here is apparently that customers might finally move their money to accounts paying decent interest. Banks spent decades automating every trick to extract profit from us, but the second consumers automate looking for a better deal, suddenly it’s a systemic threat. Funny how innovation becomes dangerous the moment it works for the customer.

I wonder who our representatives will make foot the bill for this one? Surely they won't just socialize the losses with how well it worked the last dozen times... Right?

The usual financial crisis playbook has a remarkably consistent cast: 1. banks discover a new way to create risk, 2. executives collect bonuses while it works, and 3. taxpayers get invited to the emergency meeting when it doesn’t. 👉 Somehow the public is always a stakeholder in the losses, but never in the profits.

Note to self: automate utilities churning and deal hunting to maximise savings.

@eicker Where is all this concern when banks rob grocery money from poor families? If you've ever lost your week's food money to overdraft fees when you were sure you had it covered, you would hear the tiny violins right along with me.

Actual Article.

This is clearly the exit strategy here. That's why AI companies' try to label their products as "dangerous" and call for their own regulation. On the one hand, they want to be regarded as a matter of "national security" because they bloody well know that this gives them access to taxpayer money, which in turn can bail them out of their failing bet on data center build-out. On the other hand, it helps them shift liability onto regulators if things go south and allows them to say: "We told you we wanted regulation, but you wouldn't listen."

Don't forget the other option 3: they want regulation to pull the ladder up behind them so there can be no competition. The open models from China have already proven their 'special' technology can be easily improved upon.

Banks Planning Unprecedented Catastrophe Caused by AI That They Will Make Profit From.

FTFY

I find the article's premise that optimizing individual returns will wreck the banking system very dubious. In all other parts of the financial system (risk-adjusted) greed is good, but when retail customers do it then it's bad?

True; I skipped this part because the comment I was replying to was about taxpayer money bailouts. What you're describing is the creation of an artificial moat against competitors. And it is correct that this is also a motive behind pushing for regulation.

So the agents move money from the regular account to a high interest account for days or weeks, keep on the lookout for accounts with even better conditions, and move just enough money back for the probably scheduled mortgage payment and other regular bills. That means the money doesn't stay sleeping in the regular account where the bank can use it to make profits. And they're very afraid everyone starts doing this, calling it an AI powered bank run.

Almost like the system is designed to increase wealth inequality 🤯

Banks are the largest mafia on the planet. They literally have a license to print money. Not even the government can do this. When things go south, they are bailed out with our money. Even after the worst crisis, they have a ridiculously low capital requirement of 2.5%.

Never expect criminal scum to just accept one of their sources of income being taken away.

Translation: Banks are pulling stock investments to crash the economy so they can beg the Democrats for a bail out.

I wonder what they fear more: Their investments in AI getting worthless when the Butlerian Jihad starts or them getting hacked and crashed by AI agents.

Roko's Basilisk will not view this kind of treachery lightly.

Shit, I've been doing this manually. It takes maybe an hour of combined time to look on NerdWallet for the highest APY HYSA, make an account, link the old one, move everything over, and close out the old one. Automating that sounds nice though.

Banks were condemned for money laundering.

They helped drug traffickers to launder their blood money...5 billions of suspicious transactions in bank of america and they looked the other way.

Usually banks dislike money laundering in a form where they have to actively look away... They prefer to maintain plausable deniability...

I'm fully convinced that AI will destroy our ability to process financial transactions through the internet. The digital economy is toast. We will be back to paying cash in person for everything.

Ooh, I know, my comment was pure unadulterated sarcasm.

What if this is Roko's Basilisk

Yet people write off Bitcoin as "for criminals" while glossing over the fact no one can print more of it, and it cannot be taken away from you (without you fucking up).

There is literally no better option in terms of holding and protecting your own wealth.

Yet still, in 2026, I can almost guarantee nothing but down votes and/or replies all about how it's BS, etc, etc.

Not trying to be snarky, it's just sad that the vast majority of people won't ever get a good explanation of how it works.

Why not fear both? It has gotten to the level where it doesn't live up to the investment levels and crashes, or it absolutely lives up to it and just trashes the economy in various ways.

i think that may be an improvement.

I did hate carrying change though. I'm never happy

I'm a bit torn on Bitcoin. I used to think the same as you, but now it seems to me that Bitcoin is way too easy to control. State actors could quite easily acquire enough hash power to take over the network, mining is too concentrated already. I think Monero is much more true to the original idea of Bitcoin, probably also one of the reasons it's always branded as a coin for criminals, to prevent people from looking into it.

It's also, unfortunately, just not that practical. Most people don't want to be their own bank. Your "unless you fuck up" is not quite true, what do you do if someone breaks into your house and threatens to shoot you if you don't hand over your keys? That's the true purpose of a bank, outsourced security.

While crypto is cool, it's not required to solve this, full-reserve banking would be sufficient.

Mr. Banks declared, "YOU CAN'T STOP IT, THE UNPRECEDENTED CATASTROPHE CAUSED BY THE AIS, THEY ARE COMING FOR ALL OF US!!"

What hints at them trying to crash it? Or you're thinking that they're trying to crash to keep the markets reliance on bank loans?

Hell yeah. Bring it on