LAST WEEK, BEN Goertzel and his company, Aidyia, turned on a hedge fund that makes all stock trades using artificial intelligence—no human intervention required. “If we all die,” says Goertzel, a longtime AI guru and the company’s chief scientist, “it would keep trading.”

He means this literally. Goertzel and other humans built the system, of course, and they’ll continue to modify it as needed. But their creation identifies and executes trades entirely on its own, drawing on multiple forms of AI, including one inspired by genetic evolution and another based on probabilistic logic. Each day, after analyzing everything from market prices and volumes to macroeconomic data and corporate accounting documents, these AI engines make their own market predictions and then “vote” on the best course of action.