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Dark Pools : The Rise of A. I. Trading Machines and the Looming Threat to Wall Street. Summary of the Book The world of Wall Street is changing. Once the realm of white-collared executives who predicted the outcome of the market, the business is being taken over by artificially intelligent systems which complete trades in milliseconds, outmanoeuvring humans at their own game. Josh Levine, a genius programmer, created a computerized trading hub named Island, giving small traders a place to swap stocks. Within no time, he had created a new world, one that translated trillions of dollars into electronic signals travelling at light-speed through fiber-optic cables. He was hoping to give smaller firms a level playing ground, helping them interact with larger institutions which once controlled everything. However, by the time his invention was complete, the world had morphed into an unrecognizable version of itself. The market had been toppled, and it now operated through secret exchanges called dark pools. Now, they used the advanced thinking algorithms offered by the trading machines Levine developed to become something more, something far more inconceivable than he’d ever imagined. A new species of Wall Street trader had been born, and in its hands lay the fate of the global market. About Scott Patterson Scott Patterson is an American financial journalist and writer. He works at The Wall Street Journal and he has also written The Quants. A graduate of the James Madison University, Patterson has interviewed several high-profile people such as Mark Cuban, Warren Buffett and Edward Thorp.