If the negative beta theory around GME is to be believed, possibly.

The tl;dr is a stock's "beta" is how closely it statistically correlates to market movements. A beta of 1 is a perfect correlation: market goes up 3 points, a stock with a beta of 1 also goes up 3 points. Down by 5? And the beta=1 stock does the same. If a beta is greater than 1, then it swings in the same direction, but 'harder'; market goes up by 4 points, and the stock with a beta greater than 1 goes up by more than 4. And a beta of 0 means zero correlation, the stock's movements do not follow the rest of the market at all.

Now, a negative beta means a stock does the opposite of what the market does. If the market goes up, the negative beta stock goes down. If the market goes down, the negative beta stock goes up. Same deal with distance from 0 and -1; the further it is from 0, the more extreme the movement. Until the pandemic, a sustained negative beta for any stock was only hypothetical. Zoom - the video conferencing app - was the first to stock experience a strong, sustained negative beta at the start of the pandemic. I think it 'bottomed-out' around -1, and was only there for a week or so.

GME's beta has been between -2 and -4 (depending on how you calculate it) since at least the start of March.

If the negative beta is correct, and the hypothesis of 'GME is shorted into the fucking ground' is true, then, if the short seller's get margin called on their GME shorts, they will need to dump every other position they have to pay up. And even that may not be enough.

The tl;dr on the tl;dr is:

We might be looking at another 2008 financial crisis. Only this time, instead of shitty financial games being played with housing debt, it's shitty financial games being played with brick & mortar stocks (GME isn't the only one, just the most extreme example).

Two questions:

1. "Appropriately"; does that mean "genuinely" or "politely"?

2. If our software begins to develop solely on its own, self-optimization but self-development, is it still considered an intelligence with the human sense, or does it become a third party to these interactions?