Two Norwegian stock traders convicted for outsmarting an automated electronic broker

Great Debates
1

The two persons independently discovered a way to trade stocks in a way that the automated computer stock broker algorithm would seemingly always buy for a higher amount than it sold. Which a Norwegian court found to be illegal. Supposedly had they outsmarted a human trader, there would never have been a trial. Why on earth would we want to have laws that protect automated algorithms more than human traders? Especially considering that the automated brokers exists to outsmart human traders. And what if it was another automated algorithm that had “outsmarted” the first algorithm, would it also have been illegal? It would have been almost impossible to predict.

e.g.:
Oslo Court Sentences Traders for Beating Machine
Man vs machine

2

The article doesn’t give much information. I imagine that the prosecution’s argument is that the traders are taking advantage in a flaw in the computer’s algorithm to trigger it into raising the stock price.

The law isn’t there to “protect the algoritm”. It is there to protect other investors from someone who might use a flaw in the algoritm to manipulate the stock price.

Computers don’t “outsmart humans”. They perform automated and mundane functions thousands of times faster than humans. In many ways they are a lot dumber than humans because they will execute their programming regardless if it makes sense.