It does not necessarily have to withstand human competition though.
Let's say there is an agent A whose source is on Github and which makes X BTC/month. If the agent is programmed to pay out dividends to shareholders and auto-update its code, (large) shareholders have a shared interest in improving the agent.
Likewise, an ambitious developer could fork agent A and try to improve it. If he can convince a lot of people that his agent will beat out the other agent, he can get people to invest in it in order to bootstrap agent B (assuming the agent requires an initial investment).
If agent B is more profitable than agent A, people will start investing time and money on it and abandon the other agent.
PS: Agents would not necessarily need investors assuming they can bootstrap themselves to profitability. This is just a possible scenario. However, I think is likely that agents who rely on some form of human input are more likely to beat the competition.
Let's say there is an agent A whose source is on Github and which makes X BTC/month. If the agent is programmed to pay out dividends to shareholders and auto-update its code, (large) shareholders have a shared interest in improving the agent.
Likewise, an ambitious developer could fork agent A and try to improve it. If he can convince a lot of people that his agent will beat out the other agent, he can get people to invest in it in order to bootstrap agent B (assuming the agent requires an initial investment).
If agent B is more profitable than agent A, people will start investing time and money on it and abandon the other agent.
PS: Agents would not necessarily need investors assuming they can bootstrap themselves to profitability. This is just a possible scenario. However, I think is likely that agents who rely on some form of human input are more likely to beat the competition.