Yes, but it's more like sniping an eBay auction. Whoever has the fastest internet can get in at the last fraction of a second and outbid the previously highest bidder, and by just a few pennies.
The difference with the movie is HFT is legal whereas actually stealing pennies (in the movie) is theft.
DWAC Pack!
High frequency trading is observing what someone is going to buy or sell for, and then racing to the market to bid pennies more or less than the next best bidder. Then they turn around and buy/sell to the other guy for pennies more/less than he could have gotten. That's why there's fiber optic cables: so you can race at the speed of light to make pennies off of each other trade, and if you do it enough times per day, you can accumulate significant sums of money.
It's a shady practice for sure, but I doubt it predicts the future. In fact, these algorithms probably get it wrong sometimes, and that reduces profits.
I doubt humans will ever be capable of creating AI like we see in the movies. Only God can do that.
Yes and no.
Yes, an automated purchase or sale of asset A can trigger a separate automated purchase or sale of asset B, and these things can compound each other into arbitrarily long chains of transactions. And those chains can exert a lot of market movement.
But I believe in the Efficient Market Hypothesis. If the computers are going haywire and transacting at crazy prices, I believe there are other market participants that will step in and exploit the computers, which, in and of itself, helps to correct the error and restore balance.
These blips can last for a short amount of time, or they can last for years, but in the end the market returns to balance.