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With AI Booming, Gary Gensler Wants to Keep Finance Safe for Humans

The head of the SEC is focused on the risk to markets and investors when artificial intelligence is making trades and recommendations.

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By Austin Weinstein

August 3, 2023 at 4:00 AM EDT

This article is for subscribers only.

This article is part of the August 7, 2023 issue of businessweek.

Gary Gensler would like to talk about something other than crypto. After two years of battling an industry that he says is riddled with scams and fraud, the head of the US Securities and Exchange Commission is focused on a different technology that has all of finance buzzing: artificial intelligence.

Unlike digital coins and nonfungible tokens, AI warrants the hype, according to Wall Street’s top regulator. “This is the most transformative technology of this generation,” Gensler says. “There’s a ‘there’ there—we can get to crypto later. We’re taking so much of what we humans do on a daily basis and automating it.”