Autonomous tech could execute trades without human oversight, increasing the risk of market meltdowns, UK officials warn<\/p>\n
AI agents that can make decisions and carry out transactions independently could soon operate across the financial system, the Bank of England has warned, adding that relying on human oversight might no longer be realistic.
\nBank of England Deputy Governor Sarah Breeden made the warning at the European Central Bank\u2019s annual forum in Sintra on Tuesday, as leading developers shift from generative AI chatbots to agentic systems.
\nUnlike generative AI tools such as ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude, which generate text, images, and code in response to prompts, agentic AI is designed to complete multi-step tasks with limited human intervention.
\nRather than merely recommending an investment or suggesting a purchase, an AI agent could execute trades, make payments, buy goods, and book services without requiring human approval for every action.<\/p>\n
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Breeden said the financial system is likely to \u201cevolve into one that operates more autonomously, at scale and speed.\u201d\u00a0
\nAs AI agents become more capable, \u201crelying on a human in the loop for all agent actions is unlikely to be realistic,\u201d she said, arguing that the current regulatory frameworks \u201cwere not built to contemplate\u201d this scenario.
\nBreeden warned that AI agents trained on similar data and responding to the same market signals could exhibit herd behavior, making identical trading decisions simultaneously and amplifying market volatility during periods of stress.
\nRegulators should examine \u201cwhether guardrails are needed, analogous to circuit breakers or kill switches that would limit or stop trading market-wide if faulty AI models cause market meltdown,\u201d Breeden said.
\nShe also urged central banks to prepare for more frequent \u201ctechnology surprises,\u201d saying recent advances in AI have already exceeded policymakers\u2019 expectations.<\/p>\n
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Her remarks come as governments increasingly treat AI as a national security issue. Washington has recently intervened in the rollout of some advanced AI models over cybersecurity concerns, while AI developers continue to push ahead with agentic systems. Anthropic unveiled Claude Sonnet 5 this week, its latest model designed to perform complex tasks on users\u2019 behalf.
\nThe push toward agentic AI has also reached the Pentagon. Last week, it unveiled AI agents designed to continuously analyze intelligence and rapidly generate targeting options for commanders, while stressing that humans will retain final decision-making authority.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Autonomous tech could execute trades without human oversight, increasing the risk of market meltdowns, UK officials warn AI agents that can make decisions and carry out transactions independently could soon…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":36924,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":[],"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36923","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-economy","category-environment","category-politics"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t