SEC Launches AI Task Force to Promote Responsible Integration and Innovation

SEC launches AI task force

This content has been selected, created and edited by the Finextra editorial team based upon its relevance and interest to our community. To oversee the initiative, the watchdog has appointed Valerie Szczepanik, the former head of the SEC's Strategic Hub for Innovation and Financial Technology, as it first chief AI Officer. As head of the task force, she will be charged with centralising the agency's efforts and enabling internal cross-agency and cross-disciplinary collaboration to navigate the AI lifecycle, remove barriers to progress and maintain governance. "The AI Task Force will empower staff across the SEC with AI-enabled tools and systems to responsibly augment the staff's capacity, accelerate innovation, and enhance efficiency and accuracy," says SEC Chairman Paul S. Atkins. "By ingraining innovation into our culture SEC-wide, we will further our mission to protect investors, maintain fair, orderly, and efficient markets, and facilitate capital formation."

SEC Forms Task Force Promoting 'Responsible AI Integration' | PYMNTS.com

The initiative, announced Monday (Aug. 4), is designed to promote responsible use of AI while enhancing innovation and efficiency in the SEC operations. Valerie Szczepanik, who has been named the SEC's chief AI officer, will head the task force. "Recognizing the transformative potential of AI, the SEC's AI Task Force will accelerate AI integration to bolster the SEC's mission," the regulator said in a news release. "It will centralize the agency's efforts and enable internal cross-agency and cross-disciplinary collaboration to navigate the AI lifecycle, remove barriers to progress, focus on AI applications that maximize benefits, and maintain governance. The task force will support innovation from the SEC's divisions and offices and facilitate responsible AI integration across the agency." Before being named the chief AI officer, Szczepanik directed the SEC's Strategic Hub for Innovation and Financial Technology. She has also served as associate director in the SEC's Division of Corporation Finance a Special Assistant United States Attorney at the United States Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of New York, according to the release. The announcement comes two weeks after the White House released a policy roadmap outlining President Trump's push to keep America in the lead in the global AI race. "America's AI Action Plan" follows Trump's executive order in January that ordered federal agencies to overturn AI regulations put in place by the Biden administration, which focused on oversight and risk mitigation. "As our global competitors race to exploit these technologies, it is a national security imperative for the United States to achieve and maintain unquestioned and unchallenged global technological dominance," Trump said in the opening of the AI action plan. In other AI news, recent research by PYMNTS Intelligence finds that almost all chief product officers (CPOs) expect generative AI to reshape the way they work. That research showed that nearly all product leaders say AI will streamline workflows within three years, compared to 70% last year. And more than 80% anticipate improvements in data security, compared to half of the CPOs surveyed last year. "The shift over the past year among CPOs reflects a deeper change in institutional mindset. Gen AI is no longer experimental -- it's strategic," PYMNTS wrote. "The pressure to deliver more with fewer resources has pushed firms to scale automation of routine, labor-intensive tasks, not just explore how that can be done."