Crypto can wait as there’s a bigger fish to fry, US Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) chairperson Gary Gensler recently said. Notably, the man leading the crypto crackdown in the US believes that artificial intelligence (AI) is a priority regarding regulations because it is “the most transformative technology of this generation.”

AI Can Obscure the Identity of Wrongdoers, Gensler Argues

Gary Gensler, chair of the US top securities regulator, believes artificial intelligence is a matter notably more essential to focus on than cryptocurrencies. Although the crypto space continues to be plagued with scams, hacks, and money laundering activities, AI presents more significant financial risks to US residents, according to Gensler.

“This is the most transformative technology of this generation. 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.”

– Gensler says.

Gensler brought up several significant risks the ongoing AI boom brings to financial markets, such as mass automation, which can have cascading ramifications for trillions of dollars in assets that trade on markets monitored by the SEC. While AI-generated investment recommendations can help financial institutions provide a better customer experience, this nascent technology can also be misused to conceal who’s at fault when things go wrong, says Gensler.

Last month, China became the first global nation to introduce regulations on generative AI models such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Alphabet’s Google Bard. The new law represents the first and most comprehensive regulatory framework regulating powerful AI chatbots.

EU Leading Efforts to Regulate AI in the West, US Yet to Catch Up

China’s new law will come into force on August 15 and will apply to all generative AI solutions, including those that produce text, video, audio, and image content. The move comes a few months after China published an early draft of AI rules and asked citizens for feedback.

However, the regulations seem to have a more friendly approach to the burgeoning technology. The Chinese government has pledged “to take effective measures to encourage innovative development of generative AI.” Further, penalties like “fines ranging from 10,000 to 100,000 yuan” for AI-related offenses have been removed.

Elsewhere, the European Union (EU) is currently leading the race to regulate AI among Western countries, with its Artificial Intelligence Act closer to becoming law. Meanwhile, the US has yet to release a comprehensive set of rules to regulate the technology.

This article originally appeared on The Tokenist

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