“Regulators need to move with the frontier, understand how markets evolve, and take actions as needed.” – Itay Goldstein
Artificial intelligence is rapidly reshaping the finance sector, and posing enormous questions for professionals, regulators, and researchers about how the field will navigate the massive potential and systemic risks that come with it. At the 2026 Wharton Future of Finance Forum, the panel “Artificial Intelligence in Finance: Opportunities and Risks” convened experts from regulation, fintech, law, and industry to examine how AI is already changing the game, and what guardrails are needed to ensure innovation strengthens markets, rather than destabilizes them.
Moderated by Itay Goldstein, Joel S. Ehrenkranz Family Professor and Chairperson of the Wharton School’s finance department, the panel featured:
- Kristin Johnson, Lyle T. Alverson Professor of Law, George Washington University and Former Commissioner of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission
- Nicholas Lin (C’13, W’13), Head of Product for Financial Services, Anthropic
- Apoorv Saxena (WG’08), Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder, ObinAI
- Jonathan Sokobin, Chief Economist, FINRA
- Danny Tobey, Partner and Chair of AI & Data Analytics, DLA Piper
Itay Goldstein offered these insights from the panel:
- Nature and Scope of AI: AI is reducing the cost of intelligence. It has the potential to be used across many functions in financial services, covering the entire value chain. While it started as a tool that provides major enhancement of analytical capabilities, the introduction of generative AI and now also agentic AI creates a fundamentally new environment.
- The Interaction with Humans: One of the key concerns going forward is whether AI can replace humans and what this does to the labor market. At this point, there are many theories and opinions, and it is truly hard to tell how things will evolve. However, there are jobs created for humans which are all about working with and supervising AI, and so the future is not necessarily bleak.
- Implications for Financial Fragility: There are also growing concerns about what it means to have a financial market that is populated by AI algorithms applying their own logic and decisions when trading and conducting other financial activities. Again, it is too early to tell what the implications might be, but regulators need to move with the frontier, understand how markets evolve and take actions as needed. Applying AI tools may be necessary for that.
The impact of AI on the financial system has the potential to be transformative. As its role in finance evolves, the responsibility to guide its development thoughtfully and ethically is more apparent than ever.
More Thought Leadership
Watch and listen to the Future of Finance podcast, hosted by Itay Goldstein
Read a Q&A with Professors Winston Wei Dou and Itay Goldstein on their paper, “AI-Powered Trading, Algorithmic Collusion, and Price Efficiency”
Learn more about Wharton Future of Finance
Photography by Eddy Marenco