“Agentic AI is reshaping our digital economy and the way we govern it, creating extraordinary opportunities alongside a new generation of regulatory challenges”: Bryan Zhang | Credit: Саша Алалыкин (Pexels) & Financial Innovation for Impact (inset pic)
An initiative is launching today to build ‘practical, explainable and deployable’ agentic artificial intelligence (AI) prototypes for regulators and public authorities.
The Agentic Regulator Global Hackathon is looking to ‘shape the future of AI-enabled digital regulation’, according to an announcement (8 July) by the Cambridge Digital Innovation and Regulation Initiative (which abbreviates its name to C:\>DIR), which is spearheading the programme.
A hackathon is an event during which participants, typically coders and developers, design and present innovative solutions to a particular challenge.
This initiative – which carries a total prize pool of $100,000 (about £75,000) – is seeking to bring together policymakers, regulators, academics, finance and fintech companies, RegTech (regulatory technology) companies and ‘technology innovators’ to ‘collaboratively develop agentic AI capabilities and prototypes for central banks, financial regulators and other public authorities, for example, data regulators, competition agencies, communications and energy regulators.’
It launches with the backing of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) Innovation Hub, the Global Financial Innovation Network (GFIN) and the Digital Regulation Cooperation Forum (DRCF), plus more than 35 further companies, associations, non-profit organisations and academic institutions including Ant International, Google, SWIFT, Networks for Humanity (global non-profit initiative), Ethereum Foundation, Innovate Finance (UK fintech trade association), GFTN (non-profit organisation established by the Monetary Authority of Singapore) and the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance.
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Six challenge fields
‘As AI agents are increasingly deployed to execute complex workflows and automate decisions at machine speed across financial and governance systems, public authorities face challenges around oversight, accountability, consumer protection as well as systematic risks, with the pace and autonomy of these systems beginning to outstrip the tools regulators currently equipped to supervise them,’ C:\>DIR explains in its announcement.
‘Yet agentic AI also presents significant opportunities for regulators themselves: deployed thoughtfully and strategically, the same capabilities can help public authorities improve efficiency, enhance oversight, streamline processes and mitigate risks — enabling supervisors to move at the speed of the markets they oversee, rather than lagging behind them,’ it continues.
This hackathon is ‘designed to help realise that opportunity and narrow the widening gap’, C:\>DIR states.
Teams must focus their efforts in at least one of six pre-determined topic areas: agentic financial advice and ‘high-stakes AI advisory’; agentic payments, commerce and their oversight; decentralised market infrastructure, smart contracts and AI agents; AI-driven fraud and scams; know-your-agent, digital verification and digital public infrastructure; and market manipulation, agentic herding (when multiple autonomous AI agents trigger the same market action at the same time) and stability.
The deadline for submission of concept notes is 31 July. Finalists will be provided with access to synthetic datasets from UK-headquartered company NayaOne with which to build working prototypes during the first week of September. Winners will be announced as part of an event in Cambridge (UK) on 18 September and invited to present at this year’s Singapore FinTech Festival in November.
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From ‘shared challenge’ to ‘shared build’
C:\>DIR is run by the Financial Innovation for Impact, an international not-for-profit organisation dedicated to the acceleration of regulatory, supervisory and infrastructure innovation in developing economies. It is promoted as a policy-convening platform that aims to foster collaborative communities and public-private partnerships to ‘develop common solutions and shape the future of digital markets and economies, for the benefit of the many’.
“Agentic AI is reshaping our digital economy and the way we govern it, creating extraordinary opportunities alongside a new generation of regulatory challenges,” said Bryan Zhang, co-founder and executive chair of Financial Innovation for Impact and C:\>DIR co-creator, in the announcement.
“Through the Agentic Regulator Global Hackathon, we are convening regulators, technologists, researchers and industry leaders from around the world to build practical, explainable solutions that help public authorities not only keep pace with autonomous systems, but harness them to supervise with greater speed, insight and confidence,” he added.
“The GFIN is pleased and proud to support this global agentic regulator hackathon, which turns a shared challenge into a shared build, and that is exactly what our global community of innovative regulators was created for. The future of supervision is collaborative and this hackathon is a reflection of that imperative,” said Colin Payne, who is GFIN chair (and head of innovation at the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority).