At this year’s Central Park AI Forum, Norm Ai hosted a conversation between Valerie Szczepanik, the SEC’s first Chief AI Officer, and Troy Paredes, former SEC Commissioner appointed by President George W. Bush and currently Norm Ai’s Head of Capital Markets Strategy.

Their discussion offered a rare window into how one of the world’s most influential financial regulators views its operating model in the age of AI. Given their experience at the SEC, Valerie and Troy addressed the day-to-day realities of workflow design, governance, and institutional modernization in addition to policy and macro considerations related to the use of AI by regulators.

Their conversation provided a unique opportunity to hear from two leaders at the intersection of advanced technology and financial regulation exchange ideas about the future of the SEC.

Empowering experimentation, framing strategy, and building infrastructure

Valerie began by describing her experience as the SEC’s first Chief AI Officer, noting that she encountered tremendous enthusiasm and pockets of innovation across the SEC, but that this innovation was often occurring in silos. She explained that helping to connect these pockets of innovation became an early priority, noting that “When I stepped into this role, it became clear to me that there was a lot of activity happening within the commission in silos… The first thing I needed to do was bring people together and align them around an AI strategy.”

Valerie emphasized the importance of well-designed infrastructure as a way to facilitate effective regulation, and described the creation of the SEC’s AI Task Force as a mechanism for facilitating grassroots experimentation. According to Valerie, the AI Task Force’s embrace of innovators across divisions was designed to empower individuals interested in leveraging AI and advanced technologies to further the mission of the agency. It also seeks to responsibly avoid long bureaucratic decision-making cycles.

Troy and Valerie also discussed how, as these innovations take hold, opportunities for efficiency and improved performance continue to expand and compound. Another operational insight shared by Valerie is her vision around augmenting the work of the SEC’s staff, enabling them to focus on analysis, judgment, and collaboration in order to: “…free up their time to do more human tasks or strategic thinking” as well as “...engaging with each other and with the industry.”

One of the most forward-looking parts of the discussion involved how AI may reshape the SEC’s ability to analyze data, respond to market issues, and evaluate potential regulatory changes. A key theme was the need to map machine intelligence with human expertise within a workflow ecosystem. As part of this discussion, Valerie and Troy also reflected on how AI may unlock new capacities for risk detection, cross-divisional insight, and other capabilities that are only made possible by advances in AI technology.

As the discussion concluded, Valerie acknowledged and embraced the importance of empowering the SEC’s staff to innovate. She described a Commission buzzing with ideas, new tools, prototypes, and promising experiments, noting that “We do have a thousand blooming flowers… They’re developing use cases around what they have to do every day… We want to bring them into a very well-tended garden so that we have some really great rose bushes growing.”

Closing reflections

The discussion underscored how AI has the potential to transform the mission of regulators as they evaluate the ways to strengthen governance, redesign workflows, and enable staff to build and adopt new tools in ways that are safe, responsible, and mission-aligned.

This moment represents an opportunity not just for new technologies, but for the advancement of regulatory practice itself. We thank Valerie and Troy for bringing their perspectives to this critical conversation about the regulatory future.

Disclaimer: The views expressed are solely those of the speaker and do not represent the views of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission or its staff.