Deputy governor Sarah Breeden says autonomous trading agents could amplify volatility if they all react the same way at once, and may demand new rules.
The nightmare a central banker describes is rarely a crash. It is a feedback loop. Speaking at the European Central Bank’s annual forum in Sintra, Portugal, the Bank of England’s deputy governor Sarah Breeden warned that autonomous artificial intelligence agents could cause a “market meltdown.”
Not by acting irrationally, but by acting identically, all of them responding the same way to the same signal at the same moment.
Breeden’s concern is specific to a new generation of AI. The worry is not the algorithmic trading that has driven markets for years, but agentic systems that can pursue goals and make decisions with far less human supervision.
The 💜 of EU techThe latest rumblings from the EU tech scene, a story from our wise ol' founder Boris, and some questionable AI art. It's free, every week, in your inbox. Sign up now!If many firms deploy agents trained in similar ways on similar data, she argued, those agents could “amplify volatility in stress,” reacting to a shock in lockstep and turning a wobble into a rout before any human has time to intervene.
