Before analyzing how technological innovation has changed the financial markets, one must obtain a basic understanding of some terms and concepts that are necessary to understand these markets in the first instance. As mentioned in the Introduction, the United States has two market regulators: the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). In deciding to have two market regulators, Congress established a framework in which the SEC oversees the markets for securities, which include stocks in companies, as well as bonds, government securities, and even stock options and other types of derivatives that are considered to be securities under US law. The CFTC, on the other hand, governs the markets for futures contracts, commodity options, swaps, and other derivatives that the law does not categorize as securities. Some have criticized the fact that the United States has two market regulators, as opposed to one consolidated regulator for both securities and futures markets.

If you have ever wondered about the difference between “artificial intelligence” and “machine learning,” you are in luck. The purpose of this chapter is to provide background and context on key concepts in artificial intelligence (AI) and to touch on how AI tools are used in the financial markets. In recent years, hedge funds, banks, commodity trading advisors, and numerous other financial services firms have adopted AI systems and related tools from computer science to automate numerous aspects of their operations, so understanding basic AI concepts can provide insights into how these firms operate.

This book is about how the technological advances in automation and artificial intelligence (AI) that have fundamentally changed the nature of the US markets for futures contracts and other derivatives are necessitating, in some areas, changes to the legal and regulatory framework for these markets. To arrive at policy solutions to address the ways that AI systems are altering the markets, this book examines how algorithmic robots – algo bots, for short – have largely taken over trading in the futures markets, analyzes how regulators have responded to these changes thus far, and explores what steps policy makers should take in the future. But before diving into any of those topics, allow me to put the societal impact of these advances in computer science technologies in a broader context, beyond finance and derivatives.