Do We Need Smart Contracts When We Have AI Agents?

Divyarani Raghupatruni, Senior Director of Product, Data and Orchestration, Alacriti Inc.

​AI agents are becoming capable of deciding when, where and how money should move. Banks are already using AI to assess risk, reconcile transactions, investigate exceptions and automate operations. That brings up an interesting question:

If AI can make increasingly sophisticated payment decisions, do we still need smart contracts and programmable money?

This question matters as banks prepare for a future where fiat, stablecoins and tokenized deposits coexist. Today, banks already have traditional controls around fraud checks, sanctions screening, authorization and transaction limits. But these controls often sit across disjoint systems, creating operational complexity and manual work. This problem becomes more acute as payments become real-time and multi-rail. AI and smart contracts (programmable money) are being explored as solutions addressing different parts of this problem. AI can make decisions smarter and automate work. Smart contracts, on the other hand, embed certain rules in the transaction itself.

So how should financial institutions decide where to place controls? Which controls should stay in existing systems, which should use AI and which are better enforced through programmable money?

Decision Framework

One way to evaluate this is through these four dimensions: control, persistence, coordination and atomicity.

Control: How Hard Is The Decision?

Persistence: How Long Must The Guardrails Last?

Coordination: How Many Parties Depend On The Control?

Atomicity: Is There Risk If The Steps Do Not Execute Together?

It is less a decision by AI agents or smart contracts. AI is good at understanding context, making decisions and orchestrating actions, but programmability becomes valuable when those decisions need to become persistent, shared and enforceable.

Forbes Technology Council is an invitation-only community for world-class CIOs, CTOs and technology executives. Do I qualify?