(Bloomberg) -- Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook said she anticipates artificial intelligence will drive a pickup in productivity growth, but sees “substantial” uncertainty around her forecast.
She hopes an acceleration in productivity — or producing more goods and services with less — could serve as a “counterweight” to price pressures, allowing for Americans’ wages to grow faster without sparking inflation.
“Looking ahead, I anticipate an acceleration in productivity grounded in the impressive advances in AI, but substantial uncertainty attends that forecast,” Cook said at a conference organized by Federal Reserve Banks of Atlanta, Boston and Richmond. How and when that unfolds in the economy is difficult to estimate, she said.
Cook, a former economics professor at Michigan State University, has spent part of her career researching innovation. She didn’t comment on monetary policy in the text of her remarks. Cook voted with the majority of the Federal Open Market Committee to lower the benchmark lending rate by a half a percentage point last month.
“While much is still to be learned, I see growing evidence that AI is poised to have a substantial effect on US and global labor markets,” she said. “As firms deploy these technologies and workers discover ways to make use of them, such developments can create the conditions for greater productivity and thus higher wage growth consistent with stable prices.”
“There is tremendous uncertainty about AI’s implications,” she said. “We still do not know what the magnitude or intensity of these effects will be, which workers and firms will be most affected, how big the increase in productivity might be, or even the period over which these effects will be realized.”
The conference, held in Atlanta, will feature comments from other policymakers, including Atlanta Fed President Raphael Bostic, Boston’s Susan Collins and Richmond’s Thomas Barkin.
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