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Artificial intelligence could create a new set of tasks that skilled workers could benefit from as technology advances, said Adriana Kugler, member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors.
At the 2024 SIEPR Economic Summit Lunch Keynote, the Fed governor spoke about the effects of AI on the labor market. She said it would likely be a general-purpose technology, such as electrification, affecting many sectors of the economy.
It could create improvements in production processes, but also increases in productivity, in terms of research and development.
And although AI is not as broadly based yet, the expectation is that it will start expanding soon, she said.
“We can expect AI to have productivity impacts on workers, and not only workers but on many tasks,” Kugler told Mark Duggan, director of the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research and Wayne and Jodi Cooperman Professor of Economics at Stanford University, who moderated the discussion. “There are many parts of the job that a worker does that are substituted or replaced by AI and machine learning. There are other parts that may be complemented…enhancing the productivity of those workers that performs those tasks.”
But AI could also create a new set of tasks, in areas such as web design and programming, she said. These new skills, as a result of AI, would benefit workers, those behind screens and desks, and those who perform research and development work.
At the SIEPR event, she also spoke about the history of inflation and the “dual mandate” legislation since 1977, which required the FOMC to pursue both maximum employment and stable prices.
She said she was “cautiously optimistic that we will see continued progress on disinflation without significant deterioration of the labor market.”