Bank of Canada Governor Tiff Macklem said that investments in artificial intelligence may lead to higher inflationary pressures in the short term and cause financial stability issues. 

According to Macklem, AI may also affect how businesses set prices. There is already evidence that digitally intensive firms adjust prices more often than less digitally focused ones.

“Central banks need to be closely attuned to how AI is affecting inflation, both indirectly through overall demand and supply and directly through price-setting behavior,” Macklem said.

Central banks “care a lot about prices” as part of their mandate to keep price inflation low and stable. Elaborating, the governor said :

“In the short run, AI could boost demand more than it adds to supply through faster productivity growth. And if that happens, AI adoption may add to inflationary pressures in the near term.”

Bank of Canada’s Governor Tiff Macklem warns AI could spur inflation. Source: CBC News/YouTube

AI may cause financial stability issues

AI adoption could also lead to financial stability issues, the governor pointed out. 

He said that banks and financial institutions are investing in AI to improve customer service, enhance compliance and risk management, and better assess credit and liquidity risk, and these investments are expected to improve efficiency and stability. 

But there are pitfalls, he said, as operational risks could become concentrated in a few third-party service providers, and an “event” at one of them could quickly spread through the financial system:

“The predictive ability of AI can deteriorate unexpectedly, suffer from hallucinations or be biased and discriminatory. And AI makes everything move faster, which could amplify severe market runs and herding behaviour in times of market volatility.”

AI may leave displaced workers without jobs

AI could reduce non-automated tasks significantly, leaving displaced workers with insufficient job opportunities, Macklem said.

He acknowledged that while AI can replace workers in lower-productivity jobs, they are freed up to fill other, more productive jobs in the economy. 

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However, more pessimistic estimates suggest that AI might only have a modest impact on productivity, he said, adding that AI could also create negative outcomes, such as amplifying internet addiction and enabling malicious actors. These adverse effects could substantially decrease the net positive impact of AI.

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According to Macklem, understanding and shaping the labor market impacts will be increasingly important as AI continues to advance and diffuse through economies:

“As AI becomes more established in the economy and its impacts more transformative, it could end up destroying more jobs than it creates. And the people who lose their work to automation may struggle to find new opportunities. This is a concern for us all.”

Bank of Canada using AI to forecast inflation, economic activity

Macklem said that the Bank of Canada is using AI to forecast inflation, economic activity and demand for bank notes, track sentiment in key economic sectors, clean and verify regulatory data, improve efficiency and de-risk operations. 

Macklem said with very large and highly disaggregated data sets now available, there is huge potential to use AI to understand how consumers and businesses are behaving and how companies are setting their prices. 

Although much uncertainty remains, Macklem believes the recent rapid advances in AI, and generative AI, in particular, have the potential to transform economies around the world. 

“We need to better understand how AI will affect productivity, employment, price-setting behavior and inflation. This work will take time. In the interim, we should use increasingly informed scenarios to help manage our uncertainty,” the governor concluded.

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