Artificial Intelligence

Podcast

Hand pulling dollar bill out of the screen of a smartphone

Hot Topics in Electronic Payments

Speaking of the Economy

March 12, 2025

Vanity McDaniel and Jennifer Stadler provide a snapshot of how consumers pay for goods and services today and reflect on the latest technology trends in the U.S. payments system, including contactless payments, digital wallets, "buy now, pay later," instant payments, and the use of artificial intelligence. McDaniel is a senior payments business advisor at the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond and Stadler is executive vice president of marketing and membership at PaymentsFirst, a payments industry association.

Article

Three construction workers discussing their plan, surrounded by building materials, scaffolds, and a crane.

Sectoral Determinants of Aggregate Productivity Growth

Economic Brief

February 2025, No. 25-08

The contributions of various sectors to aggregate productivity growth have shifted significantly since World War II.

Pierre-Daniel G. Sarte and Jack Taylor

Conference

A hologram with the text "AI" appears from a laptop with a person using it.

Technology-Enabled Disruption Conference: Implications of AI, Big Data and Remote Work

Oct. 1, 2024

Podcast

What Yesterday's Economy Tells Us About Today

Speaking of the Economy

Sept. 25, 2024

Tom Barkin, president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, looks back on recent economic trends and how they have shaped the current state of the national economy.

Podcast

Robot hand giving a gear to a human hand.

AI and Automation Adoption in the Fifth District and Beyond

Speaking of the Economy

Sept. 18, 2024

Pierre-Daniel Sarte and Sonya Waddell share survey results on businesses' use of AI tools and other forms of automation, and research on the potential effects of automation on the nation's overall productivity growth. Sarte is a senior advisor and Waddell is a vice president at the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond.

Survey

The Productivity Implications of How CFO Survey Firms are Using AI

Aug. 15, 2024

As the capabilities of generative AI continue to improve, the CFO Survey can provide us insights on the impact these tools are having on firms and the growth of their productivity.

Sonya Ravindranath Waddell
Vice President

Article

Software developer writing code in his office while using AI tools.

The Productivity Puzzle: AI, Technology Adoption and the Workforce

Economic Brief

August 2024, No. 24-25

Technology improvements may not matter as much as the age and experience of the workforce.

Erin Henry, Pierre-Daniel G. Sarte and Jack Taylor

Blog Post

Warehouse worker in a safety vest walks through storage area with a technology overlay showing data about all of the containers.

Automation and AI: What Does Adoption Look Like for Fifth District Businesses?

Regional Matters

June 27, 2024

Firms continue to innovate and automate, although responses from Fifth District business respondents illustrate that we are in the early days of AI adoption.

Emily Wavering Corcoran and Sonya Ravindranath Waddell

Survey

Graphic of a person touching a transparent AI button and icons webbing out that represent different types of technology and processes that include it.

U.S. Companies Ramp Up Automation and AI as Inflation Persists

June 20, 2024

Nearly two-thirds of CFOs say their companies have a strategic priority to automate tasks typically performed by employees. Among firms that plan to automate in the next 12 months, a majority expect to implement AI to perform a wide range of tasks.

Article

Illustration of a lightbulb with an internal brainstem that says AI and surrounding blocks that represent people.

Aggregate Effects of the Adoption of AI

Economic Brief

June 2024, No. 24-19

What are early studies suggesting about how AI may impact labor productivity?

Andreas Hornstein
(Emeritus)

Article

Artificial Intelligence: Potentials and Prospects

Econ Focus

Third Quarter 2024

Economic history and research can provide useful tools for thinking about the future of AI and the challenges and risks along the way.

Zhu Wang

Podcast

AI and Banking Supervision

Speaking of the Economy

Oct. 25, 2023

Tom Bilston and Tony Murray of the Richmond Fed's bank supervision team discuss how banks use machine learning, chat bots and other forms of AI as well as what these technological innovations mean for bank examiners, both in terms of the risks they monitor and how they do their job.

Article

Artificial Intelligence and Bank Supervision

Econ Focus

Second Quarter 2023

Financial institutions have approached AI with cautious optimism, developing and implementing AI-based applications for things like customer service chatbots, detecting fraud, and evaluating creditworthiness. Bank supervisors are learning how to adapt.

John Mullin

Article

Daron Acemoglu

Econ Focus

Second Quarter 2023

MIT's Daron Acemoglu, the author of Why Nations Fail and Power and Progress, on Henry Ford, making AI worker-friendly, and how democracy improves economic growth.

David A. Price

Article

Secular Trends in Macroeconomics and Firm Dynamics: A Conference Recap

Economic Brief

January 2023, No. 23-02

Among the topics discussed were income growth volatility, AI's impact on productivity and how housing price changes affect young businesses.

Tim Sablik and Matthew Wells

Article

Joshua Gans

Econ Focus

Second/Third Quarter 2020

University of Toronto economist on managing pandemics, allocating vaccines, and low-cost prediction with artificial intelligence.

David A. Price

Article

R. Preston McAfee

Econ Focus

Fourth Quarter 2018

Microsoft's former chief economist on conducting research at tech companies, entrepreneurship within large firms, and the effects of artificial intelligence on markets

David A. Price

Article

Has AI Improved Productivity?

Econ Focus

Fourth Quarter 2018

Economists interested in AI have been puzzled by what some call a "productivity paradox," the gap between optimistic expectations about the economic effects of AI and the effects that appear in the data.

Emma Yeager

Article

Machine Learning

Econ Focus

Third Quarter 2018

Whether it's a custom music playlist crafted for millions of users or interpreting X-rays and other scans, machine learning is having a substantial impact on a wide range of industries.

David A. Price