Central bankers are worried about artificial intelligence killing jobs. But OpenAI's chief economist says the story is more complicated - and more hopeful.
Ronnie Chatterji told a room full of Europe's top monetary policymakers that a task being exposed to AI does not automatically mean a worker will lose their job. Instead, he argued, AI often helps people do their work better.
Chatterji pointed to his own father's experience to make the point concrete. In 1985, his father - also an economist - first put a personal computer in his office. "Instead of using a punch card in a big room in a mainframe computer to run regressions, now he could run them on his computer," Chatterji said. "And it was a compliment to his work over time that made him more productive."
The economist warned against both blind optimism and pessimism. "We need to think a lot harder about what jobs are, how they will evolve, and that will help us give advice to people about labor-market trends rather than being optimistic or pessimistic," he said.
Chatterji added that early predictions of mass job destruction have not come true. "Those jobs shrinking as AI capabilities increased - that really hasn't happened to the same extent people were predicting."
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European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde said she is "extremely attentive" to AI's impact on jobs. Philip Lane, the ECB's chief economist who hosted the conversation, noted that adoption is happening quickly. "Our firm surveys, our consumer surveys do see quite rapid adoption compared to previous general purpose technologies," Lane said. "Europe is many ways well placed to adopt AI. So I'm optimistic we do think it's a positive factor for productivity, for investment, but it's still early days."
Not everyone is calm. Germany's Joachim Nagel called AI "a disruptive technology" and said "it's difficult to say at the moment where we are ending up here." Finland's Olli Rehn warned that central bankers must focus on risks like job losses and financial market dangers. "We should not hide the challenges we are facing," he said.
A big debate at the Sintra retreat was whether AI will push prices up or down. The short answer: both, but at different times.
Olaf Sleijpen of the Netherlands' central bank explained: "At least in the short term, AI is inflationary because there's a lot of spending going into it, which is supporting the economy. But of course the productivity gains are not there yet. And the idea is that when those materialize, that indeed would be disinflationary." Disinflationary means it brings inflation down.
Belgium's Pierre Wunsch agreed. "Some people say it's going to be deflationary, some people say it's going to be initially inflationary because you first have the investment and then the impact on productivity," he said. He also noted that if AI adds even half a percentage point to economic growth, "it's a game changer in terms of fiscal policy, in terms of debt dynamics, in terms of the possibility to increase wages."
Central bankers will track whether AI adoption leads to real productivity gains or just more spending. Europe may benefit from using AI models even if it does not own the most advanced ones. But the path is uncertain. Policymakers say they are still in "discovery mode."
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