Fed Governor Lisa Cook Calls for ‘Consensus’ on Artificial Intelligence Regulation

Leading Federal Reserve Board voice on artificial intelligence wants a unified approach to the different elements of artificial intelligence, including its impact on bias and fraud.

This was discussed by Fed Governor Lisa Cook, an economist who has been researching artificial intelligence since 2018 emerging technology Tuesday morning at a conference hosted by the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. Given all the uncertainties surrounding machine learning, Cook said it’s important to provide transparency wherever possible, including on the political front.

“Supporting the global innovation ecosystem remains desirable through research and development, advanced education, employee training and retraining, and legal protection of intellectual property,” she said. “Moreover, consensus must be reached on the benefits and costs of regulating the use of AI in the areas of privacy, compensation for training data, the perpetuation and amplification of bias, and fraud.”

This is the third time Cook will deliver prepared remarks on artificial intelligence since joining the Fed’s board of governors in 2022. Last week, she delivered a speech at Ohio State University on the technology’s impact on the labor market, and in September 2023 she called to greater transparency in AI software. She also brought this up several times along the way public question and answer sessions.

During her Tuesday speech, as well as a subsequent conversation with Atlanta Fed President Raphael Bostic, Cook struck an optimistic tone about the potential impact of artificial intelligence. She said the technology could have a disinflationary effect, increasing economic productivity in the long run and even result in higher wage growth.

Contrary to fears that artificial intelligence – especially generative intelligence, which can create unique content based on suggestions provided by humans – could replace workers, Cook believes that the technology will overtake specific tasks, but not entire professions. Nevertheless, she cited examples of AI being used to fill gaps in less populated professions such as welding. She added that artificial intelligence has made it easier and cheaper to start and run new businesses.

Overall, she said these changes have improved overall sentiment towards AI over the past year as concerns about wholesale worker replacement have waned.

“The fear that I heard… I won’t say it’s completely gone, but I think there’s a calmer approach to thinking about the tasks we’re going to have to train and retrain workers for, rather than doing it so tragically, a clear dichotomy between professions and artificial intelligence,” she said .

Cook also said that AI and technology more broadly could be used to empower certain sectors – such as manufacturing – in ways that make them more attractive to Gen Z and other future generations of workers.

“What they have found, at least in the auto industry, is that having some technology combined with some technology makes (younger generations) interested in manufacturing,” she said. “Many jobs could be robotized, and the ones that really require human talent are the ones that interest them and there is some kind of interface that they are used to. So there are ways to adapt these stations and make them more palatable, more interesting for the younger generations.”

Cook reiterated the importance of proper AI software training. She said this requires input from a diverse group of users to reduce built-in biases. In particular, she noted that ChatGPT’s artificial intelligence chatbot learns primarily from male users, citing a study from Denmark that found men outperformed male users by 20%, bucking a trend from the 1980s, according to with whom the women had previously used the program. new technology.

Cook said this demonstrated her long-standing concern for social inclusion in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics. But it’s up to the private sector to address these disparities, she said.

“Ultimately, employers have the most say in this matter,” she said. “But I think there are opportunities to make this more widespread.”