Fed chair Powell says AI is coming for your job

It may not happen today or even tomorrow, but US Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell is confident that someday soon AI is going to seriously change the US economy and labor market. 

Speaking to the US Senate Banking Committee on Wednesday to give his semiannual monetary policy report, Powell told elected officials that AI’s effect on the economy to date is “probably not great” yet, but it has “enormous capabilities to make really significant changes in the economy and labor force.”

Powell declined to predict how quickly that change could happen, only noting that the final few leaps to get from a shiny new technology to practical implementation can be a slow one. 

“What’s happened before with technology is that it seems to take a long time to be implemented,” Powell said. “That last phase has tended to take longer than people expect.”