Feb 17 (Reuters) - The Federal Reserve must dig deep on the data to assess whether artificial intelligence is boosting productivity growth and enabling faster economic growth without igniting inflation or requiring the Fed to tap the brakes with tighter policy, San Francisco Fed President Mary Daly said on Tuesday.
The Trump administration says that's already happening, and some economists say that rising investment into AI will boost productivity growth further, creating an economy that, as in the 1990s with the adoption of computers and software, could grow faster than before even as inflation remained tame.
So far, Daly said in remarks prepared for delivery to an event at San Jose State University hosted by the Silicon Valley Leadership Group, "most macro-studies of productivity growth find limited evidence of a significant AI effect." That could be because it is still too soon to see the results of the improvements from investments by individual companies in some corners of industry.
Or, she said, "it could also be that we are simply not there yet," and it takes a lot more time for economy-wide transformations to occur.
(Reporting by Ann Saphir; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama )
