ZURICH, Aug 21 (Reuters) – Artificial intelligence can push inflation higher in the short term although the overall effect of the technology remains unclear, Swiss \u200cNational Bank governing board member Petra Tschudin said in an interview published \u200con Friday. <\/p>\n
The central bank was looking closely at the impact of AI on prices, saying it could \u200bhave an effect in both directions, Tschudin told newspaper Finanz und Wirtschaft. <\/p>\n
“Investment flows are being partly redirected, which can mean adjustments and difficulties for the rest of the economy,” Tschudin said. <\/p>\n
“Shortages can occur, for example with chips, causing prices to rise. In the \u200cshort or medium term, therefore, \u2060upward inflationary pressure can also arise.” <\/p>\n
In the longer term artificial intelligence could also lower prices by increasing productivity and making goods cheaper, \u2060she said. <\/p>\n
But because inflation was calculated on an annual basis, to have a deflationary effect, this price decline would have to repeat itself regularly, she said. <\/p>\n
“Is that realistic? Productivity gains \u200bas \u200bsuch are not a new phenomenon. They do \u200bnot, by themselves, lead an \u200ceconomy into structural deflation,” Tschudin said. <\/p>\n
On Thursday, the International Monetary Fund’s new chief economist Silvana Tenreyro also warned in research published by Bank of England staff that even if artificial intelligence boosts productivity, it may not lower inflation. <\/p>\n
In its latest forecast the SNB does not see inflation above or below its target range for annual price \u200crises of 0% to 2% in the period \u200bup to the first quarter of 2029. <\/p>\n
Still, Tschudin \u200bsaid this should not be seen \u200bas a forecast the central bank will not change its policy \u200cinterest rate, which currently stands at \u200b0%. <\/p>\n
Instead the forecast was \u200bbased on how the central bank saw inflation if interest rates remained unchanged. <\/p>\n
“If there is new relevant information about inflation, we adjust monetary policy,” Tschudin said. <\/p>\n
“The \u200bconditional inflation forecast should \u200cnot be understood to mean that interest rates will remain at their \u200bcurrent level for three years. We do not publish interest rate forecasts.” <\/p>\n
(Reporting \u200bby John Revill; Editing by Kirsten Donovan) <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ZURICH, Aug 21 (Reuters) – Artificial intelligence can push inflation higher in the short term although the overall…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":576169,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[365,363,364,283701,111,139,69,66752,145,283702],"class_list":["post-576168","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-conditional-inflation","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-swiss-national-bank","tag-technology","tag-tschudin"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/576168","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=576168"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/576168\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/576169"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=576168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=576168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=576168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}