References to artificial intelligence have risen sharply at recent meetings of the Federal Reserve's Federal Open Market Committee. Analysts say AI is being folded into the core agenda of monetary policy decisions as officials identify it as a variable capable of significantly affecting productivity, prices and employment, as well as financial market stability.
The Washington Post analyzed FOMC minutes and found that the keyword AI has appeared dozens of times this year, emerging as a main issue in policy discussions, according to a report on the 29th. That marks a complete change from as recently as last autumn, when direct references to AI were extremely rare. Claudia Sahm, chief economist at New Century Advisors and a former Fed economist, said that as of 2026, AI is the central theme explaining every economic phenomenon.
The word AI did not appear directly in the minutes as recently as 2023 and early 2024, according to the analysis. Fed officials were watching for the ripple effects that technology would bring, but their language largely remained vague.
The minutes from January 2024 described the situation indirectly, noting that broad stock price indexes had risen to record highs but that the gains were driven mainly by strong advances in large-cap technology shares. The minutes cannot fully capture everything that concerns Fed officials, but at that point AI clearly was not being treated as a core topic.
AI was first named explicitly in the minutes at the FOMC meeting held April 30 to May 1, 2024, about a year and a half after the release of ChatGPT. Participants at that meeting assessed that strong productivity growth could continue if adoption of AI technology became more active. That reflected expectations that producing more output with the same number of work hours could support economic growth without stoking inflation.
Discussion of AI intensified from 2025, as the impact of Big Tech's AI investment boom on the broader U.S. economy grew.
At the December meeting, some officials said technological advances and productivity gains from wider AI adoption could raise the economic growth rate without price pressures while slowing job creation. The implication is that even if AI lifts growth, it could reduce corporate demand for labor, complicating both sides of the Fed's dual mandate of price stability and maximum employment at the same time.
Concerns about financial stability and prices were added this year. At the January meeting, some participants pointed to high valuations of AI-related stocks, market capitalization concentrated in a small number of companies, and increased debt financing for AI infrastructure investment as potential vulnerabilities. At the July meeting, some participants assessed that the impact of AI infrastructure construction on prices had been limited to certain areas, while others took the opposing view that AI investment was lifting aggregate demand and was already having, or would soon have, a broader effect on prices.
With AI emerging as a key variable in monetary policy, Fed Chair Kevin Warsh said in a speech on the 28th at an economic policy symposium in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, that the central bank recognizes AI will affect both the economy and the conduct of monetary policy as a new variable and potentially a new factor of production, and said the Fed would carry out related research.
