Fed Governor Waller Explores AI's Role in Economic Data at FRED Con

Federal Reserve Governor Christopher Waller delivered remarks at FRED Con 2026, a conference hosted by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis focused on data, artificial intelligence, and economic storytelling. The event, titled "Navigating Trust, AI and Storytelling in a World of Data," brought together data professionals and economists to examine how emerging technologies are reshaping the way economic information is gathered, interpreted, and communicated.

Waller's speech, framed around the playful metaphor of a clash between FRED — the St. Louis Fed's widely used Federal Reserve Economic Data platform — and modern AI systems, addressed substantive questions about trust, accuracy, and the evolving landscape of data analysis. FRED is one of the most accessed public repositories of U.S. and international economic data, used by researchers, policymakers, journalists, and the general public.

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The address reflects growing institutional interest within the Federal Reserve System in how artificial intelligence tools interact with authoritative economic datasets. Central banks and government statistical agencies have been increasingly scrutinizing whether AI-generated economic analysis accurately represents underlying data or introduces distortions that could mislead users or policymakers.

Waller's participation signals that senior Fed officials are actively engaging with questions that extend beyond traditional monetary policy — namely, how the integrity of public economic data can be preserved and communicated effectively in an era when AI tools can generate rapid but not always reliable summaries of complex datasets. The tension between accessibility and accuracy in AI-assisted data interpretation is a challenge not unique to the Fed but one with particular consequences given the Fed's policy-setting role.

Continue reading at FRB: Speeches.