Fed's Waller Addresses AI and Economic Data at FRED Con 2026

Federal Reserve Governor Christopher Waller delivered remarks at FRED Con 2026, the annual conference hosted by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, addressing how artificial intelligence is reshaping the way economic data is accessed, interpreted, and communicated to the public.

The conference, themed "Navigating Trust, AI and Storytelling in a World of Data," brought together data professionals, economists, and technologists to examine the evolving role of AI tools alongside established platforms such as FRED — the St. Louis Fed's widely used Federal Reserve Economic Data database, which hosts hundreds of thousands of economic time series drawn from government and private sources.

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Waller's remarks framed the moment as a competitive and collaborative reckoning between legacy data infrastructure and emerging AI capabilities, a tension his speech title likened to the cinematic clash of Godzilla versus Kong. The analogy underscored a broader policy and institutional question: how established data repositories can maintain relevance, accuracy, and public trust as AI-driven interfaces increasingly serve as the primary gateway through which users consume economic information.

The stakes of that question extend well beyond the technical. Federal Reserve officials have grown increasingly attentive to how AI systems handle economic data, particularly whether they accurately convey uncertainty, avoid misrepresentation of statistics, and preserve the integrity of the analytical narrative around monetary policy and macroeconomic conditions.

FRED Con 2026 reflects the St. Louis Fed's continued effort to position its data platform at the forefront of the open-data movement while grappling with the disruptive potential of generative AI in research and public communication. Continue reading at FRB: Speeches.