Keynote speech by Piero Cipollone, Member of the Executive Board of the European Central Bank, at the National Conference of Statistics on official statistics at the time of artificial intelligence

Rome, 4 July 2024

It is a pleasure to be here today to discuss the implications of artificial intelligence (AI) from a central bank’s perspective.^[1]

The world is witnessing extraordinary advances in the field of AI.^[2] We are moving from analytical AI models designed to perform specific tasks^[3] to generative AI models capable of creating human-like content.

The burgeoning interest in generative AI has boosted AI adoption.^[4] A recent international survey revealed that almost three-quarters of organisations had adopted AI for one or more business functions, and around two-thirds of them are using generative AI. Nevertheless, just 8% reported using AI for five or more business functions – suggesting that we are still in the initial stages of AI integration.^[5]

AI can be applied to a…