The writer is a former professor of economics and senior adviser at the Bank of England.
There are many dark visions of the far future of artificial intelligence: Skynet vs humans, as depicted in the Terminator franchise; Nick Bostrom’s Superintelligence running amok, turning the world into paper clips; or a world of worklessness, with either poverty or abundance — ‘fully-automated luxury Communism’ (depending on who owns the robots).
But a recent paper — The Emotions of Monetary Policy — which uses modern machine-learning techniques to crunch speeches at European Central Bank press conferences by Mario Draghi and Christine Lagarde, raises the prospect of another future that might not be all that far off, one that is also not wholly positive. I don’t know whether there would be a watchable sci-fi finance movie in it (please throw me a few $ as an executive consultant if you steal the idea), or even a new series of Industry, but read on and make your own judgement.