Thank you, President Bostic. Let me start by saying my thoughts are with all the people of Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and the other communities who have felt the force of Helene's impact. I am saddened by the tragic loss of life and widespread disruption in these regions served by the Federal Reserve Banks of Atlanta and Richmond. As Chair Powell said yesterday, we at the Fed are encouraging banks to work with customers in affected areas and we are working to support the Reserve Banks to ensure there are ample cash supplies, which can be especially important during times of power outages.
I am always happy to be in Atlanta, in Georgia, and at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. I grew up in Georgia, and I am a proud graduate of Spelman College. Atlanta is an appropriate place to speak about today's topic, artificial intelligence (AI), as it is in the midst of large corporations and startups developing uses for AI and near so many impressive schools, including Georgia Tech, a top AI research university and where I took courses to prepare for a Ph.D. in economics. Our tech entrepreneurship and AI roundtable with Chair Powell, held at Spelman last year, is a testament to Atlanta being such a locus of activity.
Today, I will speak to you about AI, big data, and the path ahead for productivity. My comments today will build upon what I offered a year ago at the NBER AI meeting in Toronto, when I emphasized the importance of business decision-making in our progress along that path. Technology alone will not determine the outcome.
Futurists have dreamed of an autonomous, thinking machine throughout the modern era. Benjamin Franklin once lost a game of chess to such a machine, the "Mechanical Turk"; of course, there was a human chess master hidden inside. Nowadays, chess engines that beat the top players can run on your phone.