Christine Lagarde: The transformative power of AI - Europe's moment to act
Speech by Ms Christine Lagarde, President of the European Central Bank, at the BratislavAI Forum on artificial intelligence and education as part of an OECD high-level event to mark the 25th anniversary of "Better policies for better lives", Bratislava, 24 November 2025.
The views expressed in this speech are those of the speaker and not the view of the BIS.
It's a privilege to speak with you today about artificial intelligence.
In 1987 Robert Solow famously remarked that "you can see the computer age everywhere but in the productivity statistics."
The same observation could be made today. We see AI advancing at remarkable speed. Yet its aggregate impact is still barely visible in the data.
Over the past year global corporate investment in AI reached USD 252 billion, and private AI firms raised a record USD 100 billion. Five leading US investors in terms of capital expenditure are now companies that focus heavily on AI. None of these companies numbered among the top ten investors a decade ago.
Some view this surge as temporary exuberance running ahead of underlying fundamentals. But a debate framed only in terms of short-term ups and downs may miss the bigger picture.
History offers many examples of intense investment waves that – despite swings in the investment cycle – ultimately left behind transformative technologies that reshaped economies for decades.
So the key question is not whether there are cycles – that is almost certain – but how long it will take before the enduring productivity benefits become visible.