Central banks can now use AI to forecast the economy without building new models

The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) has built an AI model called BISTRO that can forecast economic trends. This means central banks can use a single AI tool for many different forecasting tasks, instead of building separate models for each one.

For decades, central banks built custom statistical models for every economic question. This was slow and expensive. BISTRO means they can now use one AI model to do many different kinds of forecasts, including those that show how different policies might play out. This could make economic policy decisions faster and more responsive.