by Christopher Condon
Chicago Tribune
Move over Janet Yellen. Automation in the workplace is about to get personal.
Instead of relying on the Federal Reserve chair, imagine using a computer to transform mountains of raw economic data into reliable predictions for unemployment, inflation and gross domestic product. What’s the best level for the federal funds rate? Press .
“The capability is here,” says Andrew Lo, director of the Laboratory for Financial Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, near Boston. “The biggest hurdle is the cultural barrier. You’ve got a lot of central bankers who are not as open to technology.”