- Key insight: Artificial intelligence agents already account for half of the visits to the Federal Reserve Economic Data site.
- Expert quote: "Up till now, FRED has been designed to be viewed and understood by humans. But an AI bot sees and interprets data very differently. And that means the FRED team must adapt how FRED is presented to this new type of viewer so that the data are conveyed back to the agent's master accurately and in a well-documented manner." — Federal Reserve Gov. Christopher Waller
- Forward Look: The Fed is instituting a model context protocol to help AI bots engage with its databases.
The Federal Reserve is adding new capabilities to its flagship online database to make it more searchable by artificial intelligence agents.
Fed Gov. Christopher Waller, during a Thursday morning speech, said the central bank will soon update its Federal Reserve Economic Data, or FRED, website to help it better connect to AI systems.
In his remarks, delivered at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, Waller said these adaptations to FRED are a response to the rapid growth of traffic on the website driven by AI queries. He noted visits to the site are growing 150% per year, primarily from bots, with the split between human and AI traffic currently at roughly 50-50.
"Up till now, FRED has been designed to be viewed and understood by humans. But an AI bot sees and interprets data very differently," Waller said. "And that means the FRED team must adapt how FRED is presented to this new type of viewer so that the data are conveyed back to the agent's master accurately and in a well-documented manner."
Waller's speech is the latest in the fast growing
FRED serves as a single access point for the various economic data produced by the Fed directly and gathered from other government agencies and global sources. In total, it hosts more than 850,000 data series.
Read more:
Fed's Waller sees transformative potential in AI payments Barr: 'now is the time' to prepare for AI-driven job losses Bowman: AI cyber threats need 'proactive risk management' Musings about Muse, Meta's red-hot new AI agent
Waller, who served as executive vice president and director of research at the St. Louis Fed before joining the Board of Governors in 2020, described FRED as the "goodwill ambassador for the Federal Reserve around the world." He said the database is a critical tool for analysts and decisionmakers in both the public and private sectors.
"Among all the Federal Reserve's accomplishments over the years, I consider FRED to be the greatest public good that we have ever created," he said.
In his speech, Waller described how the database has evolved over its 60-year history from a weekly newsletter to a telephone answering machine to computer bulletin board and, ultimately, a continuously updated website. He said the current wave of innovation is different from past evolutions in one key way.
"Unlike past technological advances that primarily aided in the distribution of data, AI can create content as well, and this capability creates new risks," he said.
In the near term, the Fed will seek to address this by rolling out what is known as a model context protocol, a digital rule book that helps AI agents and external tools or databases communicate with one another.
Waller said the MCP is an attempt to ensure data from FRED is accurately cited and is reproduced by AI agents in a way that minimizes hallucinations, biases and hidden assumptions.
Thus far, Waller said, the bots that access FRED have "generally been very accurate in describing visualizations and explaining complex terms and concepts in simple ways," but without an interoperability interface, issues may arise.
Waller said the Fed is working on other skills to optimize its databases for AI interoperability. Specifically, he said the central bank is striving to make the Federal Reserve Archival System for Economic Research, or FRASER, library and the Archival Federal Reserve Economic Data, or ALFRED, database open to AI inquiries.
"Our market economy depends on information, and in ways that most people take for granted, it depends on the quiet and dependable presence of a trusted source of economic data," he said. "With FRED, ALFRED, and FRASER, the St. Louis Fed and the Federal Reserve System perform a vital public service, and this conference today represents our commitment to continue that service, as AI presents new opportunities and challenges."
