BANGKOK: The artificial intelligence boom has been a key driver of global growth, but also poses economic risks should investment in the technology falter, experts and policymakers said this week at the IMF-World Bank Annual Meetings in Bangkok.
Propelled by spending on data centres and microchips, AI has helped cushion the economic shock of rising global energy prices caused by war in the Middle East, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said. The fund’s chief economist Silvana Tenreyro noted this week that global trade rose 8.3pc between 2023 and 2025 — a figure she said would be closer to 4.6pc without AI-related products. “It is everywhere in the global economy,” Bank of Canada Governor Tiff Macklem said of AI.
“You see it in GDP. You see it in the stock market. You see it in the bond market... So it is here, and it’s just the beginning.” But some top officials gathered in Bangkok this week cautioned against relying too heavily on AI investment. Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh called AI the “most consequential change” to the global economy in his lifetime, and said it had “a huge benefit”. Still, he warned the road ahead would be “bumpy”. “The path from where we are to there is likely to be a very bumpy one, bumpy in our understanding of the technology, bumpy because we really don’t know what the market structure is going to be of these new technologies,” he said.
Russia boycotted
Many delegates to the International Monetary Fund’s steering committee walked out of a meeting on Saturday when Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov addressed the group in Russian, three sources familiar with the matter said.
Delegates walk out of meeting during Russian official’s speech
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 has roiled the International Monetary and Financial Committee, preventing it from reaching consensus statements in the years since. There were deep divisions again at this week’s annual meetings of the IMF and World Bank in Bangkok, as new tensions flared between the US and Ukraine. “Many delegations walked out, including members of the European Union,” one of the sources said. A second official in the room said nearly a dozen delegates left the room when the Russian official began speaking. Delegates from Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Norway, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia were among those who left, the official said.
Published in Dawn, October 18th, 2026
