For central banks the message is that, by widening their information net, they could stand to benefit from the wisdom of crowds. But there are limits to how and to how far you would wish to widen the net if the crowd is to add signal rather than noise. To illustrate this point, consider the following thought-experiment. Imagine you have an endowment of time – 10,000 hours – to make as informed a decision as possible on a complex question. I have not chosen 10,000 hours randomly. In his book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell argues, based on a detailed set of case studies, that it takes around 10,000 hours for one person to command true expertise in a subject area. Now let’s choose a complex, and topical, question: will Artificial Intelligence (AI) cause mass unemployment? It is well-known that the views of experts (and non-experts) differ widely on this complex question and that the outcome is very uncertain. The problem we need to solve is not this but a simpler one: how many people should we choose to help inform our view on the impact of AI on unemployment? 37  The conditioning assumptions (such as the assumed path of interest rates) and purpose of forecasts will vary between central banks and other forecasters. 38 Mankodi and Pike (2018) discuss whether central bankers can become superforecasters. 14  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  14  One possible answer to this question is one person.
Last year industrial output declined markedly in all major regions of the world economy. In the US it appears that the decline may be coming to a halt. Developments in Japan are still highly uncertain. In the US, confidence indicators have recently shown some signs of improvement. The decline recorded following the terrorist acttacks on 11 September last year has been partly reversed. Nor does it appear that households in the euro area have become more pessimistic in the last few months. However, the indicators suggest that they still consider the economic situation to be fairly negative. Various institutions’ growth forecasts for 2002 were lowered substantially through 2001. Due to sluggish economic developments, many central banks reduced their key rates last year, in some cases quite appreciably. With the exception of Japan, no significant further downward adjustments of growth forecasts have been made in the last few months. Norges Bank expects international consumer price inflation to be low both this year and in 2003. This will contribute to a low, and in some cases negative, rise in prices for imported consumer goods. During the autumn of 2001, we saw signs that the international turnaround was also being felt in Norway. Some export industries, travel and tourism were most vulnerable. The oil price fell sharply. Since last autumn the oil price has hovered around USD 18-20 per barrel. The price of oil futures has remained stable at around USD 20 per barrel.