CFOs Meet LLMs
Can AI predict what business leaders actually think about the economy?
Researchers prompted an AI language model to role-play as CFOs of real companies and answer questions about economic optimism. The AI's answers matched what those CFOs actually said in surveys with striking accuracy, even after accounting for the companies' past responses and characteristics. This suggests LLMs could replace expensive, slow-to-conduct surveys with instant, continuous snapshots of business sentiment across thousands of firms.
Business leaders' economic outlook drives hiring, investment, and lending decisions that ripple through the entire economy. Currently, policymakers and investors rely on surveys of just a few hundred CFOs that arrive months late. If AI can reliably predict what executives are thinking in real time, economists and the Federal Reserve could spot economic shifts weeks or months earlier and adjust policy accordingly—potentially catching slowdowns before they happen or avoiding overheating.