When the world’s most influential central bankers gather in a Portuguese resort town to talk about artificial intelligence with Silicon Valley’s top economists, it’s worth paying attention. Not because of what they announce, but because of what it signals about where the regulatory winds are blowing.
On June 30, OpenAI Chief Economist Aaron Chatterji sat down with ECB Executive Board member Philip R. Lane at the ECB Forum on Central Banking in Sintra, Portugal, for a live discussion about AI’s role in the financial system.
What happened in Sintra
The ECB’s annual forum ran from June 29 to July 1, and this year’s agenda made one thing clear: the central bank is treating AI and tokenization as front-burner policy issues, not academic curiosities.
The Chatterji-Lane session kicked off at 14:30 local time on June 30, pairing OpenAI’s first-ever chief economist, who was appointed in October 2024, with one of the ECB’s most senior policymakers. Lane has served on the ECB Executive Board since 2019 and functions as the institution’s chief economist.
