Over 200 Economists Warn AI Economic Impact Could Eclipse Industrial Revolution in Just Years

Over 200 experts call for urgent action to tackle AI's economic impact

July 13 (Reuters) - More than 200 researchers and economists, including 15 Nobel laureates and researchers at OpenAI, Anthropic and Google, have called for governments and technology leaders to urgently create policies and institutions to address the economic impact of AI. They issued the jointly signed statement on Monday, warning that AI could drive a larger economic transformation than the Industrial Revolution but one that is "vastly shorter" in ⁠time frame, raising questions for workers, companies and public institutions. The statement has called for deeper research on AI's economic impacts and to start building policies and institutions required to ensure the technology benefits society and to navigate risks such as large-scale job displacement. "Steam, electricity, and computers each gave societies decades to adapt. AI may give us only ⁠a few years," said Anton Korinek, professor at the University of Virginia. "We cannot improvise our strategy and institutions in the middle of the transformation; waiting for certainty means arriving too late." Korinek, who joined ⁠Anthropic's economic research team in March, organized the initiative with fellow economists Erik Brynjolfsson, Ajay Agrawal and Tom Cunningham. Its signatories include OpenAI finance chief ⁠Sarah Friar, Google DeepMind Chief Scientist Jeff Dean, Anthropic co-founder Jack Clark and people on the economics research ⁠team at the Claude chatbot maker. Nobel laureates Michael Spence, Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson, among others, also signed the statement. Reporting by Deborah Sophia in Bengaluru; Editing by Leroy Leo Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab

Economists Warn of A.I. Threat

Nearly 200 economists signed a letter calling for policymakers to do more to understand and respond to potential A.I. disruptions. Artificial intelligence could transform the economy faster than any previous technology, and policymakers must move equally quickly to figure out how to respond, a group of economists and researchers are warning. "A.I. may become radically more powerful over the next 10 years," the researchers wrote in a statement released on Monday, adding that the technology "could bring risks, including large-scale job displacement, as well as opportunities such as major gains in living standards." The statement, titled "We Must Act Now," was signed by nearly 200 people, including 15 Nobel laureates and the chief economists of two of the leading A.I. labs, Open AI and Anthropic. Other notable signatories include Jack Clark, a co-founder of Anthropic; Eric Schmidt, the former chief executive of Google; and Vinod Khosla, a prominent venture capitalist. Tech industry leaders have been warning for several years that as A.I. grows more powerful, it could quickly take over a large share of human work, leading to widespread joblessness. Economists have tended to greet those predictions with skepticism, noting that technological changes tend to play out more gradually than predicted by industry boosters. Some economists, however, have grown concerned that A.I. is spreading through the economy more quickly and more broadly than past technologies, and that their profession is downplaying the risks. The statement on Monday is the latest sign that such concerns are becoming more widespread. It warns that the effects of A.I. could be "larger than the Industrial Revolution, but unfolding over a vastly shorter time frame."

'We Must Act Now': 16 Nobel laureates warn on AI

More than 200 economists, including 16 Nobel laureates and the chief economists of OpenAI and Anthropic, have signed a statement called We Must Act Now. The remarkable part is not the warning about AI and jobs. It is that a profession famous for its scepticism is admitting it is driving in the fog. Two hundred economists, sixteen of them Nobel laureates, have signed a statement on AI and the economy. The punchline: the smartest people in the room are telling you they cannot see the road. Economists do not usually panic in public. This week, more than 200 of them did it together. On Monday a group of the world's most decorated economists and AI researchers published a statement called We Must Act Now. It runs to just 88 words. It carries 16 Nobel laureates, the chief economists of both OpenAI and Anthropic, and a supporting cast that includes Eric Schmidt, Reid Hoffman, Yoshua Bengio and Yann LeCun. The message is blunt. AI "may become radically more powerful over the next 10 years", the letter says. It could drive "an unprecedented transformation of our economy, larger than the Industrial Revolution, but unfolding over a vastly shorter time frame". That might mean large-scale job losses, or major gains in living standards. The signatories want economists, policymakers and technology leaders to act now and build the guardrails. The sceptics blinked The interesting part is not the warning. It is the signatures. Economists have spent years greeting Silicon Valley's job-apocalypse talk with a raised eyebrow. Technological change, they liked to note, arrives slower than the hype. So the striking names here are the ones who used to say exactly that. Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson, the MIT professors who shared the 2024 Nobel and long played down the AI-jobs scare, both signed. "There's been a notable change in the profession", said Erik Brynjolfsson, the Stanford economist who organised the effort, speaking to the New York Times. Acemoglu has not fully converted. He still doubts AI will move as fast as the boosters claim. But recent breakthroughs have rattled him. If AI does to white-collar work what robots did to factories, only faster, he told the Times, that "would be really disruptive, really costly for people's livelihoods". Driving in the fog Here is the twist that makes the statement so odd. It is not a set of predictions. It is a confession. The signatories are not claiming to know what happens next. They are admitting they cannot see it. "We are driving in the fog, and it is extraordinarily difficult to anticipate what will happen next", said Tom Cunningham of the research group METR, one of the organisers, in the group's official announcement. Anton Korinek, a University of Virginia economist now on leave at Anthropic, put a clock on it in the same release. "Steam, electricity, and computers each gave societies decades to adapt", he said. "AI may give us only a few years." Brynjolfsson has been blunter still. He talks about "flying blind" into one of the most consequential periods in history. His fix is data. His Canaries dashboard, built with ADP and flagged by Fortune, tracks 4.6 million workers to catch trouble before it reaches the headline figures. It already shows employment for 22 to 25-year-olds in AI-exposed jobs shrinking more than 4 percent a year, even as the wider job market looks calm. Nobody agrees what to measure Not everyone is sold on the fog. Torsten Slok, chief economist at Apollo, did not sign. He argues that even "AI exposure", the term at the centre of the debate, gets measured five different ways that disagree most where the stakes are highest, as Fortune reports. Read one way, telemarketers and writers are doomed. Read another, barely touched. The timing is almost comic. Days before the letter landed, the bosses of Anthropic and OpenAI were busy softening their own doom forecasts, recasting AI as a productivity helper rather than a job killer, even as researchers still argue over whether it is quietly reshaping how people work. A very European footnote The list leans hard on Europe. LSE, Cambridge, Oxford, INSEAD, ETH Zurich, Toulouse and Bocconi all feature, alongside the Nobel laureate Christopher Pissarides. What none of them offer is a single concrete policy. There are no numbers, no bills, no institutions named. That is the point, and the problem. Two hundred of the sharpest economic minds alive agree on one thing. They need better tools to see what is coming, and the guardrails are not built yet. The louder fight over who captures the gains can wait until they can read the map. On the evidence of this letter, the map does not yet exist.

Economists on AI-infused future: "We must act now"

That part, everybody can agree on. Less settled is how society should grapple with that fact. Driving the news: The statement, titled "We Must Act Now," was organized by Stanford's Erik Brynjolfsson and other leading economists studying AI. It was published earlier this week with more than 200 signatories, including 16 Nobel laureates. It is now approaching 2,000 signatories. * They include figures identified with the political left (Paul Krugman) and right (Niall Ferguson, Tyler Cowen), as well as both technologists (Reid Hoffman, Eric Schmidt) and people with experience in policymaking (Jason Furman, Gita Gopinath, Gina Raimondo). Here's the short statement, in its entirety: Between the lines: The organizers were able to get such broad agreement by keeping the statement tight and vague. Some of the pushback they have received points to the crucial unresolved questions as the U.S. and countries around the world grapple with an AI-infused future. * The counterargument is that the potential of AI to improve living standards is so great that if governments try to act preemptively to head off unknown risks, they risk blocking transformative benefits to humanity. What they're saying: "You must be kidding," wrote John Cochrane, at Stanford's Hoover Institution, on X. "AI might have big effects. It could have risks. So 'policymakers,' must 'act now,' before they have any idea what they're doing, to 'build the incentives, guardrails and institutions needed to steer AI in a direction that complements humans and benefits society?'" * "Boy I'm glad no self-appointed 'policy maker' decided to 'steer' the development of the steam engine. The ones who 'steered' nuclear power destroyed it. Preemptive dirigisme is killing tech in Europe." The other side: "Good AI needs to complement humans, and this requires a redirection, because the current focus on [artificial general intelligence] is, in all but name, an agenda for displacing humans from meaningful work," said MIT's Daron Acemoglu, who signed the statement, on X. * "That's why steering AI must be a first priority," he added. "I'm happy that many thought leaders have agreed." The bottom line: Can the pro-humanity benefits of AI be enjoyed while policymakers work to prevent its less desirable side effects? That is the debate that the most prominent names in global economics are having.

More than 200 economists warn that more AI job losses are coming

Job losses spurred by the AI boom are growing, and a group of economists is now sounding the alarm that it's going to get worse. A new group called We Must Act Now released an open letter on Monday, warning about "AI's transformation of the economy." The open letter is signed by more than 200 economists, and signees currently include sixteen Nobel Laureates, Anthropic co-founder Jack Clark, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, and the chief economists of both OpenAI and Anthropic. The open letter urges tech leaders and policymakers to take urgent action and address the impacts AI will have on the economy now and in the future. "AI may become radically more powerful over the next 10 years," reads the first bullet point of the open letter. "This could drive an unprecedented transformation of our economy, larger than the Industrial Revolution, but unfolding over a vastly shorter time frame," the open letter continues. "It could bring risks, including large-scale job displacement, as well as opportunities such as major gains in living standards." We Must Act Now's statement concludes with a call to action for leaders of both government bodies and the tech industry. "Economists, policymakers and technology leaders must act now to understand the economics of transformative AI and to build the incentives, guardrails, and institutions needed to steer AI in a direction that complements humans and benefits society," reads the letter. A report released at the end of last year found that there were 50,000 jobs lost due to AI in 2025, and this year, Amazon, Atlassian, Block, Fiverr, Meta, Pinterest, and Snap have all announced layoffs related to AI. As the technology develops, AI-related job cuts are likely to accelerate, too. A survey from May 2026 found that 99 percent of executives among the 12,000 respondents said that they expected AI "to lead to at least some headcount reduction in the next two years." Some politicians are already working on the problem. California Governor Gavin Newsom took action shortly after Meta laid off 8,000 employees, citing its AI push. Last month, Newsom shared that the state will be tracking AI job losses and revealed California's AI-Unemployment Tracker. However, the economists who signed on to the We Must Act Now letter would clearly like to see more. "AI capabilities are advancing far faster than our understanding of the economic implications," said economist Erik Brynjolfsson, who organized the group alongside economists Ajay Agrawal, Tom Cunningham, and Anton Korinek. "In that gap lie the greatest opportunities of our era. We must act now to guide AI to complement humans rather than simply imitate them -- and to generate prosperity for the many, not just the few."

Sixteen Nobel-Winning Economists Warn That Major AI Job Losses Are Coming

Can't-miss innovations from the bleeding edge of science and tech Over 200 economists, researchers and industry executives, including sixteen Nobel Prize winners, signed an urgent letter warning that AI could radically transform the economy at an unprecedented pace and scale -- and that policymakers and governments need to move to mitigate the fallout. Titled "We Must Act Now," the letter is brief. It predicts that "AI may become radically more powerful over the next ten years," and that acceleration in the tech's capabilities "could drive an unprecedented transformation of our economy, larger than the Industrial Revolution, but unfolding over a vastly shorter time frame." While possible risks include "large-scale job displacement," there may also be "opportunities," the letter suggests, citing "major gains in living standards." But neither the risks nor the benefits of AI can be harnessed if leaders across policy, government, and industry don't act quickly to understand the scale of AI's potential impact on the workforce. "Economists, policymakers and technology leaders must act now to understand the economics of transformative AI," the letter declares, "and to build the incentives, guardrails, and institutions needed to steer AI in a direction that complements humans and benefits society." Signees include Nobel-winning Massachusetts Institute of Technology professors Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson, New York University economist and Nobel winner Michael Spence, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, former OpenAI researcher-turned-critic Zoë Hitzig, current OpenAI Chief Financial Officer Sarah Friar, and Anthropic cofounder Jack Clark, among many others. That said, despite the many big names who signed on, the letter doesn't actually propose any solutions to the issues it raises. It's more of a general awareness campaign about the scale of the problem society is facing. But as the New York Times noted, perhaps the most notable thing about the letter is the intellectual breadth among signees, from AI optimists who have long predicted radical change, to skeptics who are less convinced of AI's capacity to transform labor and the economy. "There's been a notable change in the profession," Stanford economist Erik Brynjolfsson, who helped organize the statement, told the NYT. "I still see a big gap there, a big mismatch, and I'm kind of worried that we're not going to be ready for the tsunami that's coming." "If you look at what robots did in the manufacturing sector, if AI does something equivalent in a more compressed time period, that would be really disruptive, really costly for people's livelihood," added Acemoglu, a noted skeptic. We're already seeing some major shifts in the workforce, regardless of whether AI is actually replacing jobs or being used as a scapegoat. It's a difficult time to be an early-career job seeker, and the tech industry in particular has already seen mass layoffs due to AI-focused restructurings. One recent report found that AI may be pushing older workers out of jobs.Some reports, meanwhile, have even contended that AI has had no substantive impact on jobs so far. But before AI has the chance to wreak havoc in the job market -- should that future come to pass -- the experts are clear: it's not the time to be caught on our back foot.

'We are driving in the fog': Hundreds of economists admit they're flying blind on AI | Fortune

"We are driving in the fog, and it is extraordinarily difficult to anticipate what will happen next." That alarmed voice is coming straight from the top of the economics profession. That's Anton Korinek, a University of Virginia economics professor and one of the organizers of a statement signed this week by over 200 economists -- including 16 Nobel laureates and the chief economists of OpenAI and Anthropic -- admitting, in effect, that the profession is flying blind on AI. The short statement, "We Must Act Now," released Monday, doesn't claim to have answers and claims the field is dangerously behind on the questions. It only offers three warnings. Michael Spence, a Nobel laureate at NYU, called for an "all hands on deck" approach to "steering AI in beneficial directions" -- given the scale, scope and speed of its advancements, along with the high degree of uncertainty about how big and when the impact will arrive. That cuts to the heart of this document's unusual nature: it's not a policy platform or a set of predictions. It's a demand for the infrastructure to see clearly, issued by people admitting they currently can't. One top Wall Street analyst, who did not sign the statement, thinks he knows what the confusion is all about. Even the skeptics say they're guessing What makes the fog metaphor credible rather than alarmist is who's admitting it. Nela Richardson, ADP's chief economist, has described much of the public debate over AI and employment comes down to "guesswork" given the huge range of variables involved. Likewise, Daron Acemoglu, the MIT Nobel laureate who has been the field's most rigorous skeptic of AI productivity claims, previously told Fortune that he finds much of the productivity discourse around AI "brainless" even as he now says recent advances have made him more worried about near-term disruption. Signing onto today's statement, Acemoglu said he was "so happy to join other leading experts in calling for the urgent need to redirect AI so that its risks are minimized and it can work for the benefit of workers and society." Stanford's Erik Brynjolfsson, who The Atlantic recently noted has a remarkable knack for getting people who disagree to work together, previously told Fortune that he was puzzled by many of Acemoglu's projections on AI and productivity. It's no surprise, then, that Acemoglu signed on and that Brynjolfsson was an organizer of this statement. "AI capabilities are advancing far faster than our understanding of the economic implications," Brynjolfsson said in today's statement. "We must act now to guide AI to complement humans rather than simply imitate them -- and to generate prosperity for the many, not just the few." Brynjolfsson is at work trying to build new tools to understand the impact: his Canaries Dashboard with ADP Research tracks 4.6 million workers across more than 730 occupations in near-real time and purports to show employment for workers ages 22 to 25 in AI-exposed occupations shrinking more than 4% annually, even as the aggregate labor market looks calm. Named after the proverbial canary in the coal mine, Brynjolfsson previously talked to Fortune about why "flying blind" is such an urgent problem: the danger is invisible at the headline level and only shows up once you cut the data by age and task exposure. "We are flying blind into one of the most consequential periods in world history," he said at the dashboard's launch. "We need timely, trusted evidence to understand where AI is creating value and where it is disrupting work." The instruments themselves are contested Torsten Slok, Apollo Global Management's influential chief economist, published a blog post a week ahead of the "We Must Act Now" statement, arguing that even the basic concept of "AI exposure" -- the term at the center of most labor market research -- is contested by five competing measurement frameworks, each of which produces different results. One measures what workers actually do with Claude, using real chat logs. Another does the same with Microsoft Copilot. A third has human experts judge which job skills AI is theoretically capable of replacing, regardless of whether anyone is using it that way. A fourth asks ChatGPT to grade its own usefulness on each task, and a fifth scans employer job postings for AI skill mentions. The theoretical frameworks run systematically higher than the usage-based ones because they ignore whether adoption is actually happening or worth the cost. The disagreement is worst exactly where the stakes are highest. "What is most striking," Slok writes, "is that the five measures disagree most exactly where the stakes are highest, among the very jobs everyone wants to flag as at-risk -- such as telemarketers, tax preparers and writers." There is a big difference, in other words, between asking "What could AI do to this job?" and asking "What are workers actually using AI for?" The theoretical use cases (questions 3, 4 and 5) are running "systematically higher" than the real-world ones (1 and 2), he said, because they ignore whether adoption is even happening or worth the cost. As he often does, Slok offered a "bottom line" takeaway: "When someone says a job is 'highly exposed to AI,' the honest first question is: Exposed by which measure, and measuring what? Until that is pinned down, the label 'AI exposure' carries far less meaning than it appears to."

Economists warn AI could drive mass job displacement

More than 200 economists and researchers, including 16 Nobel laureates, released a joint statement on Monday warning that artificial intelligence could reshape the economy at a speed and scale exceeding the Industrial Revolution, and calling on policymakers and technology leaders to begin building policies and institutions to address the disruption. The statement, titled "We Must Act Now," warns that AI "could bring risks, including large-scale job displacement, as well as opportunities such as major gains in living standards." Among its core demands, the statement urges economists, policymakers, and technology leaders to expand their understanding of how AI is reshaping the economy and to develop guardrails ensuring the technology augments rather than displaces human workers. The statement's significance lies partly in who signed it. Erik Brynjolfsson, a Stanford economist who helped organize the effort, said there has been "a notable change in the profession," according to The New York Times. The economics profession has long pushed back on warnings of swift AI-driven displacement, with most researchers arguing that the timeline for technological disruption is routinely overstated. Among those who put their names to the document are Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson -- both MIT professors and 2024 Nobel economics laureates -- whose earlier public skepticism about AI's disruptive potential made their participation particularly striking, according to the Times. "If you look at what robots did in the manufacturing sector, if AI does something equivalent in a more compressed time period, that would be really disruptive, really costly for people's livelihoods," Daron Acemoglu said, according to the Times. At the same time, Acemoglu cautioned that he has not abandoned his doubts about whether AI will move as fast as the industry's most optimistic voices claim, even as a string of recent breakthroughs has sharpened his worry about workers being pushed out of jobs. Anton Korinek, a University of Virginia professor currently embedded with Anthropic, framed the urgency in historical terms: "Steam, electricity, and computers each gave societies decades to adapt; AI may give us only a few years." Korinek co-organized the effort with Stanford's Erik Brynjolfsson, Ajay Agrawal of the University of Toronto, and METR researcher Tom Cunningham. Industry representation on the signatory list is notable, with Reuters reporting that it includes Sarah Friar, who serves as OpenAI's finance chief, Jeff Dean of Google $GOOGL DeepMind, and Jack Clark, one of Anthropic's founding figures. The statement does not include specific policy recommendations. Getting a clearer statistical picture of how AI is moving through the economy ranks among the most urgent tasks facing the field, Brynjolfsson told the Times, pointing to years of contradictory measurements that have left researchers struggling to assess who is most at risk. "I still see a big gap there, a big mismatch, and I'm kind of worried that we're not going to be ready for the tsunami that's coming," he said. The statement arrives as white-collar payrolls have contracted for 31 consecutive months, a stretch that Aaron Terrazas, a former chief economist at Glassdoor, has called without precedent outside of a recession. The headline unemployment rate has remained around 4.3%, but labor market researchers have noted that slack is appearing as underemployment and workforce exits rather than formal unemployment.

Hundreds of economists say 'we must act now' on AI's economic impact and job displacement risks

Hundreds of economists say in an open letter that institutions "must act now" to address how artificial intelligence could transform the economy and could put many people out of work. The statement released Monday was signed by top economists, along with computer scientists and some executives at tech companies including Anthropic, Google and OpenAI. "AI may become radically more powerful over the next 10 years," says the letter organized by Stanford University's digital economy lab. "This could drive an unprecedented transformation of our economy, larger than the Industrial Revolution, but unfolding over a vastly shorter time frame. It could bring risks, including large-scale job displacement, as well as opportunities such as major gains in living standards." The letter, which has only four sentences, says leaders must "build the incentives, guardrails, and institutions needed to steer AI in a direction that complements humans and benefits society." The Stanford lab says the letter has so far been signed by more than 200 economists and AI researchers, including 16 winners of a Nobel Prize. Computer scientist and AI pioneer Yoshua Bengio was among the signatories and said in a separate statement that based on the trajectory of AI development, "it is highly plausible that AI will drastically transform our economies." "We must be intentional and make collective, democratic choices, rather than letting market forces play out and risking leaving most citizens behind," wrote Bengio, a professor at the University of Montreal.

Economists and tech leaders sign statement warning of AI threats

The open statement says that leaders in this space must act now to understand the economics of transformative AI and steer the tech in the right direction. Almost 200 economists and technology leaders have signed a statement warning of the risks posed by AI if it is to be left 'unchecked' in the coming years. Many of the world's experts are concerned that AI is reaching a stage where it is too powerful and needs to be guided in a more human-focused direction. The statement, which is titled "We Must Act Now," was organised by economists Erik Brynjolfsson, Ajay Agrawal, Anton Korinek and Tom Cunningham and was signed by a range of people close to the issue. This includes several Nobel laureates, the chief economists of Open AI and Anthropic, Jack Clark, a co-founder of Anthropic, Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google and experts from Cambridge University, Stanford, Harvard and Oxford, among others. The statement said, "AI may become radically more powerful over the next 10 years. This could drive an unprecedented transformation of our economy, larger than the Industrial Revolution, but unfolding over a vastly shorter time frame. It could bring risks, including large-scale job displacement, as well as opportunities such as major gains in living standards. "Economists, policymakers and technology leaders must act now to understand the economics of transformative AI and to build the incentives, guardrails, and institutions needed to steer AI in a direction that complements humans and benefits society." The statement is reflective of a landscape in which more and more people are becoming concerned about AI's potential to eliminate employment, impact the economy and affect how we live our lives. In early July, Microsoft announced it is laying off 4,800 people, including 3,200 from its gaming division Xbox, as the company aims to cut costs and flatten its organisational structure in response to AI and a changing landscape. In June, new research from Boston Consulting Group (BCG), found that for many organisations, AI is fundamentally reshaping the nature of work, leadership and how employees experience the workplace. While there were positive elements to the research, many contributors also found an increase in 'cognitive load', creating a paradox' where AI is making work better and harder simultaneously. Don't miss out on the knowledge you need to succeed. Sign up for the Daily Brief, Silicon Republic's digest of need-to-know sci-tech news.

Prominent economists, tech executives call for new regulatory approach to AI

Prominent economists, tech executives call for new regulatory approach to AI A group of economists and tech industry figures has called on policymakers to address the risks posed by artificial intelligence more directly. The signatories outlined their concerns in a public letter published today. The initiative was organized by economics professors Erik Brynjolfsson, Ajay Agrawal, Anton Korinek and Tom Cunningham. More than half of the 200-plus other signatories to the letter are also economists, and more than a dozen are Nobel Prize laureates. The brief document calls on policymakers to "build the incentives, guardrails, and institutions needed to steer AI in a direction" that benefits humanity. The letter adds that the regulatory push should include input from economists and technology experts. The signatories point to the rapid advance of AI models as the motivation behind the letter. "AI may become radically more powerful over the next 10 years," reads the letter. "This could drive an unprecedented transformation of our economy, larger than the Industrial Revolution, but unfolding over a vastly shorter time frame." The economists who signed the letter were joined by dozens of tech industry figures. The group includes former Google LLC Chief Executive Officer Eric Schmidt, prominent startup investor Vinod Khosla and Jeff Wilke, the former head of Amazon.com Inc.'s consumer business. Google DeepMind Chief Scientist Jeff Dean signed as well. The executives participated alongside nearly two dozen Anthropic PBC and OpenAI employees. Anthropic co-founder Jack Clark was among the signatories. Two employees at Thinking Machines Inc., an AI startup led by former OpenAI Chief Technology Officer Mira Murati, participated as well. AI "could bring risks, including large-scale job displacement, as well as opportunities such as major gains in living standards," the signatories wrote in the letter. The letter comes less than a year after technology-focused nonprofit Future of Life Institute organized a similar initiative. It released a public letter in which Geoffrey Hinton and other prominent researchers urged the suspension of efforts to develop AI, or artificial general intelligence. That's a hypothetical form of AI capable of performing many tasks better than humans. More recently, OpenAI published a policy paper with recommendations on how AI should be regulated. Like today's public letter, the company called on lawmakers to form new institutions focused on addressing the technology's risks. OpenAI's paper also floated dozens of other ideas including the creation of an AI-focused sovereign wealth funding. Earlier this month, the Financial Times reported that the U.S. government could take a 5% stake in OpenAI and other frontier AI labs. It's believed that the shares could be used to fund a sovereign wealth fund similar to the one the ChatGPT developer's paper suggested.

Why 200 Experts -- From Nobel Laureates to Google Execs -- Just Issued a Serious AI Warning to Business Leaders

If you think you can just sit back and watch how the market reacts before making any major changes to your business, you are completely miscalculating the speed of this technological shift. A coalition of the most brilliant economic minds and top tech executives in the world just issued a blunt warning to business leaders. A group of leading economists and artificial intelligence researchers released a statement titled We Must Act Now. The document was signed by more than 200 experts, including 15 Nobel Laureates and key leaders from OpenAI and Anthropic.

AI could lead to large-scale job displacement, say Nobel laureates

Hundreds of economics and artificial intelligence researchers warned Monday that institutions must begin preparing for the potential economic upheaval AI could unleash, while putting many jobs at risk. The open letter, signed by Nobel laureates, top computer scientists and technology executives, including from OpenAI, Google and Anthropic, said policymakers "must act now" to address the massive economic transformation. "AI may become radically more powerful over the next 10 years," the four-sentence letter organized by Stanford University's digital economy lab reads. "This could drive an unprecedented transformation of our economy, larger than the Industrial Revolution, but unfolding over a vastly shorter time frame. It could bring risks, including large-scale job displacement, as well as opportunities such as major gains in living standards." The letter urged industry leaders "to understand the economics of transformative AI and to build the incentives, guardrails, and institutions needed to steer AI in a direction that complements humans and benefits society." The statement was organized by economists Erik Brynjolfsson, Ajay Agrawal, Anton Korinek, and Tom Cunningham, and cautioned leaders that while AI offers great improvements to productivity and living standards, it also "raises important questions for workers, firms, and public institutions." The letter so far has been signed by more than 200 economists and AI researchers from leading organizations around the world, according to the Stanford lab, including 16 Nobel Prize laureates. "The scale, scope, and speed of the advances in AI, combined with a high level of uncertainty about the magnitude and timing of the impacts across many parts of the economy, call for an 'all hands on deck' approach to steering AI in beneficial directions," Michael Spence, a Nobel Laureate and New York University professor, said in a statement. Also among the signatories was University of Toronto professor Ajay Agrawal, who said in a statement that "we cannot afford to wait for the full transformation to arrive and in the meantime rely on institutional scaffolding that was optimized for a pre-high-fidelity-prediction world."

Nobel Laureates, Economists Warn About AI's Potential Job Risks

* Anthropic's Jack Clark is among the key signatories * Signatories also highlight the opportunities AI offers * Economists have signed the letter titled "We Must Act Now" Tech firms globally are either in the process of integrating AI technologies and automation into their workflows. This, added with the use of AI chatbots by individuals for various daily tasks, has led to an unprecedented rise in AI adoption. The proponents of AI argue that the agents improve efficiency. However, the accelerated adoption of AI by firms comes as companies have laid off several workers and cut white-collar jobs, including managerial positions. Warning about the potential dangers of AI, various economists, Nobel laureates, and industry leaders have signed a letter, claiming that AI could lead to large-scale job displacements and transform economies. Google, OpenAI and Anthropic Executives Among Co-Signatories More than 200 economists, Nobel laureates, and industry leaders have co-signed the letter titled "We Must Act Now" on AI's transformation of the economy. The letter states that AI could become "radically" more powerful over the next 10 years. This phenomenon is said to transform world economies in an unprecedented manner, touted to be larger than the Industrial Revolution. However, this change is predicted to unfold over a significantly shorter period of time. This rapid transformation poses significant risks, the statement notes. Among other risks, AI's unprecedented transformation of economies is said to cause "large-scale job displacements". Apart from its threats, the letter notes that this phenomenon also presents a few opportunities, including "major gains in living standards". In the letter, the signatories agree that economists, policymakers, and technology leaders "must act now" to understand the economics of transformative AI. They must also set up guardrails against the threats and build incentives and institutions required to "steer AI" in the direction that "complements humans" and provides benefits to society as a whole. As previously mentioned, the list of signatories includes some prominent Nobel laureates, like Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, and Christopher A. Pissarides. Apart from economists, the list also names a few industry leaders, like Anthropic's Co-founder Jack Clark, OpenAI's Ronnie Chatterji and Dean Ball, former CEO of Google Eric Schmidt, and Google DeepMind's Michiel Bakker. This comes as various companies have already begun announcing massive layoffs citing cost reductions, macroeconomic conditions, and organisational restructuring. In March, Oracle announced it was laying off 491 employees, reportedly taking the total number of terminated employees to 21,000 in the last year. This came as the tech firm has increased its spending on building AI infrastructure. Similarly, Microsoft is said to be planning to reduce its workforce by about 2.5 percent. Coinbase and Cognizant have also laid off several employees due to accelerated AI adoption.

Hundreds Of Economists Say 'We Must Act Now' On AI's Economic Impact And Job Displacement Risks

Hundreds of economists urge immediate action to address AI's potential impact on the economy. SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- Hundreds of economists say in an open letter that institutions "must act now" to address how artificial intelligence could transform the economy and could put many people out of work. The statement released Monday was signed by top economists, along with computer scientists and some executives at tech companies including Anthropic, Google and OpenAI. "AI may become radically more powerful over the next 10 years," says the letter organized by Stanford University's digital economy lab. "This could drive an unprecedented transformation of our economy, larger than the Industrial Revolution, but unfolding over a vastly shorter time frame. It could bring risks, including large-scale job displacement, as well as opportunities such as major gains in living standards." The letter, which has only four sentences, says leaders must "build the incentives, guardrails, and institutions needed to steer AI in a direction that complements humans and benefits society." The Stanford lab says the letter has so far been signed by more than 200 economists and AI researchers, including 16 winners of a Nobel Prize. Computer scientist and AI pioneer Yoshua Bengio was among the signatories and said in a separate statement that based on the trajectory of AI development, "it is highly plausible that AI will drastically transform our economies." "We must be intentional and make collective, democratic choices, rather than letting market forces play out and risking leaving most citizens behind," wrote Bengio, a professor at the University of Montreal.

AI economic impact: Nobel laureates among more than 200 experts urging action on AI's economic impact

They issued the jointly ⁠signed ⁠statement on Monday, warning that AI could drive a larger economic transformation than the Industrial Revolution but one that is "vastly shorter" in time frame, raising questions for workers, companies and public institutions. More than 200 researchers and economists, including 15 Nobel laureates and researchers at OpenAI, Anthropic and Google, have called for governments and technology leaders to urgently create policies and institutions to address the economic impact of AI. They issued the jointly ⁠signed ⁠statement on Monday, warning that AI could drive a larger economic transformation than the Industrial Revolution but one that is "vastly shorter" in time frame, raising questions for workers, companies and public institutions. The statement has called for deeper research on AI's economic impacts and ⁠to start building policies and institutions required to ensure the technology benefits society and to navigate ⁠risks such as large-scale job displacement. "Steam, electricity, and computers each gave societies decades to adapt. AI may give us only a few years," said Anton Korinek, professor at the University of Virginia. "We cannot improvise our strategy and institutions in the middle of the transformation; waiting for certainty means arriving too late." Korinek, who joined Anthropic's economic research team in March, organized the initiative with fellow economists Erik ⁠Brynjolfsson, Ajay Agrawal and Tom Cunningham. Its signatories include OpenAI finance chief Sarah Friar, Google DeepMind Chief Scientist Jeff Dean, Anthropic co-founder Jack Clark and people on the economics research team at the Claude chatbot maker. Nobel laureates Michael Spence, Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson, among others, also signed the statement.

Justin Wolfers, Ex-Google CEO Among Nearly 200 Experts Issuing Stark Warning Over AI 'Tsunami': 'We Must

Top economists and tech chiefs warned that AI could become dramatically more powerful over the next decade, bringing significant risks, widespread job displacement, and opportunities, such as higher living standards. The statement warned that the transformation driven by this development could surpass the Industrial Revolution in scale while unfolding at a much faster pace. It could create significant economic gains and higher living standards, but also pose risks such as widespread job displacement. While many economists have been skeptical, arguing that technological shifts typically happen more gradually, some are now expressing concerns that AI may be spreading faster and more broadly than previous innovations, with potential risks being underestimated. The statement also urged economists, policymakers, and technology leaders to urgently study AI's economic impact and create the right incentives, safeguards, and institutions to ensure AI complements humans and benefits society. Stanford economist Erik Brynjolfsson, who played a key role in organizing the statement, told the New York Times, "I still see a big gap there, a big mismatch, and I'm kind of worried that we're not going to be ready for the tsunami that's coming." Noted economist Justin Wolfers, who also signed the letter, wrote on X, "None of us know what our AI-fueled future holds, but the range of possibilities includes both utopian and dystopian scenarios (and in-betweensies)." AI Wealth Gap Debate Intensifies He said AI could make top industry players 10 to 100 times wealthier, creating a wealth gap far larger than previous technological shifts. Earlier, economist Wolfers said the U.S. stock market's record rally is being driven largely by a small group of AI-related companies, masking weaker performance across the broader market. He argued that removing AI-linked firms eliminates much of the mystery behind new market highs, with the economy outside the AI sector appearing to be largely stagnant as AI investment fuels growth and market gains. Disclaimer: This content was partially produced with the help of AI tools and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors. Photo courtesy: Shutterstock Market News and Data brought to you by Benzinga APIs To add Benzinga News as your preferred source on Google, click here.

Tech Leaders and Economists Call for AI Guardrails to Protect Workers | PYMNTS.com

Among the signers of the statement are 16 Nobel Laureates, the Stanford Digital Economy Lab, which is hosting the online statement, said in a Monday (July 13) press release. Other signers, according to the page on which the statement is posted, include former Google CEO Eric Schmidt; Greylock Partner and LinkedIn Co-Founder Reid Hoffman; Advanced Machine Intelligence Labs Executive Chairman Yann LeCun; Khosla Ventures Founder Vinod Khosla; 10 people affiliated with Anthropic; and six affiliated with OpenAI. The statement reads as follows: "AI may become radically more powerful over the next 10 years." "This could drive an unprecedented transformation of our economy, larger than the Industrial Revolution, but unfolding over a vastly shorter time frame. It could bring risks, including large-scale job displacement, as well as opportunities such as major gains in living standards." "Economists, policymakers and technology leaders must act now to understand the economics of transformative AI and to build the incentives, guardrails and institutions needed to steer AI in a direction that complements humans and benefits society." The statement was organized by four economists: Erik Brynjolfsson, a professor at Stanford University and director of the Stanford Digital Economy Lab; Ajay Agrawal, a professor at the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management; Anton Korinek, a professor at the University of Virginia, currently on leave at Anthropic; and Tom Cunningham, a researcher at METR, according to the press release. Brynjolfsson said in the press release: "We must act now to guide AI to complement humans rather than simply imitate them -- and to generate prosperity for the many, not just the few." Agrawal said in the release: "Whether rapidly advancing AI broadly elevates global living standards or severely concentrates wealth is not predetermined; it depends on how we choose to rearchitect our political and economic systems today." Korinek said in the release: "We cannot improvise our strategy and institutions in the middle of the transformation; waiting for certainty means arriving too late." Cunningham said in the release: "It's the right time for a coordinated effort to bring clarity to a confusing situation." For all PYMNTS AI coverage, subscribe to the daily AI Newsletter.

'We Must Act Now': 16 Nobel Laureates Sign a Stanford Campaign for AI Regulation

The academics have joined a growing chorus of industry leaders questioning the unbridled growth of AI and its negative impact A group of leading economists and AI researchers that boasts of 16 Nobel Laureates, have joined the growing chorus of voices seeking joint efforts to organise, prepare and regulate the fast-growing AI ecosystem. Business czars such as Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and Palantir boss Alex Karp have questioned the veracity of the business and revenue models operated by major AI labs such as OpenAI and Anthropic. Now, the academics have joined the chorus through a signature campaign titled: We Must Act Now: A Statement on AI's Transformation of the Economy. "We Must Act Now" is how the campaign that already boasts of over 200 academics and experts of different hues have given the call-to-action to prepare for the economic transformation and changes that AI could bring about. The statement, organised by economists of the stature of Erik Brynjolfsson, Ajay Agrawal, Anton Korinek, and Tom Cunningham, warns that AI could drive an economic transformation larger than the Industrial Revolution -- on a vastly shorter timeline. It goes on to urge economists, policymakers, and technology leaders to prepare for this shift. AI systems are becoming increasingly capable of reshaping the economy at an unprecedented speed. While it offers enormous opportunities to improve productivity and living standards, it also raises important questions for workers, companies and public institutions, the signatories have warned. There is an urgent need for economists, policymakers, and technology leaders to deepen research on AI's economic impacts and start building policies and institutions that would be required to ensure that AI complements human capabilities and benefits all sections of society by doing so. Erik Brynjolfsson, the Jerry Yang and Akiko Yamazaki Professor at Stanford University and Director of the Stanford Digital Economy Lab, noted that "AI capabilities are advancing far faster than our understanding of the economic implications. In that gap lie the greatest opportunities of our era. We must act now to guide AI to complement humans rather than simply imitate them -- and to generate prosperity for the many, not just the few." "The scale, scope, and speed of the advances in AI, combined with a high level of uncertainty about the magnitude and timing of the impacts across many parts of the economy, call for an 'all hands on deck' approach to steering AI in beneficial directions," says Michael Spence, Nobel Laureate and Professor Emeritus at New York University. "I'm so happy to join other leading experts in calling for the urgent need to redirect AI so that its risks are minimized and it can work for the benefit of workers and society," said Daron Acemoglu, Nobel Laureate and Institute Professor at MIT. "Steam, electricity, and computers each gave societies decades to adapt; AI may give us only a few years. We cannot improvise our strategy and institutions in the middle of the transformation; waiting for certainty means arriving too late," said Anton Korinek, Professor at the University of Virginia, currently on leave at Anthropic. "Whether rapidly advancing AI broadly elevates global living standards or severely concentrates wealth is not predetermined; it depends on how we choose to re-architect our political and economic systems today. We cannot afford to wait for the full transformation to arrive and in the meantime rely on institutional scaffolding that was optimized for a pre-high-fidelity-prediction world," said Ajay Agrawal, Professor at the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management. "We are driving in the fog, and it is extraordinarily difficult to anticipate what will happen next. It's the right time for a coordinated effort to bring clarity to a confusing situation." said Tom Cunningham, Researcher at METR. The statement, prepared and promoted by the Stanford Digital Economy Lab, has been signed by more than 200 economists and AI researchers from leading universities and AI research organizations around the world.

Over 200 experts call for urgent action to tackle AI's economic impact

More than 200 researchers and economists, including 15 Nobel laureates and researchers at OpenAI, Anthropic and Google, have called for governments and technology leaders to urgently create policies and institutions to address the economic impact of AI. They issued the jointly signed statement on Monday, warning that AI could drive a larger economic transformation than the Industrial Revolution but one that is "vastly shorter" in time frame, raising questions for workers, companies and public institutions. The statement has called for deeper research on AI's economic impacts and to start building policies and institutions required to ensure the technology benefits society and to navigate risks such as large-scale job displacement. "Steam, electricity, and computers each gave societies decades to adapt. AI may give us only a few years," said Anton Korinek, professor at the University of Virginia. "We cannot improvise our strategy and institutions in the middle of the transformation; waiting for certainty means arriving too late." Korinek, who joined Anthropic's economic research team in March, organized the initiative with fellow economists Erik Brynjolfsson, Ajay Agrawal and Tom Cunningham. Its signatories include OpenAI finance chief Sarah Friar, Google DeepMind Chief Scientist Jeff Dean, Anthropic co-founder Jack Clark and people on the economics research team at the Claude chatbot maker. Nobel laureates Michael Spence, Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson, among others, also signed the statement.

Nobel laureates among more than 200 experts urging action on AI's economic impact

July 13 (Reuters) - More than 200 researchers and economists, including 15 Nobel laureates and researchers at OpenAI, Anthropic and Google, have called for governments and technology leaders to urgently create policies and institutions to address the economic impact of AI. They issued the jointly signed statement on Monday, warning that AI could drive a larger economic transformation than the Industrial Revolution but one that is "vastly shorter" in time frame, raising questions for workers, companies and public institutions. The statement has called for deeper research on AI's economic impacts and to start building policies and institutions required to ensure the technology benefits society and to navigate risks such as large-scale job displacement. "Steam, electricity, and computers each gave societies decades to adapt. AI may give us only a few years," said Anton Korinek, professor at the University of Virginia. "We cannot improvise our strategy and institutions in the middle of the transformation; waiting for certainty means arriving too late." Korinek, who joined Anthropic's economic research team in March, organized the initiative with fellow economists Erik Brynjolfsson, Ajay Agrawal and Tom Cunningham. Its signatories include OpenAI finance chief Sarah Friar, Google DeepMind Chief Scientist Jeff Dean, Anthropic co-founder Jack Clark and people on the economics research team at the Claude chatbot maker. Nobel laureates Michael Spence, Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson, among others, also signed the statement. (Reporting by Deborah Sophia in Bengaluru; Editing by Leroy Leo)

200 economists say AI threatens jobs but no one has a plan to fix it

A letter penned by close to 200 economists, academics, and tech executives this week has warned that artificial intelligence has the power to disrupt the world economy faster than any previous technology. Unfortunately, it did not come with a solution. The letter, entitled "We Must Act Now," was issued Monday, and stated that "AI may become radically more powerful over the next 10 years," presenting risks ranging from job loss at scale to opportunities in improving quality of life. Organized by Stanford economist Erik Brynjolfsson, the list includes 15 Nobel laureates, as well as the chief economists of OpenAI and Anthropic, Anthropic founder Jack Clark, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, and venture capitalist Vinod Khosla. Also read: Windows search box cleanup: Microsoft fixes years of bloat, here's how What is interesting about the letter is not so much what it says. Tech leaders have been warning about job losses because of AI for some time now. What matters is who else signed the letter. The names of Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson, the MIT economists who won the 2024 Nobel in economics, are interesting here. "There's been a notable change in the profession," Brynjolfsson said. "I still see a big gap there, a big mismatch, and I'm kind of worried that we're not going to be ready for the tsunami that's coming." But Acemoglu sticks to his guns when it comes to the timing. While saying that he is still skeptical about AI proving to be revolutionary as soon as Silicon Valley claims it will be, he admits that recent achievements of technology made him worried about job losses. "If you look at what robots did in the manufacturing sector, if AI does something equivalent in a more compressed time period, that would be really disruptive, really costly for people's livelihoods," he said. Also read: macOS Golden Gate public beta is here: How to install, supported devices and all new features You know what the actually issue is? The letter is asking the economists, government officials, and business representatives to "act now to understand the economics of transformative AI" and guide it towards complementing human workers. That's all. No policy prescriptions. No estimates of how many jobs could be lost or within what time horizon. No suggestions on how to address the flaws of unemployment insurance and other social safety net programs, which economists know are ill-prepared for a wave of white-collar layoffs. According to Brynjolfsson, the top priority in the field at the moment is developing instruments for measuring the impact of artificial intelligence in the economy since there is no data available. Currently, various ways of measuring it yield totally different conclusions about one simple question: does AI take jobs right now, or not? That's the real headline hiding under this one. It isn't that 200 credentialed people are worried about AI. It's that the people whose job is to have answers are, for now, just as unprepared as everyone else, and are saying so publicly for the first time.