Over 200 economists warn AI's economic impact could trigger mass job displacement faster than any revolution

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."

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."

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.

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)