More than 200 economists and AI researchers, including 16 Nobel Memorial Prize winners in economics, signed a statement published July 13 warning that artificial intelligence’s economic effects could unfold too quickly for governments and businesses to keep up.
The statement, titled “We Must Act Now: A Statement on AI’s Transformation of the Economy,” was organized by Stanford University’s Digital Economy Lab, led by economists Erik Brynjolfsson, Ajay Agrawal, Anton Korinek and Tom Cunningham. It argues that AI could drive a transformation larger than the Industrial Revolution, but compressed into years rather than decades, leaving little time for the gradual adjustment past technological shifts allowed.
Faster than past technologies
Steam power, electricity and computers each took decades to diffuse through economies, giving workers, firms and regulators time to adjust, the statement says. AI’s current trajectory offers no such guarantee, according to the signatories, who list both risks – including large-scale job displacement – and potential benefits, such as major gains in living standards, if the technology’s rollout is managed well.
“We cannot improvise our strategy and institutions in the middle of the transformation,” said Anton Korinek, one of the statement’s organizers, who is currently on leave at Anthropic. “Waiting for certainty means arriving too late.”
Who signed
Signatories include Nobel laureates Joseph Stiglitz, Paul Krugman, Ben Bernanke, Daron Acemoglu and Michael Spence, alongside economists, computer scientists and executives from Anthropic, Google and OpenAI. The statement does not endorse specific policies but calls on economists, policymakers and technology leaders to deepen research into AI’s economic effects and start building the institutions needed to manage the transition.
The letter follows a string of AI-linked layoffs at major employers and warnings from United Nations officials that unmanaged AI adoption could widen the gap between wealthy and developing economies.