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.”
