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 on 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 organised 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.
"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," said Erik Brynjolfsson, the Jerry Yang and Akiko Yamazaki professor at Stanford University and director of the Stanford Digital Economy Lab.
'AI may give us only a few years'
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.
"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, a professor at the University of Virginia, currently on leave at Anthropic.
Tom Cunningham, researcher at METR, who has also signed the letter said: "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."
Nobel Laureate Michael Spence called for an "all hands on deck" approach to guide the technology beneficially.
" 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," said Spence, a professor emeritus at New York University.
