Over 200 Economists Including 16 Nobel Laureates Release Statement on AI Economic Effects

A statement titled "We Must Act Now" was released Monday by more than 200 economists, including 16 Nobel laureates and the chief economists of OpenAI and Anthropic. The document warns that AI may become radically more powerful over the next 10 years and could drive an economic transformation larger than the Industrial Revolution but compressed into a shorter period.

The statement identifies risks such as large-scale job displacement alongside potential gains in living standards.

It urges economists, policymakers and technology leaders to understand the economics of transformative AI and to develop incentives, guardrails and institutions that steer AI toward complementing humans and benefiting society. Anton Korinek, a University of Virginia economics professor and one of the organizers, described the current situation as driving in fog with extreme difficulty anticipating outcomes.

Erik Brynjolfsson, a Stanford professor and another organizer, stated that AI capabilities are advancing far faster than understanding of the economic implications.

Brynjolfsson's Canaries Dashboard with ADP Research tracks 4.6 million workers across more than 730 occupations. The dashboard shows employment for workers ages 22 to 25 in AI-exposed occupations shrinking more than 4 percent annually. Michael Spence, a Nobel laureate at NYU, called for an all-hands-on-deck approach to steering AI in beneficial directions.

Daron Acemoglu, the MIT Nobel laureate, said he joined to call for redirecting AI to minimize risks and benefit workers and society. Torsten Slok, Apollo Global Management's chief economist, published a blog post a week earlier noting that five competing measurement frameworks for AI exposure produce different results.