We Must Act Now – A Statement on AI's Transformation of the Economy

A group of prominent economists, policymakers, and technology leaders, including Nobel laureates and former government officials, issued a statement warning that AI could transform the economy faster than the Industrial Revolution, bringing both risks like job displacement and opportunities for higher living standards. They called for urgent action to understand the economics of transformative AI and to build incentives, guardrails, and institutions to steer AI toward benefiting society.

We Must Act Now A Statement on AI’s Transformation of the Economy AI may become radically more powerful over the next 10 years. 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. 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. ⬇ Signatories Erik Brynjolfsson , Stanford University Ajay Agrawal , University of Toronto Anton Korinek , University of Virginia and Anthropic Tom Cunningham , METR Michael Spence , New York University Daron Acemoglu , MIT Diane Coyle , University of Cambridge Chad Jones , Stanford University David Autor , MIT Joseph Stiglitz , Columbia University Niall Ferguson , Stanford University Jason Furman , Harvard University Simon Johnson , MIT Christopher A. Pissarides , London School of Economics Paul Milgrom , Stanford University George Akerlof , Georgetown University and University of California, Berkeley Philippe Aghion , INSEAD Dan Hendrycks , Center for AI Safety Eric Schmidt , Former CEO of Google Peter Howitt , Brown University Oliver D. Hart , Harvard University Bengt Holmstrom , MIT Alvin Roth , Stanford University Michael Kremer , University of Chicago Roger B. Myerson , University of Chicago Paul Krugman , Graduate Center of the City University of New York Ben Bernanke , Brookings Institution Pascual Restrepo , Yale University Jaan Tallinn , University of Cambridge Daniel Susskind , Gresham College Yoshua Bengio , Université de Montréal, LawZero and Mila Gillian Hadfield , Johns Hopkins University Raffaella Sadun , Harvard Business School Tyler Cowen , George Mason University Reid Hoffman , Greylock Wojciech Zaremba , OpenAI Foundation David J. Deming , Harvard University Jack Clark , Anthropic Ronnie Chatterji , OpenAI Dean Ball , OpenAI Jeff Dean , Google Joshua Gans , University of Toronto Abhishek Nagaraj , University of California, Berkeley Jeffrey Sachs , Columbia University Peter McCrory , Anthropic Alex Imas , University of Chicago Stephanie Bell , Partnership on AI Rebecca Finlay , Partnership on AI Gina Raimondo , RAISE US Yann LeCun , Advanced Machine Intelligence Labs John McHale , University of Galway Oskar Nordström Skans , Uppsala University Ebehi Iyoha , Harvard Business School Kevin Bryan , University of Toronto Judy Chevalier , Yale University Shannon Liu , University of Toronto Shai Bernstein , Harvard Business School Alexander Oettl , Emory University Benjamin Jones , Northwestern University Scott Stern , MIT Hong Luo , University of Toronto Amir Sariri , Purdue University John List , University of Chicago Rebecca Henderson , Harvard Business School Ben Weidmann , University College London Kristina McElheran , University of Toronto Basil Halperin , University of Virginia Christian Catalini , MIT Rembrand Koning , Harvard Business School Lee Lockwood , University of Virginia Daniel Trefler , University of Toronto Annie Liang , Northwestern University Anders Humlum , University of Chicago Jonathan Colmer , University of Virginia Maria del Rio-Chanona , University College London Janice Stein , University of Toronto David Yanagizawa-Drott , University of Zurich Frank Neffke , Complexity Science Hub Eva Vivalt , University of Toronto Doh-Shin Jeon , Toulouse School of Economics Adam Posen , Peterson Institute for International Economics Jakub Growiec , SGH Warsaw School of Economics David Hémous , University of Zurich Elliott Ash , ETH Zurich Klaus Prettner , Vienna University of Economics and Business Donghyun Suh , Bank of Korea Benjamin Moll , London School of Economics Philipp Schmidt-Dengler , University of Vienna Olivier Blanchard , Peterson Institute for International Economics Emilio Calvano , LUISS University of Rome John Van Reenen , London School of Economics Maryam Farboodi , Cornell University Sholto Douglas , Anthropic John Schulman , Thinking Machines Martin Beraja , University of California, Berkeley John Fernald , INSEAD Boaz Barak , Harvard University and OpenAI Arnaud Costinot , MIT Noam Brown , OpenAI Anna Salomons , Tilburg University and Utrecht University Olivier Jeanne , Johns Hopkins University Neil Thompson , MIT Simone Daniotti , Utrecht University Jerry Yang , AME Cloud Ventures Leonardo Gambacorta , Centre for Economic Policy Research Daniel Kokotajlo , AI Futures Project Michiel Bakker , MIT and Google DeepMind Manuel Trajtenberg , Tel Aviv University Giacomo Calzolari , European University Institute Jeff Wilke , Re:Build Manufacturing Jacques Crémer , Toulouse School of Economics Danny Yagan , University of California, Berkeley Beatrice Weder di Mauro , Centre for Economic Policy Research Max Tegmark , MIT Vinod Khosla , Khosla Ventures Benjamin Shiller , Brandeis University Oren Etzioni , University of Washington Martin Ford Oded Galor , Brown University Sarah Friar , OpenAI Marc L. Busch , Georgetown University Walid Hejazi , University of Toronto Dilip Soman , University of Toronto John Danaher , University of Galway Thomas Astebro , HEC Paris Alex Tabarrok , George Mason University Alberto Galasso , University of Toronto Alfonso Gambardella , Bocconi University Reza Satchu , Harvard Business School Alex Whalley , University of Calgary Tom Davidson , Forethought Center for AI Strategy Laurina Zhang , Boston University Andrew Scott , University of Oxford Jean-Etienne de Bettignies , Queen's University Sam Manning , GovAI Joel Blit , University of Waterloo Sampsa Samila , IESE Business School Roshni Raveendhran , University of Virginia Liz Lyons , University of California, San Diego Ramana Nanda , Imperial College London Marianne Bertrand , University of Chicago Arnaldo Camuffo , Bocconi University Maxim Massenkoff , Anthropic Petra Moser , New York University Shivaji Sondhi , University of Oxford and Princeton University Danny Buerkli , Windfall Trust Carles Boix , Princeton University Anna Yelizarova , Windfall Trust Ken Ono , Axiom Math and University of Virginia Isaiah Andrews , MIT Anders Sandberg , University of Oxford Martin Chorzempa , Peterson Institute for International Economics Gita Gopinath , Harvard University Zoë Hitzig , Anthropic Lawrence Katz , Harvard University Nathan Wilmers , Anthropic Sebastian Becker , HEC Paris Markus K. Brunnermeier , Princeton University Sebastian Mallaby , Council on Foreign Relations Adrian Brown , Windfall Trust Sonia Sennik , Creative Destruction Lab Ioana Marinescu , University of Pennsylvania Nicholas Bloom , Stanford University Johannes Hermle , Anthropic Ashesh Rambachan , MIT Brian Jabarian , Carnegie Mellon University Lukas Althoff , Stanford University Soumitra Shukla , Harvard Business School Andrey Fradkin , Boston University Andrew Koh , Columbia University Prasanna Tambe , University of Pennsylvania Cheryl Wu , Yale University Albert Wenger , Union Square Ventures Gigi Danziger , Eutopia Chris Tonetti , Stanford University Justin Bullock , University of Washington Bryan Seegmiller , Northwestern University Betsey Stevenson , University of Michigan Stefanie Stantcheva , Harvard University Justin Wolfers , University of Michigan Eva Lyubich , Anthropic Chrishan Thuraisingham Szymon Sacher , Anthropic Thomas Houlden , Columbia University Ben Golub , Northwestern University Carlos J. Serrano , HEC Paris Heski Bar-Isaac , University of Toronto William Strange , University of Toronto Jen Baggs , University of Victoria Victor Aguirregabiria , University of Toronto Melissa Lynne Dell , Harvard University Jasmine Sun Rob Reich , Stanford University James Landay , Stanford University Anousheh Ansari , XPRIZE Foundation Fiona Chen , Harvard University Michael Nayak , XPRIZE Foundation George Williamson , The Alan Turing Institute Michael Chui , McKinsey Gabriel Unger , Stanford University Katya Klinova Parker Whitfill , METR Arvind Karunakaran , Stanford University Georgios Petropoulos , University of Southern California Marshall School of Business José Ramón Enríquez , Stanford University Christos Makridis , Arizona State University Luca Vendraminelli , Stanford University Alvin Wang Graylin , Stanford University Sophia Kazinnik , Stanford University Christina Langer , Stanford University Riitta Katila , Stanford University Lynn Wu , University of Pennsylvania Matt Beane , University of California, Santa Barbara David Nguyen , Stanford University Avinash Collis , Carnegie Mellon University Pamela Mishkin , Stanford University Andy Haupt , Stanford University Neale Mahoney , Stanford University Robb Willer , Stanford University Sinan Aral , MIT Thomas W. Malone , MIT Wajeeha Ahmad , Stanford University Diyi Yang , Stanford University Mary MacLennan Wang Jin , Chapman University Arjun Ramani , MIT Glen Weyl , Microsoft Research J. Frank Li , University of British Columbia Jeremy Howard , fast.ai Matt Gentzkow , Stanford University Bharat Chandar , Stanford University Jiaxin Pei , Stanford University Sarah Bana , Chapman University Christie Ko , Stanford University Susan Young , Stanford University Nobel laureate Show all signatures