More than 200 of the world’s most influential economists, technology executives and researchers have signed an open letter warning that artificial intelligence (AI) poses a serious and growing threat to jobs. The letter also says governments are not moving fast enough to prepare for what lies ahead. The letter, titled “We Must Act Now” and subtitled “A Statement on Transforming the Economy with AI,” was organized by Stanford University’s Digital Economy Institute. At just 88 words, it’s purposefully concise.
Who all signed the letter?
Among the signatories are former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, Nobel Prize winners Joseph Stiglitz, Daron Acemoglu, and Simon Johnson. The list also includes Google AI leader Jeff Dean, Anthropic co-founder Jack Clark, and OpenAI finance director Sarah Friar, making it one of the rare documents that brings together both AI builders and economists studying the technology’s impact. Others include the godfathers of AI, Yoshua Bengio and Jan LeCun, and Vinod Khosla.
what is written in the letter
The letter’s argument is straightforward: AI could become “radically more powerful” over the next decade, warning that without meaningful action by policymakers, the result could be “massive job losses” on a scale the world has never seen before.we must act nowStatement on Transforming the Economy with AIAI has the potential to become dramatically more powerful over the next decade.This could trigger an unprecedented economic transformation, larger in scale than the Industrial Revolution but unfolding over a much shorter period of time. It can bring not only opportunities, such as significant improvements in living standards, but also risks, such as large-scale job turnover.Economists, policymakers, and technology leaders must act now to understand the economics of transformative AI and build the incentives, guardrails, and institutions needed to guide AI in a direction that complements humans and benefits society.The letter comes as Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei predicts that AI could eliminate up to half of entry-level white-collar jobs within five years. Many economists and technologists are somewhere in the middle, arguing that AI is more likely to change jobs than completely replace them.
