Experts urge action on AI's economic impact

ISLAMABAD: More than 200 economists and researchers, including 15 Nobel laureates as well as staff linked to OpenAI, Anthropic and Google, have called on governments and technology leaders to move quickly to develop policies and institutions to deal with the economic effects of artificial intelligence.

The jointly signed statement was issued on Monday. It warned that AI could produce an economic shift larger than the Industrial Revolution, but over a much shorter period, creating major questions for workers, businesses and public institutions.

The signatories said more detailed research was needed on AI’s economic consequences and urged the early creation of policy frameworks and institutions to help ensure the technology benefits society while managing risks including large-scale job displacement.

Anton Korinek, a professor at the University of Virginia, said past technological changes gave societies more time to adjust than AI may allow. In the statement, he said:

Steam, electricity, and computers ​each gave societies decades to adapt. AI may give us only a ​few years.

Korinek added:

We cannot improvise our strategy and institutions in the middle of the transformation; waiting for certainty means arriving ​too late.

Korinek joined Anthropic’s economic research team in March and organised the initiative with fellow economists Erik Brynjolfsson, Ajay Agrawal and Tom Cunningham.

Those who signed the statement include OpenAI finance chief Sarah Friar, Google DeepMind chief scientist Jeff Dean, Anthropic co-founder Jack Clark and members of the Claude maker’s economics research team. Nobel laureates Michael Spence, Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson were also among the signatories.

The call comes amid wider debate over how governments and industry should respond to the rapid development of AI and its potential effects on employment, productivity and economic institutions.