More than 200 leading economists, executives and researchers (including more than a dozen Nobel laureates) signed a letter warning of the potential threat of AI to jobs. The 88-word letter, titled “We must act now,” says AI could become “radically more powerful” in the next decade, and argues that policymakers around the world must do
More than 200 leading economists, executives and researchers (including more than a dozen Nobel laureates) signed a letter warning of the potential threat of AI to jobs.
The 88-word letter, titled “We must act now,” says AI could become “radically more powerful” in the next decade, and argues that policymakers around the world must do more to build protective barriers for the technology or risk “large-scale job displacement.”
Signatories include former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, and Nobel laureates Joseph Stiglitz, Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson.
Read the full text of the letter, organized by the Stanford Digital Economy Lab and subtitled “A statement on AI’s transformation of the economy,” here:
- This could drive an unprecedented transformation of our economy, greater than the Industrial Revolution, but unfolding in a much shorter period of time. It could bring risks, including large-scale job displacement, as well as opportunities such as greater gains in living standards.
- Economists, policymakers, and technology leaders must act now to understand the economics of transformative AI and build the incentives, barriers, and institutions necessary to steer AI in a direction that complements humans and benefits society.
While generative AI has, to some extent, automated parts of white-collar jobs such as coding, customer service, marketing, and research, there is little evidence so far of widespread job losses directly caused by this technology.
Several recent studies suggest AI is changing hiring before it changes employment. Research from Harvard Business School, INSEAD and the University of Toronto found that venture capital-backed startups are hiring fewer entry-level workers while hiring more experienced employees, reflecting a shift toward smaller AI-assisted teams.
Researchers at the International Monetary Fund recently found that AI adoption remains concentrated among a minority of workers, suggesting that the technology has not yet spread widely enough to produce widespread disruption in the labor market.
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has predicted that AI could eliminate up to half of entry-level white-collar jobs within five years, while others have said the technology is more likely to transform jobs than directly replace them, boosting productivity by automating routine tasks while also creating demand for new skills.