Economists and AI researchers urge governments to prepare now for AI's impact
More than 200 economists and AI researchers, including 16 Nobel laureates, signed an open letter released July 13 warning that governments and companies should act now to shape how artificial intelligence reshapes the economy. Organized through Stanford’s digital economy lab and coordinated by University of Virginia professor Anton Korinek, the letter argues AI capabilities could expand sharply within a decade, producing “a transformation larger than the Industrial Revolution, but unfolding over a vastly shorter time frame.”
The signatories flag widespread job displacement and widening inequality — both within and between countries — as central risks, and call for “incentives, guardrails, and institutions” to steer the technology toward broad benefit. Their core argument is one of timing: institutions built during past economic shifts took decades to develop, and Korinek warns that waiting for certainty means “arriving too late.”
The letter is advocacy rather than a specific policy program, and its practical weight will depend on whether it moves governments already struggling to regulate the sector. Its significance lies in the breadth of the coalition — mainstream economists and technical researchers converging on the same warning about pace.