Stanford Digital Economy Lab Letter: 16 Nobel Laureates and 200+ Economists Say AI's Economic Transformation Will Be 'Larger Than the Industrial Revolution' — and Demand Institutions Now
Organized by Erik Brynjolfsson, Ajay Agrawal, Anton Korinek and Tom Cunningham and released July 13, the open letter warns AI may become far more capable within a decade, driving a transformation 'larger than the Industrial Revolution, but unfolding over a vastly shorter time frame,' with large-scale job displacement as a named risk. It calls on governments and industry to build 'incentives, guardrails, and institutions' that keep AI complementary to humans rather than substitutive. The notable thing is the signatory composition: this is mainstream academic economics, not the AI-safety community, putting its name to a displacement warning — which is a different and harder-to-dismiss constituency than the usual signatories.
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