More than 200 economists and artificial intelligence (AI) researchers, including 16 Nobel Prize laureates, have issued a joint statement emphasizing the need to act now, warning that AI could rapidly transform the economy through large-scale job displacement and other changes.

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Reuters Yonhap News

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On July 13 (local time), they released a statement titled "We Must Act Now," stressing that "AI could fundamentally become even more powerful over the next decade" and that "while the technology offers opportunities such as significant improvements in living standards, it also poses risks, including large-scale job displacement."


They went on to say, "Economists, policymakers, and technology industry leaders must understand the impact that transformative AI will have on the economy," and emphasized, "We must take action now to establish the necessary incentives, safeguards, and institutions to ensure AI develops in ways that complement humans and benefit society."


The New York Times (NYT) noted that this statement reflects a growing awareness of AI issues among economists. Erik Brynjolfsson, a professor at Stanford University who stated that the aim is to make economists and policymakers take AI's disruptive potential more seriously, said, "I worry that we are not properly preparing for the coming tsunami."



The statement was led by Professor Brynjolfsson, Professor Ajay Agrawal of the University of Toronto, Professor Anton Korinek of the University of Virginia, and Tom Cunningham, a researcher at METR. Nobel laureates including Joseph Stiglitz of Columbia University, Daron Acemoglu of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and Paul Krugman were among the signatories. Jack Clark, co-founder of Anthropic, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, and prominent venture capitalist Vinod Khosla also signed the statement.


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