AI could lead to large-scale job displacement, say Nobel laureates

Technology AI could lead to large-scale job displacement, say Nobel laureates Comments: by Finya Swai - 07/14/26 11:37 AM ET Comments: Link copied by Finya Swai - 07/14/26 11:37 AM ET Comments: Link copied

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Hundreds of economics and artificial intelligence researchers warned Monday that institutions must begin preparing for the potential economic upheaval AI could unleash, while putting many jobs at risk.

The open letter, signed by Nobel laureates, top computer scientists and technology executives, including from OpenAI, Google and Anthropic, said policymakers “must act now” to address the massive economic transformation.

“AI may become radically more powerful over the next 10 years,” the four-sentence letter organized by Stanford University’s digital economy lab reads.

“This could drive an unprecedented transformation of our economy, larger than the Industrial Revolution, but unfolding over a vastly shorter time frame. It could bring risks, including large-scale job displacement, as well as opportunities such as major gains in living standards.”

The letter urged industry leaders “to understand the economics of transformative AI and to build the incentives, guardrails, and institutions needed to steer AI in a direction that complements humans and benefits society.”

The statement was organized by economists Erik Brynjolfsson, Ajay Agrawal, Anton Korinek, and Tom Cunningham, and cautioned leaders that while AI offers great improvements to productivity and living standards, it also “raises important questions for workers, firms, and public institutions.”

The letter so far has been signed by more than 200 economists and AI researchers from leading organizations around the world, according to the Stanford lab, including 16 Nobel Prize laureates.

“The scale, scope, and speed of the advances in AI, combined with a high level of uncertainty about the magnitude and timing of the impacts across many parts of the economy, call for an ‘all hands on deck’ approach to steering AI in beneficial directions,” Michael Spence, a Nobel Laureate and New York University professor, said in a statement.

Also among the signatories was University of Toronto professor Ajay Agrawal, who said in a statement that “we cannot afford to wait for the full transformation to arrive and in the meantime rely on institutional scaffolding that was optimized for a pre-high-fidelity-prediction world.”

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