Get a move on! Economist and AI developers warn AI is moving too fast

More than 200 economists, technologists, and AI researchers and wonks are urging businesses, AI developers, and policymakers to move more quickly to prepare for the broader impacts of the AI transformation on the economy.

Signatories to a new statement, “We Must Act Now,” noted that the technology’s potential impact on the labor market could reshape how work gets done and by who (or what?) on a far shorter timeline than previous industrial shifts (e.g. the Industrial Revolution), leading to more rapid worker displacement and stresses on the health of the overall economy.

“Economists, policymakers and technology leaders must act now 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 reads.

The statement published Monday has been signed by more than 21,000 petitioners including Nobel laureates, and leaders from OpenAI, Anthropic, and other technology organizations. Stanford economist Erik Brynjolfsson, who has been studying the impacts of AI on the workplace and economy for years, organized the project.

Brynjolfsson and the prominent signatories of the letter aren’t even the most conspicuous bearers of this message. In his first papal teaching since his ascendency to the papacy, Pope Leo XIV dedicated an entire encyclical to admonish a technology that puts profits ahead of human beings

“The ‘new ways’ of working are not necessarily better. For ‘while AI promises to boost productivity by taking over mundane tasks, it frequently forces workers to adapt to the speed and demands of machines, rather than machines being designed to support those who work,’” the pope said in the missive.

Businesses and their AI transformation leaders (oh hello, HR—we see you found your seat at the table!) are simultaneously working rapidly to develop governance systems, protect against risky outcomes, and deploy new AI tools amid this ongoing technological arms race, and HR and L&D teams are racing to upskill the right talent for this moment and for the AI-enabled future.

The race is on.

The group argues that while AI could generate significant productivity gains and boost the economy in new ways, it could also trigger large-scale job displacement if governments and institutions do not understand its impacts on the economy and guard against it.

I’m kind of worried that we’re not going to be ready for the tsunami that’s coming,” Brynjolfsson told the New York Times.