Institutions and Governments Need to Prepare for AI's Economic Impact

A Landmark Statement from Over 200 Experts

On July 13, 2026, a group of leading economists and AI researchers, including sixteen Nobel laureates, released "We Must Act Now: A Statement on AI's Transformation of the Economy," calling for urgent preparation for the economic impacts of radically more powerful AI.

The statement, organized by economists Erik Brynjolfsson, Ajay Agrawal, Anton Korinek, and Tom Cunningham, warns that increasingly capable AI systems could reshape the economy at unprecedented speed. Korinek, who joined Anthropic's economic research team in March, spearheaded the initiative alongside his fellow organizers.

Signatories include OpenAI finance chief Sarah Friar, Google DeepMind Chief Scientist Jeff Dean, Anthropic co-founder Jack Clark, and Nobel laureates Michael Spence, Daron Acemoglu, and Simon Johnson, among others.

The Core Warning: Less Time Than Prior Revolutions

The statement warns that AI could drive a larger economic transformation than the Industrial Revolution, but one that is "vastly shorter" in time frame, raising urgent questions for workers, companies, and public institutions. As University of Virginia professor Anton Korinek put it: "Steam, electricity, and computers each gave societies decades to adapt. AI may give us only a few years."

While AI offers enormous opportunities to improve productivity and living standards, the statement calls on economists, policymakers, and technology leaders to deepen research on AI's economic impacts and to begin building the policies and institutions needed to ensure AI complements human capabilities and benefits society.

Key priorities include navigating risks such as large-scale job displacement and ensuring the technology's benefits are broadly shared.

The full statement and the current list of signatories are available at wemustactnow.ai.

Sources:
Stanford Digital Economy Lab: "We Must Act Now" Statement
BNN Bloomberg: Over 200 experts call for urgent action to tackle AI's economic impact
PR Newswire: Official Press Release