— Steam, electricity, and computers each gave societies decades to adapt. AI may give us only a few years, comments Anton Korinek, Economics professor at the University of Virginia, to Reuters. He is part of Anthropic’s economic research team and co-organized the letter.
The letter further says that «economists, policymakers and technology leaders must act now to understand the economics of transformative AI.»
It also emphasizes the risks, such as a «large-scale job displacement» once AI reaches a certain capability, but then says we might be in for «major gains in living standards.»
The signatories include 16 Nobel laureates; three for economics, the chief economists of OpenAI and Anthropic, Google DeepMind Chief Scientist Jeff Dean, Anthropic co-founder Jack Clark, LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman, and former Google head Eric Schmidt, along with researchers and scientists from top universities and AI labs.
— AI capabilities are advancing far faster than our understanding of the economic implications, said signatory Erik Brynjolfsson, Director of the Stanford Digital Economy Lab, and added — In that gap lie the greatest opportunities of our era. We must act now to guide AI […] to generate prosperity for the many, not just the few.
Read more: The open letter, Reuters, the Stanford Digital Economy Lab, Associated Press, Mashable, and Business Insider.