200+ Economists and AI Researchers Sign 'We Must Act Now' on the AI Labor Shock

On July 13, 2026, Stanford's Digital Economy Lab released an open letter titled "We Must Act Now". More than 200 economists, AI researchers, and industry leaders signed the document, including 16 Nobel laureates, Anthropic co-founder Jack Clark, and the chief economists of both OpenAI and Anthropic. The signatories urged governments and companies to study the economic effects of AI before the next wave of disruption arrives. The letter argues that AI could become extraordinarily powerful within the next ten years and may drive an economic transformation larger than the Industrial Revolution, but compressed into a much shorter time window. The authors say the technology will raise living standards, yet it also carries the risk of large-scale labor displacement, especially for cognitive and clerical work. Major tech firms have already begun announcing layoffs they link directly to AI. What makes the letter unusual is the signatories' alignment. The list includes Erik Brynjolfsson, an optimist about AI productivity, alongside Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson, two of the strongest AI skeptics in mainstream economics. A French founder noted on social media that he had never seen so many famous people from opposite camps sign the same page. The cross-camp signal matters because it shows the warning is not coming from a single ideological side. The closing call to action asks economists, policymakers, and tech executives to build the guardrails and incentives that will keep AI a complement to human labor. Brynjolfsson said the rise of AI is moving faster than our ability to measure it, and that gap between the technology and our understanding is the defining risk of this decade.