A statement released on Monday by Stanford University’s Digital Economy Lab and signed by more than 200 economists, AI researchers, and technology executives warns that artificial intelligence may become “radically more powerful” within a decade, driving an economic shift larger than the Industrial Revolution but compressed into a far shorter timeframe. The immediate effect is a convergence of voices from across the AI debate — including prominent former skeptics — signalling that concern over large-scale job displacement has moved from the margins to the centre of mainstream economic thinking.

The four-sentence text, titled “We Must Act Now,” argues that without deliberate policy, the transformation could bring mass job losses alongside potential gains in living standards. It calls for incentives, guardrails, and institutions to steer AI toward complementing human labour rather than replacing it. The brevity and the breadth of signatories — from Nobel laureates Daron Acemoglu and Joseph Stiglitz to AI pioneers Yoshua Bengio and Yann LeCun, and industry figures such as Eric Schmidt and Reid Hoffman — underscore a rare alignment between those building the technology and those studying its consequences.

The warning lands as labour market data begin to show strain in sectors highly exposed to AI. Researchers at Switzerland’s KOF economic institute note rising unemployment in IT, marketing, and communications roles, though broader job destruction remains limited. In the United States, Amazon recently cut 14,000 positions after its chief executive said AI agents would take over certain roles, and new college graduates face intensifying competition. The United Nations has separately cautioned that AI could widen inequality between advanced and developing economies. These early signals lend weight to the statement’s urgency, even as many economists still expect AI to ultimately boost productivity.

The statement stops short of prescribing specific policies, leaving governments and international bodies to translate the warning into action. Its organisers hope to inject momentum into a policy debate that, viewed from Washington, Brussels, and Beijing, has so far lagged behind the pace of AI deployment. The next test will be whether this unusual coalition can sustain pressure and whether concrete regulatory proposals emerge from the dialogue it has opened.