Over 200 economists, technology executives, and researchers have signed an open letter warning that artificial intelligence poses a serious and growing threat to jobs, stating that governments are not moving fast enough to prepare. The letter, titled “We Must Act Now” and subtitled “A Statement on AI's Transformation of the Economy”, was organised by the Stanford Digital Economy Lab. Signatories include former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, Nobel Prize laureates Joseph Stiglitz, Daron Acemoglu, and Simon Johnson, Google AI lead Jeff Dean, Anthropic co-founder Jack Clark, OpenAI finance chief Sarah Friar, and AI pioneers Yoshua Bengio and Yann LeCun. The letter warns that AI could become “radically more powerful” over the coming decade, and without meaningful action from policymakers, the result could be “large-scale job displacement” on a scale the world has not seen before. It states that AI may drive an unprecedented economic transformation, larger than the Industrial Revolution, but unfolding over a vastly shorter time frame, bringing risks and opportunities. The letter calls for economists, policymakers and technology leaders to act now to understand the economics of transformative AI and build incentives, guardrails, and institutions to steer AI in a direction that complements humans.