More than 200 researchers and economists, including 15 Nobel laureates and researchers at OpenAI, Anthropic and ​Google, have called for governments and technology leaders ‌to urgently create policies and institutions to address the economic impact of AI.

They issued the jointly signed statement on Monday, warning ​that AI could drive a larger economic transformation ​than the Industrial Revolution but one that is “vastly ⁠shorter” in time frame, raising questions for workers, ​companies and public institutions.

The statement has called for deeper research ​on AI’s economic impacts and to start building policies and institutions required to ensure the technology benefits society and to navigate risks ​such as large-scale job displacement.

“Steam, electricity, and computers ​each gave societies decades to adapt. AI may give us only a ‌few years,” said Anton Korinek, professor at the University of Virginia.

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“We cannot improvise our strategy and institutions in the middle of the transformation; waiting for certainty means arriving ​too late.”

Korinek, who ​joined Anthropic’s ⁠economic research team in March, organised the initiative with fellow economists Erik Brynjolfsson, Ajay ​Agrawal and Tom Cunningham.

Its signatories include OpenAI ​finance ⁠chief Sarah Friar, Google DeepMind Chief Scientist Jeff Dean, Anthropic co-founder Jack Clark and people on the economics research ⁠team at ​the Claude chatbot maker.

Nobel laureates ​Michael Spence, Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson, among others, also signed the ​statement.