An open letter was published recently by a group called We Must Act Now, drawing attention to AI’s potential economic impact. They focus on three main points:
- AI will become more powerful over the next decade.
- The impact on the economy could be greater than the Industrial Revolution.
- Industry and government leaders must act now to steer AI in the right direction.
It’s signed by university professors and employees of AI companies, like OpenAI and Anthropic.
We can add this open letter to the growing stack. Economic concerns were raised in this 2015 open letter about AI, signed by Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking. The same group issued another one in 2023, calling for a pause on training AI systems. This one is from 2024, signed by former and current OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google DeepMind employees. In 2025, 10 Nobel Prize winners signed the Global Call for Red Lines to prevent AI risks. Just to name a few.
I’m not listing these to dismiss the most recent letter by We Must Act Now. My intention is the opposite. AI safety is clearly top of mind, yet not much has actually been done to mitigate these concerns. Why?
It’s true that AI is impacting the workforce. Companies like OpenAI are actively targeting and benchmarking against industries, like real estate, government, manufacturing, professional/scientific/technical services, health care and social assistance, finance and insurance, retail trade, wholesale trade, and information. There are also new roles created by the existence of AI, like the AI Champion.
According to Pew Research Center, “Concerns about AI are especially common in the United States, Italy, Australia, Brazil and Greece, where about half of adults say they are more concerned than excited,” regarding the increased use of AI in daily life.
So let’s look at a couple reasons for the lack of regulations:
There are financial incentives to speed up
In May 2026, Anthropic raised $65 billion in Series H funding at a $965 billion post-money valuation. When tech grows, jobs are created. Even when AI leads to layoffs, the financial incentive remains. Layoffs due to signs of weakness or some type of deep financial pain typically results in a stock price falling, but when there are layoffs due to AI efficiencies, stock prices go up. It sounds right to say that the CEO of a publicly traded company might feel they are falling behind if they are not announcing layoffs due to AI.
It’s a confusing race
Some of the people signing these open letters are the ones actively advancing the tech (let’s not forget who benefits from reminding everyone that AI is powerful). That’s like saying, I’m racing my car towards this cliff and someone else should really put my foot on the brake. The problem is that there are multiple cars and no one wants to be the first to stop before they hit the cliff. It’s a game of chicken and a race at the same time. The worst part is that some of the drivers think they’re gonna fly if they’re the first ones to hit the edge.
Add in the fact that some of these drivers are governments and they don’t want to slow down before the other governments slow down. Sadly, it might take a few cars to go over the edge for others to realize that no one is flying.
So what is the solution? That’s another post. Or another open letter.
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