The World's Top Economists Are Sounding the Alarm on AI

A growing number of prominent economists — including Daron Acemoglu, Larry Summers, and former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers — are warning that generative AI may not deliver the broad productivity boom many tech companies and investors expect. The concern is that AI is being deployed mainly to replace workers (automation) rather than to augment human labor, which could suppress wages, widen inequality, and hollow out the middle class, without generating enough macroeconomic growth to offset the damage. This marks a shift from the earlier consensus that AI would be a universal economic uplift. The debate matters because inflated productivity expectations have driven massive investment (hundreds of billions in AI infrastructure) and stock valuations; if those expectations prove wrong, it could trigger a market correction and reshape tech industry strategy.