Ben Casselman

Artificial intelligence could transform the economy faster than any previous technology, and policymakers must move equally quickly to figure out how to respond, a group of economists and researchers are warning. The statement, titled “We Must Act Now,” was signed by nearly 200 people, including 15 Nobel laureates and the chief economists of two of the leading A.I. labs, Open AI and Anthropic.

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick recently suggested that he plans to change the way the government reports data on gross domestic product in order to remove the impact of government spending. His remarks have renewed concerns that the new administration could seek to interfere with federal statistics—especially if they start to show that the economy is slipping into a recession. The basic definition of gross domestic product is widely accepted internationally and has been unchanged for decades.

Rural areas have complained for years that slow, unreliable or simply unavailable internet access is restricting their economic growth. But the pandemic has given new urgency to those concerns, at the same time that President Biden’s infrastructure plan — which includes $100 billion to improve broadband access — has raised hope that the problem might finally be addressed. In a recent survey conducted for The New York Times by the online research platform SurveyMonkey, 78 percent of adults said they supported broadband investment, including 62 percent of Republicans.