One of the boldest numbers yet put on artificial intelligence was delivered to the world's finance officials on Saturday. Anthropic co-founder Jack Clark told the IMF and World Bank annual meetings in Bangkok that one of the company's internal economic models forecasts AI could expand U.S. economic output to $44 trillion by 2030 — up from just over $30 trillion now, an increase of almost 50 per cent, Reuters reported.
Clark, Anthropic's head of public benefit, conceded the figure 'sounds very outlandish.' The model assumes the technology keeps improving, he said, and growth on that scale would require genuinely new industries and inventions to have been created to power it. He pointed to AI vastly accelerating scientific discovery as the engine.
The warning came with the number. Clark called for international cooperation to erect 'unusual and serious rules' for the technology, saying policymakers have a small and shrinking number of years to impose safeguards, and spoke of growing evidence of a pace of progress that could outrun human control. 'The whole pace of progress of not just AI but science as a whole will speed up,' he told hundreds of officials, 'and this will feel confusing and disorienting, and will bring with it great wealth and potentially great peril.'
On jobs, Clark said AI was already causing losses in high-exposure fields such as call centres and customer service, while enhancing employment in scientific research; how many jobs new industries might create remains a major unknown.
The remarks land as Anthropic prepares for an initial public offering expected in November that could value the company at up to $2 trillion — a valuation that itself assumes something like the future Clark described.
