At the IMF and World Bank meetings, IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva urged safeguards for AI, while Anthropic’s Jack Clark argued companies should not set policy alone.
At a panel on artificial intelligence and the global economy in Bangkok on October 16, International Monetary Fund Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva called for safeguards to contain AI’s potential harms. Anthropic co-founder and policy head Jack Clark joined the discussion, arguing that decisions about AI policy should not be left solely to the companies building the technology.
Georgieva compared AI’s rapid development to a Formula 1 race, saying protections are needed in case the technology causes harm. Clark warned that policy frameworks are still being developed and said negligence could bring serious disruption. His comments echoed a proposal he made last month for leading AI companies to coordinate a pause in advanced-system development, an idea he has linked to concerns about losing control of increasingly capable systems.
The panel also considered how AI could reshape employment. Georgieva cited an IMF study suggesting that about 10% of jobs might be transformed or newly created, while repetitive-task work could disappear. She said new service-sector jobs may emerge as a consequence of investment, but cautioned that these roles may pay poorly. Bank of Canada Governor Tiff Macklem said technological change would produce both winners and losers, and emphasized the need to help people affected by job losses.
Georgieva also pointed to access to electricity and digital networks, as well as cybersecurity, as prerequisites for wider participation in AI’s benefits. The exchange put economic opportunity, worker transitions and safety oversight into the same policy discussion, but did not announce a new IMF rule or regulatory proposal. It reflects continuing debate among international institutions and AI developers over how governments should share responsibility for managing the technology’s risks.