A grim take: a new warning from top economists signals AI could wipe out huge numbers of jobs, and the fear is it hits fast and hard.

• Almost 200 economists and tech leaders, including 16 Nobel winners and staff from OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic, signed a statement urging action now on AI's economic risks.
• Their worry is speed — AI could reshape the economy bigger than the industrial revolution but in a fraction of the time, leaving no one ready.
• Job losses may already be hidden: white-collar hiring has been shrinking for years, showing up as people quitting or taking lesser work rather than official unemployment.
• The alarming call here is that companies racing to cut staff could push unemployment to 10–12% or worse — a depression, with no one left able to afford the products AI makes so cheaply.
• Young people are told to avoid coding and computer jobs entirely, while stocks keep climbing and Wall Street and the media act like nothing is wrong.

Outlook: The prediction is a brutal stretch of rising job losses ahead, with no real turnaround expected before 2029 at the earliest.