When one of the most cited economists in growth theory tells you there’s a one-in-three chance AI causes human extinction, it’s worth paying attention. It’s worth paying even more attention when the company building that AI hires him to study the problem from the inside.
Chad Jones, the STANCO 25 Professor of Economics at Stanford Graduate School of Business, is taking a leave of absence to join the newly established Anthropic Institute. His start date is June 30, 2026, and his mandate is straightforward if somewhat existential: figure out what AI actually means for the future of the economy, and whether that future includes humans at all.
The math behind the existential bet
Jones’s recent NBER working paper, titled “A.I. and Our Economic Future,” lays out the intellectual framework that likely caught Anthropic’s eye. The paper models AI-driven acceleration in research and innovation, using log utility assumptions to calculate the trade-offs humanity faces.
The numbers are striking. Jones’s model produces a one-in-three probability of human extinction from superintelligent AI systems. The flip side: a two-thirds chance that living standards increase by roughly 55 times current levels.
