Google DeepMind Director Calls for Manhattan Project Level Data Collection on Economy

What was said

"We don't have any data. I've been kind of saying we need a Manhattan Project for data. We don't have data on basically consumer demand elasticities. We don't know what they are. We're not really tracking what jobs are getting created or destroyed, the O*NET database with all of the tasks and different jobs that's been rarely updated. It's super low quality."

Alex Imas reveals critical gaps in economic data needed to predict AI's labor market impact. He argues that without comprehensive tracking of consumer preferences, job creation patterns, and task-level employment data, economists cannot reliably forecast whether automation will cause unemployment or wage changes. This data vacuum undermines current policy debates.