Anthropic's Jack Clark tells IMF meetings the AI 'singularity has begun' and calls for 'unusual and serious rules'; the $44T 2030 US GDP figure is the extreme setting of Anthropic's public scenario tool

Why it matters

【Key points】

Anthropic co-founder Jack Clark delivered this year's Per Jacobsson Foundation Lecture, "Inside the Event Horizon: Why Everyone Should Take AI Progress Seriously," at the IMF/World Bank Annual Meetings in Bangkok on Oct 17, moderated by Raghuram Rajan with discussants V. Anantha Nageswaran and Peking University's Yan Shen. Beforehand Clark posted that he would speak "about the singularity and why I believe it has begun."

Per Reuters, Clark said rapidly improving AI will bring far faster change across fields and that international cooperation is needed for "unusual and serious rules." He cited US GDP reaching $44 trillion by 2030 (vs. just over $30T today), conceding it "sounds very outlandish." On Oct 16, on a panel with IMF chief Georgieva, he backed regulation by AI-developing countries: "We need common sense standards."

【Verifiable】

Reuters via CNA: https://www.channelnewsasia.com/business/anthropics-clark-says-ais-impact-accelerating-quickly-and-could-vastly-boost-us-gdp-6468116

IMF lecture page: https://www.imf.org/en/meetings/2026/annual/schedule/2026/10/17/per-jacobsson-foundation-lecture-212473

Clark's correction: https://x.com/jackclarkSF/status/2111411532991177195

【Our read】

1. The $44T is not a new forecast: Clark corrected reports calling it an "internal model" — it is the "extreme" setting of Anthropic's public September scenario explorer (modest $34.1T, substantial $36.3T).

2. The news is the register: a frontier-lab co-founder telling an IMF audience the singularity has begun while asking for international rules, the same week as Anthropic's draft safety bill and Treasury's "super intelligence" push.

3. No full transcript yet; details come from Reuters and Clark's posts.