Larry Summers

Lawrence H. Summers (born 1954) is one of the most decorated — and most polarizing — economists of his generation: U.S. Treasury Secretary under Bill Clinton, president of Harvard, director of the National Economic Council under Barack Obama, and the economist who revived the phrase “secular stagnation.” In November 2023 he took on a very different role: board member of OpenAI, appointed in the reconstitution that followed Sam Altman’s firing and reinstatement.

The Industrial Revolution comparison

Summers has been among the most expansive mainstream voices on AI’s economic potential. At Fortune’s Innovation Forum in Hong Kong in March 2024 he predicted AI could eventually perform nearly all cognitive labor, while cautioning that no productivity miracle would show up in the statistics quickly. His formulation of the transition was characteristically vivid: AI will substitute for a doctor making a difficult diagnosis before it substitutes for a nurse’s ability to hold a frightened patient’s hand.

His OpenAI tenure ended abruptly. In November 2025, after the House Oversight Committee released Jeffrey Epstein’s estate documents showing Summers corresponded with Epstein as late as 2019, he resigned from the OpenAI board and stepped back from teaching duties at Harvard and a raft of other public commitments. He was not accused of wrongdoing in Epstein’s crimes, but the episode ended his formal role inside the industry whose transformative potential he had championed.