Ben Bernanke is an American economist who served as Chair of the Federal Reserve from 2006 to 2014, a period that included the 2008 financial crisis. He received the 2022 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for research on banks and financial crises. He is a distinguished fellow at the Brookings Institution (Source: anthropic.com). In July 2026 he joined the Long-Term Benefit Trust that oversees part of Anthropic's governance, where he was expected to contribute to the company's research on how AI is changing the economy.
| Current roles | Distinguished Fellow, Brookings Institution; Trustee, Anthropic Long-Term Benefit Trust (from July 2026) |
| Previous roles | Chair, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (2006–2014); chair of the economics department, Princeton University |
| Awards | Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (2022) |
Background
Bernanke spent more than two decades as an academic economist before entering government, much of it at Princeton, where he chaired the economics department. His research focused on the Great Depression and the role of banks in financial crises, the work cited for his 2022 Nobel Prize. He led the Federal Reserve through the 2008 global financial crisis and the recovery that followed (Source: anthropic.com). CNBC noted that he succeeded Alan Greenspan and took the Fed into zero interest rates and quantitative easing. After leaving the Fed he held positions at the Brookings Institution, Citadel and Pimco (Source: cnbc.com).
As Fed chair, Bernanke gave a speech titled "Promoting Research and Development: The Government's Role" on May 16, 2011, at a Washington conference on "New Building Blocks for Jobs and Economic Growth". A 2026 Lawfare essay by Kevin Frazier and Alan Rozenshtein links to it as support for the claim that basic R&D has historically produced broadly beneficial innovation, in arguing for more federal investment in the science of AI (Dominating AI Requires Understanding AI (Frazier + Rozenshtein, Lawfare, May 12 2026); Source: federalreserve.gov).
Anthropic Long-Term Benefit Trust
On July 9, 2026, Anthropic's Long-Term Benefit Trust named Bernanke as a trustee. The Trust is the independent body that holds a class of Anthropic stock and appoints a portion of its board. Anthropic created the Trust in 2023 as a purpose trust holding Class T stock, which gives it authority to elect and remove a growing share of the company's directors, ultimately a majority, alongside Anthropic's status as a Delaware public benefit corporation (Source: anthropic.com). Trustees hold no equity in Anthropic, do not share in its profits, are paid only for their time and service, and are chosen by existing trustees in consultation with the company. Anthropic said Bernanke would bring expertise to "one of the questions Anthropic studies most closely: how AI is changing the economy" and would contribute to its economic research (Source: anthropic.com).
Anthropic co-founder and President Daniela Amodei said that "AI may have the most significant economic effects of any technology in modern history" and that Bernanke's judgment "will make us better at anticipating and responding to how advanced AI affects workforces and economies around the world". Bernanke said: "The potential of artificial intelligence is enormous, and so is the range of outcomes. How that potential plays out will depend, in part, on the institutions we build around it." Trust chair Neil Buddy Shah cited Bernanke's record of leading the Fed "with expertise, independence, and sound judgment" (Source: anthropic.com; cnbc.com).
The appointment adds a macroeconomic-policy background to a trust whose members include national-security expert Richard Fontaine, chief executive of the Center for a New American Security, whose appointment Anthropic announced on June 7, 2025 (its trust page dates his joining to May 2025). The other trustees at the time were Shah and Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar, president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, who joined in January 2026. CNBC described Bernanke as the trust's fourth member (Source: anthropic.com; anthropic.com; cnbc.com). CNBC reported that the appointment came as Anthropic, valued at $965 billion, was preparing for a possible initial public offering. It also follows Anthropic's public emphasis on AI's labor-market and economic effects (see AI Labor Disruption).
"We Must Act Now" statement
Bernanke, listed with the Brookings Institution, was among the initial signatories of "We Must Act Now: A Statement on AI's Transformation of the Economy". The statement was organized through the Stanford Digital Economy Lab and published July 13, 2026, and its signatories include 16 Nobel laureates in economics. It holds that AI may become radically more powerful over the next ten years and could drive an economic transformation larger than the Industrial Revolution over a far shorter period, bringing risks including large-scale job displacement as well as gains in living standards. It calls on economists, policymakers and technology leaders to "act now" to build incentives, guardrails and institutions that steer AI toward complementing humans (We Must Act Now: A Statement on AI's Transformation of the Economy (July 2026)).
Relationships
- related: Anthropic — Long-Term Benefit Trust trustee (July 2026)
- related: AI Labor Disruption — appointment framed around AI's workforce and economic effects
- related: We Must Act Now: A Statement on AI's Transformation of the Economy (July 2026) — signatory
- related: Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar, Center for a New American Security (CNAS), Federal Reserve
- related: Dario Amodei, Daniela Amodei — Anthropic leadership