On November 4, the “Theory and Policy in the Era of Intelligence” Forum of the 2026 World Internet Conference Wuzhen Summit was held in Wuzhen, Zhejiang Province. Professor Richard Freeman, Adjunct Professor at Fudan Institute for Global Public Policy (IGPP) and Herbert Ascherman Professor of Economics at Harvard University, was invited to deliver a keynote speech on the social transformations and governance challenges brought about by the development of AI.

Co-hosted by the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Tsinghua University, the forum focused on addressing fundamental and emerging issues in AI and exploring global trends in AI development, technological innovation, and governance policies. Speakers included Amandeep Singh Gill, United Nations Under-Secretary-General and Special Envoy for Digital and Emerging Technologies, and Jianping Wu, Academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, alongside other leading scholars and experts from China and abroad.

In his keynote speech, Professor Freeman examined the safety risks and governance challenges associated with AI agents. He noted that, unlike traditional tools, AI agents can make decisions and take actions autonomously, but their behavior may not always align with human values. He highlighted two major sources of risk: the potential misuse of AI by malicious actors and the safety concerns arising from the autonomous behavior of AI agents.

To address these challenges, Professor Freeman proposed a new governance perspective drawing on labor economics. He explored whether existing labor laws and collective bargaining institutions could offer useful approaches to regulating the behavior of AI agents. Drawing on workers’ “right of refusal,” he discussed how AI agents might be enabled to refuse instructions that violate laws or regulations or could cause harm to humans. He also emphasized that applying existing labor institutions to AI agents and developing them into feasible governance mechanisms remain important questions for further exploration.

Professor Freeman is an internationally renowned labor economist whose research spans labor economics, technological innovation, talent mobility, and the impact of AI on labor markets. He has established close academic ties with IGPP, having participated in international academic conferences and research collaborations at the Institute on multiple occasions. In 2026, he was formally appointed as an Adjunct Professor at IGPP.