Daron Acemoglu: What do we know about the economics of AI?

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2025-01-03 12:30:04

For all the talk about artificial intelligence upending the world, its economic effects remain uncertain. There is massive investment in AI but little clarity about what it will produce.

Examining AI has become a significant part of Nobel-winning economist Daron Acemoglu’s work. An Institute Professor at MIT, Acemoglu has long studied the impact of technology in society, from modeling the large-scale adoption of innovations to conducting empirical studies about the impact of robots on jobs.

In October, Acemoglu also shared the 2024 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel with two collaborators, Simon Johnson PhD ’89 of the MIT Sloan School of Management and James Robinson of the University of Chicago, for research on the relationship between political institutions and economic growth. Their work shows that democracies with robust rights sustain better growth over time than other forms of government do.

Since a lot of growth comes from technological innovation, the way societies use AI is of keen interest to Acemoglu, who has published a variety of papers about the economics of the technology in recent months.