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Profs. Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson are two of the winners of this year’s Nobel Prize in economic sciences. Johnson joined CBS Boston to discuss his Nobel Prize-winning research and the potential impact of AI. "People are both too optimistic and too pessimistic if they believe AI can do more things than it really can, but they haven't thought through the way in which it could really wipe out middle-skill, middle-education, middle-income jobs,” says Johnson.
Profs. Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson have been awarded the Nobel Prize in economic sciences for their research that “advanced the understanding of economic disparities among countries,” reports Paul Hannon and Justin Lahart for The Wall Street Journal. “I’ll be very happy if this prize contributes to having more awareness of the importance of building better institutions, building better democracy,” said Acemoglu. “I think those are urgent challenges for us.”
AP reporters Daniel Niemann, Mike Corder and Paul Wiseman highlight the work of Profs. Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson, who have been honored with the Nobel Prize in economic sciences for their work demonstrating “the importance of societal institutions for a country’s prosperity.” Says Johnson of how AI could impact workers: “AI could either empower people with a lot of education, make them more highly skilled, enable them to do more tasks and get more pay. Or it could be another massive wave of automation that pushes the remnants of the middle down to the bottom.”
Prof. Simon Johnson, one of the recipients of this year’s Nobel Prize in economics, joins the PBS NewsHour to discuss the inspiration for his research, the role of institutions in economies around the world and how technology could be harnessed to create better jobs for all. Johnson notes that through his work with the MIT Shaping the Future of Work Initiative, he and his colleagues hope to “get more good jobs in the United States and around the world.” He adds that in the past, “we have managed things so that technology delivered benefits for a broad cross-section of society. But that's not what we have done in the past four decades. We need a course-correction, and that's what we're going to work on.”
Boston Globe reporter Alexa Gagosz spotlights the work of Profs. Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson, recipients of the 2024 Nobel Prize in economics for their research examining global inequality. MIT President Sally Kornbluth called Acemoglu and Johnson, who first stepped foot on MIT’s campus in 1985 as a graduate student, “prolific and influential scholars” whose work “reflects a very MIT interest in making a positive impact in the real world.” Kornbluth added: “Their historical investigations have a great deal to teach us about how and why real societies fail or thrive. And they [have] both become familiar voices in the news, public intellectuals trying to help us all make sense of a tumultuous world.”
Profs. Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson PhD '89 have been awarded the 2024 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel for their work explaining the gaps in prosperity between nations and advancing our understanding of inequality, reports Jeanna Smialek for The New York Times. “Reducing the huge differences in income between countries is one of our times’ greatest challenges,” said Jakob Svensson, chairman of the economics prize committee. Thanks to the economists’ “groundbreaking research,” he said, “we have a much deeper understanding of the root causes of why countries fail or succeed.” Acemoglu reacted to winning the prize, noting that: “You dream of having a good career, but this is over and on top of that.”
A new commentary by Prof. Jonathan Gruber and his colleagues outlines a proposal for a new long-term care at home plan, aimed at enabling seniors to stay in their homes, reports Jonathan Cohn for HuffPost. “Relative to other countries, we’re very nursing home focused, and we’re not really doing enough to keep people at home,” says Gruber. “I also just think it’s a valuable benefit to people that makes their lives better.”
Prof. Daron Acemoglu speaks with Greg Rosalsky of NPR’s Planet Money about a recent survey that claims "almost 40% of Americans, ages 18 to 64, have used generative AI." "My concern with their numbers is that it does not distinguish fundamentally productive uses of generative AI from occasional/frivolous uses," says Acemoglu.
Prof. David Autor speaks with Washington Post reporter Cat Zakrzewski about AI automation in the workforce. Autor notes that when it comes to AI’s impact on the labor market the “concern should not be the number of jobs. We're actually running out of workers, not running out of jobs because of our demographics, but whether we have jobs that reward people's expertise and knowledge rather than jobs that displace expertise and knowledge and don't leave people with a viable, highly paid thing to do.”
Prof. David Autor speaks with Washington Post reporter Cat Zakrzewski about the anticipated impact of AI in various industries. “We are just learning how to use AI and what it's good for, and it will take a while to figure out how to use it really productively,” says Autor.
Prof. Daron Acemoglu speaks with Bloomberg reporter Jeran Wittenstein about the current state of AI and the technology’s economic potential. “You need highly reliable information or the ability of these models to faithfully implement certain steps that previously workers were doing,” says Acemoglu of the state of current large language models. “They can do that in a few places with some human supervisory oversight” — like coding — “but in most places they cannot. That’s a reality check for where we are right now."
Prof. Daron Acemoglu speaks with Bloomberg reporters John Lee and Katia Dmitrieva about the social and economic impacts of AI. “We don’t know where the future lies,” says Acemoglu. “There are many directions, the technology is malleable, we can make different choices.”
Glenn Loury PhD '67 is a guest on the Boston Globe podcast “Say More” with Shirley Leung, discussing his memoir “Late Admissions: Confessions of a Black Conservative.” Now a Brown economics professor, Loury had an unusual and difficult life for an academic, saying he wrote the memoir because “I owed it to myself to tell the real story, and to rely on the generosity of the reader to see past the darkest and ugliest to the hopefully decent and honest human being grappling with his life.”
Prof. Daron Acemoglu is a guest on the Financial Times podcast, “The Economics Show with Soumaya Keynes," detailing his research on the economics of AI and implications for workers. He says AI could help the current workforce communicate better and control its own data, while opening up possibilities for the geographically or economically disadvantaged, if the right policies are put in place. “I think having this conversation, and really making it a central part of the public debate that there is a technically feasible and socially beneficial different direction of technology, would have a transformative effect on the tech sector,” he explains.
Writing for Forbes, Andrew Binns highlights research from Prof. Daron Acemoglu suggesting total productivity gains of AI could be as little as 0.53% over 10 years, much lower than common estimates.