Daron Acemoglu: the opportunity economist

Source:The Prospect Date:25Jan2024

After decades of sweeping research covering technology, “democracy, dictatorship and labour laws,” Daron Acemoglu—the polymathic Turkish-American economist whom Prospect readers have voted the world’s top thinker for 2024—is ready to boil things down. “The overall conclusion I’ve reached,” he tells me, “is that there’s nothing automatic about shared prosperity.”

Refusal to buy into this is what makes Acemoglu an urgent thinker in 2024, when many are acutely worried about what the rapid rise of AI will mean for work and life in our unequal society. He warns that for all the undoubted potential for good, “technology often is impoverishing for certain groups”, a serious point that—with one of many chuckles—he illustrates with “the oft-quoted semi-joke that the future factory will have two employees, a man and a dog. The man will be there to feed the dog, and the dog is there to make sure that the man doesn’t touch the equipment!”

The Editors are proud to have made his acquintance, co-produced and benefited from his exceptional wisdom