Economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He won the Nobel prize in economics in 2024, most famous for his work on historical development.
Acemoglu estimates that AI will lift global GDP by no more than 1-2% in total over a decade. This conclusion hinges on an assumption that only about 5% of tasks can be performed more cheaply by AI than by workers—an assumption that rests in part on research conducted in 2023, when AI was less capable.
Research by Acemoglu and Pascual Restrepo of Boston University found that roughly half of America's employment growth between 1980 and 2010 came from the creation of entirely new occupations.
But if you wish at once to do nothing and to be respectable nowadays, the best pretext is to be at work on some profound study.