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Episode 796

Power and Progress: MIT Professor Daron Acemoglu on Navigating Techno-Optimism and Regulation in the Era of AI

August 24, 2023
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About the Guest

Daron Acemoglu

Elizabeth & James Killian Professor of Economics at MIT; Institute Professor at MIT; Author
Daron Acemoglu is the Elizabeth & James Killian Professor of Economics at MIT, as well as an Institute Professor, the highest faculty honor at MIT. He is also the 2005 winner of the John Bates Clark Medal, an award given to an American economist under the age of 40, who has been judged as having made a significant contribution to economic thought and knowledge, one of the many honors he's received across his career. Daron is also an elected fellow at the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the British Academy of Sciences among other prestigious bodies. He is the author of five books, including his latest Power and Progress: Our Thousand-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity, which he co-authored with Simon Johnson.

Episode Overview

796: Professor Daron Acemoglu joins the broadcast to speak about his latest book, Power and Progress: Our Thousand-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity, and his perspective on techno-optimism in the era of artificial intelligence. Daron issues a warning about blind optimism during this pivotal moment in technology and draws on the key themes of power dynamics, techno-optimism, and effective regulation strategies from his book to explain the balance between power and progress and ways to counteract the accrual of power to a select few. He explains the three countervailing forces of democracy, worker voice, and regulation; the two key problems with regulations surrounding generative artificial intelligence; and what this future of AI regulation means on a global scale. Finally, as a writer himself, Daron talks about the ongoing Writer’s Strike as a defense against Generative AI, the potential benefits generative AI will have for writers of the future, and why he is optimistic about generative AI being a “job helper”.

“"If those who control technology and those who control corporations become so powerful that there are no barriers to stop them or slow them down, especially when they're going in directions that are harmful to the rest, that is not going to be a recipe.""

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