Daron Acemoglu, the economist who says technological innovation does not equal prosperity | Economy and business

Luis Granena

Daron Acemoglu is an unbiased economist with a penchant for dismantling the clichés of mainstream thought. This wild path, almost against the grain, is not new to him. He is the son of Armenians, a minority with a long history of struggle for survival in his native Türkiye. His passion for observing the connections between economics and politics dates back to his youth, when the coup by Kenan Evren's military junta brought violence to the streets and poverty to Turkish households. He wanted to deal with the consequences of the dictatorship for the economy, but had to study these connections from a distance. Acemoglu became increasingly critical of the situation in Turkey, and his father advised him to leave the country out of fear for his safety.

A few years ago, Mark Zuckerberg, a man with more power than Alexander the Great, revealed that one of his favorite reads was Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty. Authored by Acemoglu and James A. Robinson, the book shows that prosperity is not a function of culture or geography, but of the policies dictated by a nation's institutions. Thus, Acemoglu and Robinson have scientifically proven that self-regulation of the market – the famous laissez-faire – is truly magical thinking, that politics drives the economy and that the democratic system leads to shared prosperity. It was a worldwide bestseller.

It's likely that in recent months Zuckerberg has delved into “Power and Progress Our Thousand-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity,” Acemoglu's book with Simon Johnson. After in-depth economic, historical and social research, the two authors show that technological innovations alone do not bring about a boost in prosperity. Today we live better than our ancestors, but this is not because of successive technological inventions; Rather, it is because civil society questioned the decisions of elites and wealth was created through the dissemination and participatory design of these technologies.

Acemoglu, 56, is clear that it is now necessary to return to such measures. If they were feasible in the very difficult years of the Industrial Revolution—when new production techniques made factory owners and impoverished workers so rich that their life expectancies were shortened until they organized and demanded improvements in their working conditions—they are also feasible now. “You have to exercise democratic control over the direction of technology,” Acemoglu said in an email conversation. Period.

It seems clear that sooner or later he will be awarded a Nobel Prize. Daron addresses many topics, all in a very brilliant way.”

Mónica Martínez Bravo, an MIT-trained economist who studied with Acemoglu

When he left Turkey, Acemoglu went to Britain, enrolled in economics at the University of York and discovered that none of his subjects dealt with political issues. He then decided to conduct his own research and apply empirical, mathematical and conceptual tools to his analysis of human affairs. At the age of 25, he received his doctorate from the London School of Economics and was soon appointed assistant professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he was warned that the mixing of economics and politics was an undesirable heterodoxy. He continued his studies on these links almost secretly. He's now a professor there, and it's safe to say that political economy is currently mainstream at MIT.

Acemoglu's theses have long attracted great interest around the world. Last summer, the International Monetary Fund's Gita Gopinath quoted the economist as calling for AI to be regulated in a way that benefits society. Paul Romer, a 2018 Nobel Prize winner for his research on the importance of innovation for economic growth, has confessed that Acemoglu's research made him rethink his ideas, and senior officials from leading AI laboratories are discussing his books among themselves.

His work and analytical skills are legendary. “It seems clear that sooner or later he will be awarded a Nobel Prize, but among his former students we sometimes jokingly say that in Stockholm it will be a matter of deciding in which field he will receive it, because Daron has a lot of topics “All in a brilliant way,” explains Mónica Martínez Bravo, an economist trained at MIT, where Acemoglu conducted her doctoral work, and current Secretary General for Inclusion at the Spanish Ministry of Inclusion, Social Security and Migration.

Against automatic thinking

Not everything that is said should be taken as gospel. Against the more orthodox stance of American science, Acemoglu makes a simple statement in his lectures: At the core of the wildest capitalism is an insurmountable error, which consists in the fact that people do not have to consume; What he wants more than anything in the world is to participate.

He has proven it thousands of times in his studies. Everything is connected. Acemoglu explored the infinite relationships between work, lifestyles and political systems, examining the Sicilian Mafia as both a cause and a consequence of a lack of state structure, the innovation to alleviate climate change in the energy transition, the connections between cultural and democratic institutions and social balance, and between the rise of fascism and war, the danger of too much data, the impact of AI on the job market, civil power in the case of the Arab Spring in Egypt and the rise and fall of the general laws of capitalism, among many other topics. “He is a visionary. Before a topic begins to produce scientific literature, he has been studying it for some time,” says Martínez Bravo.

Those who know him well say he is a great teacher, his knowledge is encyclopedic and he is extraordinarily productive. “Every year he publishes around fifteen research papers in the most renowned business journals and generates around 20,000 citations per year. His numbers are out of this world,” emphasizes Pascual Restrepo, Acemoglu’s former student and now his colleague in research on the emergence of robots in the labor market.

Two years ago, in a debate with economics guru Martin Wolf, Acemoglu's thesis led him to admit that economic studies separate from politics and social sciences – the economic practice that has been consistently followed for decades – is actually “embarrassingly simple.” And then Wolf brings up a big problem: “We don’t have a good model for studying society,” he says. That's what Acemoglu does: it forces you to rethink what you take for granted based on indisputable research.

That is why, in times of automation and programming, Acemoglu warns against uncritical thinking and insists on thinking and deciding about the human uses that technology should offer us. He argues that there is nothing wrong with automation, that it has been around since the mid-18th century and that it will of course continue to exist, but that it must direct its powers towards improving human life.

In the film AI Artificial Intelligence (2001, Steven Spielberg), the robot prostitute played by Jude Law tells the robot child (Haley Joel Osment) that information is the most expensive thing these days. That's true now too. With all the fake news and misinformation, in-depth knowledge backed by data like Acemoglu's is worth its weight in gold.

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