Nobel Laureate Acemoglu: AGI Is Not the Only Path for General-Purpose Technologies

Daron Acemoglu, the 2024 Nobel laureate in economics and a professor at MIT, criticized the “determinism” popular in Silicon Valley in an interview on October 14. He argued that general-purpose technologies have multiple evolution paths, and that blindly pursuing artificial general intelligence (AGI) and replacing human labor is not the only solution.

Acemoglu, whose research examines how technological change affects economic growth, noted that different technological paths will bring markedly different social benefits and costs.