MIT economists Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson have published a new book, Power and Progress: Our 1000-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity, which examines who has benefited from past innovations and who may gain from AI today, economically and politically. The authors argue that AI is a tool of social control for some governments that also creates riches for a small number of people. They believe that the current path of AI is neither good for the economy nor for democracy, and these two problems reinforce each other. Acemoglu and Johnson suggest that AI tools might expand what home health care workers can do, and make their services more valuable, without reducing workers in the sector. They advocate for an extensive menu of policy responses, including data ownership for internet users, tax reform that rewards employment more than automation, government support for a diversity of high-tech research directions, repealing Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act, and a digital advertising tax. The authors want to broaden the public discussion of AI beyond industry leaders, discard notions about the AI inevitability, and think again about human agency, social priorities, and economic possibilities.
