Power and Progress

Our 1000-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity

Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson

The bestselling co-author of Why Nations Fail and the bestselling co-author of 13 Bankers deliver a bold reinterpretation of economics and history that will fundamentally change how you see the world.

Upcoming international editions

Learn More

What People Are Saying

One powerful thread runs through this breathtaking tour of the history and future of technology, from the Neolithic agricultural revolution to the ascent of artificial intelligence: Technology is not destiny, nothing is pre-ordained. Humans, despite their imperfect institutions and often-contradictory impulses, remain in the driver’s seat. It is still our job to determine whether the vehicles we build are heading toward justice or down the cliff. In this age of relentless automation and seemingly unstoppable consolidation of power and wealth, Power and Progress is an essential reminder that we can, and must, take back control.

Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo

2019 Nobel laureates in economics and authors of Poor Economics and Good Economics for Hard Times

This singular book elevated my understanding of the present confluence of society, economics, and technology. Here we have a synthesis of history and analysis coupled with specific ideas about how the future can be improved. It pulls no punches but also inspires optimism.

Jaron Lanier

Author of Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now

Acemoglu and Johnson have written a sweeping history of more than a thousand years of technical change. They take aim at economists’ mindless enthusiasm for technical change and their crippling neglect of power. An important book that is long overdue.

Sir Angus Deaton

2015 Nobel laureate in economics and coauthor of Deaths of Despair

If you are not already an addict of Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson’s previous books, Power and Progress is guaranteed to make you one. It offers their addictive hallmarks: sparkling writing and a big question that affects our lives. Are powerful new technologies guaranteed to benefit us? Did the industrial revolution bring happiness to our great-grandparents 150 years ago, and will artificial intelligence bring us more happiness now? Read, enjoy, and then choose your lifestyle!

Jared Diamond

Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Guns, Germs, and Steel and other international bestsellers

Acemoglu and Johnson would like a word with the mighty tech lords before they turn over the entire world economy to artificial intelligence. The lesson of economic history is technological advances such as AI won’t automatically lead to broad-based prosperity—they may end up benefiting only a wealthy elite. Just as the innovations of the Gilded Age of American industrialization had to be reined in by progressive politics, so too, in our Coded Age, we need not only trade unions, civil society, and trustbusters, but also legislative and regulatory reforms to prevent the advent of a new panopticon of AI-enabled surveillance. This book will not endear the authors to Microsoft executives, but it’s a bracing wake-up call for the rest of us.

Niall Ferguson

Milbank Family Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and author of The Square and the Tower

A book you must read: compelling, beautifully written, and tightly argued, it addresses a crucially important problem with powerful solutions. Drawing on both historical examples and a deep dive into the ways in which artificial intelligence and social media depress wages and undermine democracy, Acemoglu and Johnson argue for a revolution in the way we manage and control technology. Throughout history, it has only been when elites have been forced to share power that technology has served the common good. Acemoglu and Johnson show us what this would look like today.

Rebecca Henderson

John and Natty McArthur University Professor, Harvard University, and author of Reimagining Capitalism in a World on Fire

The technology of artificial intelligence is moving fast and likely to accelerate. This powerful book shows we now need to make some careful choices to really share the benefits and reduce unintended, adverse consequences. Technology is too important to leave to the billionaires. Everyone everywhere should read Acemoglu and Johnson—and try to get a seat at the decision-making table.

Ro Khanna

Silicon Valley member of Congress

Two of the best economists alive today are taking a closer look at the economics of technological progress in history. Their findings are as surprising as they are disturbing. This beautifully written and richly documented book marks a new beginning in our thinking about the political economy of innovation.

Joel Mokyr

Professor of economics and history, Northwestern University

Will the AI revolution increase the average worker’s productivity while recusing their drudgery, or will it simply create more exploitative and heavily surveilled workplaces run by robotic overlords? That is the right question, and luckily Acemoglu and Johnson have set out to answer it, giving it profound historical context, combing through the economic incentives, and lighting a better path forward.

Cathy O’Neil

Author of Weapons of Math Destruction and The Shame Machine

Technology is upending our world—automating jobs, deepening inequality, and creating tools of surveillance and misinformation that threaten democracy. But Acemoglu and Johnson show it doesn’t have to be this way. The direction of technology is not, like the direction of the wind, a force of nature beyond human control. It’s up to us. This humane and hopeful book shows how we can steer technology to promote the public good. Required reading for everyone who cares about the fate of democracy in a digital age.

Michael J. Sandel

Author of The Tyranny of Merit: Can We Find the Common Good?

A remarkable analysis of the current drama of technology evolution versus human dignity, where the potent forces boosting inequality continue to destroy our belief in the nobility of work and the inevitability of egalitarian progress. Acemoglu and Johnson offer a fresh vision of how this drama unfolds by highlighting human capabilities and social skills. They are deeply informed, masters at synthesis, and passionate about shaping a better future where innovation supports equality.

Ben Shneiderman

Distinguished University Professor, University of Maryland, and author of Human-Centered AI

Our future is inevitable and determined by the acceleration of technologies like AI and Web3. . . . Or so we are told. Here, from two of the greatest economists of our time, we have the definitive refutation of the techno-determinist story that has held us back from building a better future for the last four decades. With a bit of luck, we may look back at this as a turning point where we collectively once again took responsibility for defining the world we want technology to empower us to live in together.

E. Glen Weyl

Research lead and founder, Decentralized Social Technology Collaboratory, Microsoft Research Special Projects

In this brilliant, sweeping review of technological change past and present, Acemoglu and Johnson mean to grab us by the shoulders and shake us awake before today’s winner-take-all technologies impose more violence on global society and the democratic prospect. This vital book is a necessary antidote to the poisonous rhetoric of tech inevitability. It reveals the realpolitik of technology as a persistent Trojan horse for economic powers that favor the profit-seeking aims of the few over the many. Power and Progress is the blueprint we need for the challenges ahead: technology only contributes to shared prosperity when it is tamed by democratic rights, values, principles, and the laws that sustain them in our daily lives.

Shoshana Zuboff

Professor emeritus, Harvard Business School, and author of The Age of Surveillance Capitalism

America (and the world) is at a crossroads. Big business and the rich rewrote the rules of the US political economy since the 1970s, making it more grotesquely unfair than ever just as automation and offshoring jobs changed the game as well. Now with AI, renowned MIT economists Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson explain in their important and lucid book how the transformation of work could make life even worse for most people, or, possibly, much better––depending on the political and social and technological choices we make starting now. We must ‘stop being mesmerized by tech billionaires,’ they warn, because ‘progress is never automatic.’ With revealing, relevant stories from throughout economic history and sensible ideas for systemic reform, this is an essential guide for this crucial battle in the ‘one-thousand-year struggle’ between the powerful and everyone else.

Kurt Andersen

Author of Evil Geniuses

Innovation is undeniably a cool thing. Because of it, we survive diseases that regularly used to kill us. We can access and process unimaginable amounts of information. Without new technologies we would never meet the challenge to decarbonize the economy and contain climate change. But as Acemoglu and his MIT colleague Simon Johnson point out in their forthcoming book, Power and Progress (due out in May), contemporary evidence and the long story of humanity’s technological development confirm ‘there is nothing automatic about new technologies bringing widespread prosperity. Whether they do or not is an economic, social, and political choice.

Eduardo Porter

Bloomberg

Acemoglu and Johnson give an incisive analysis of the economics of labor and technology, along with a trenchant critique of the ‘techno-optimism’ of corporate visionaries…a stimulating call for social and political action to ensure the rising tide of innovation lifts all boats.

Publishers Weekly

[I]nsightful…A convincing attack on today’s dysfunctional economy plus admirable suggestions for correcting matters.

Kirkus

News + Upcoming Events

Dean’s Speaker Series: A Conversation with Dr. Daron Acemoglu, MIT Institute Professor

Date
November 8, 2023
Time
12PM
Dean’s Speaker Series: A Conversation with Dr. Daron Acemoglu, MIT Institute Professor

CDT Digital Leadership Series: Achieving Shared Prosperity in The Age Of AI – A Conversation with Simon Johnson

Date
November 1, 2023
Time
5:30PM
CDT Digital Leadership Series: Achieving Shared Prosperity in The Age Of AI – A Conversation with Simon Johnson

Daron Acemoglu at the Centre for the Governance of AI

Date
October 10, 2023
Time
12AM
Daron Acemoglu at the Centre for the Governance of AI

World Inequality Lab: Power and Progress

Date
November 6, 2023
Time
11AM
World Inequality Lab: Power and Progress

Daron Acemoglu at BU Questrom: Redirecting Innovation: Can We? Should We?

Date
November 10, 2023
Time
4:30PM
Daron Acemoglu at BU Questrom: Redirecting Innovation: Can We? Should We?

Rethinking Market Capitalism: Daron Acemoglu at the London School of Economics

Date
October 20, 2023
Time
1PM
Rethinking Market Capitalism: Daron Acemoglu at the London School of Economics

United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs Webinar: Can We Have Pro-Human AI?

Date
October 6, 2023
Time
10AM
United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs Webinar: Can We Have Pro-Human AI?

Simon Johnson at the Berkeley Economy and Society Initiative

Date
October 10, 2023
Time
4PM
Simon Johnson at the Berkeley Economy and Society Initiative

Stanford Digital Economy Lab: Can We Redirect Technological Change?

Date
October 9, 2023
Time
3PM
Stanford Digital Economy Lab: Can We Redirect Technological Change?

Starr Forum: Power and Progress Featuring Daron Acemoglu

Date
September 26, 2023
Time
5:30PM
Starr Forum: Power and Progress Featuring Daron Acemoglu

Inaugural Lecture: World Bank Sustainable Development and Infrastructure Practices

Date
September 11, 2023
Time
12AM
Inaugural Lecture: World Bank Sustainable Development and Infrastructure Practices

IFTF Ten-Year Forecast 2023 — Working Through the Future of AI

Date
September 12, 2023
Time
11AM
IFTF Ten-Year Forecast 2023 — Working Through the Future of AI

Ivo Pezzuto Forward-Thinking Lab

Date
June 24, 2023
Time
12AM
Ivo Pezzuto Forward-Thinking Lab

World Bank hosts Simon Johnson

Date
June 13, 2023
Time
10:15AM
World Bank hosts Simon Johnson

Creative Destruction Lab Super Session

Date
June 13, 2023
Time
12AM
Creative Destruction Lab Super Session

MIT Faculty Lecture Series to the Naval Undersea and Surface Warfare Centers

Date
June 6, 2023
Time
12PM
MIT Faculty Lecture Series to the Naval Undersea and Surface Warfare Centers

People Over Robots: How policy distorts decisions around automation

Date
June 12, 2023
Time
10AM
People Over Robots: How policy distorts decisions around automation

Markus’ Academy: Daron Acemoglu on Power and Progress

Date
June 14, 2023
Time
12:30PM
Markus’ Academy: Daron Acemoglu on Power and Progress

IMF Artificial Intelligence’s Economic, Social and Trade Impacts: A Conversation with Daron Acemoglu and Gary Marcus

Date
June 8, 2023
Time
12PM
IMF Artificial Intelligence’s Economic, Social and Trade Impacts: A Conversation with Daron Acemoglu and Gary Marcus

Festival Internazionale dell’Economia: Meet the Author with Daron Acemoglu

Date
June 3, 2023
Time
7PM
Festival Internazionale dell’Economia: Meet the Author with Daron Acemoglu

President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology Public Meeting: AI Impacts on Society

Date
May 19, 2023
Time
1:55PM
President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology Public Meeting: AI Impacts on Society

Shaping the next revolution: How can we ensure that technological change boosts our national prosperity?

Date
May 24, 2023
Time
5:30PM
Shaping the next revolution: How can we ensure that technological change boosts our national prosperity?

Paul Johnson and Simon Johnson talk to Faiza Shaheen

Date
June 8, 2023
Time
10AM
Paul Johnson and Simon Johnson talk to Faiza Shaheen

Lunchtime book talk at EconCon 2023

Date
June 9, 2023
Time
12:30PM
Lunchtime book talk at EconCon 2023

UCL IIPP Book Launch: Power and Progress

Date
June 1, 2023
Time
5PM
UCL IIPP Book Launch: Power and Progress

2022 Annual Lucia Lecture

Date
October 19, 2022
Time
12AM
2022 Annual Lucia Lecture

2022 WIDER Annual Lecture: “In the name of progress: Will technology solve inequality?”

Date
October 7, 2022
Time
4:15PM
2022 WIDER Annual Lecture: “In the name of progress: Will technology solve inequality?”

Rethinking Capitalism: In Conversation with Daron Acemoglu

Date
May 25, 2023
Time
12PM
Rethinking Capitalism: In Conversation with Daron Acemoglu

How Tech Meets Work

Date
May 2, 2023
Time
12PM
How Tech Meets Work

Simon Johnson at Books Inc. Palo Alto

Date
May 23, 2023
Time
7PM
Simon Johnson at Books Inc. Palo Alto

Simon Johnson: Can AI Power Up Progress?

Date
May 25, 2023
Time
6PM
Simon Johnson: Can AI Power Up Progress?

Simon Johnson at the Commonwealth Club of California

Date
May 22, 2023
Time
6:30PM
Simon Johnson at the Commonwealth Club of California

The Great Debate Over Technology and Prosperity

Date
May 17, 2023
Time
10AM
The Great Debate Over Technology and Prosperity

INET Oxford hosts Simon Johnson

Date
May 30, 2023
Time
5PM
INET Oxford hosts Simon Johnson

Equitable Growth Presents: Harnessing tech for worker power and inclusive prosperity

Date
May 17, 2023
Time
2PM
Equitable Growth Presents: Harnessing tech for worker power and inclusive prosperity

Power and Progress Book Preview with Bloomberg Beta

Date
May 5, 2023
Time
12PM
Power and Progress Book Preview with Bloomberg Beta

Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson at the Brattle Theatre

Date
May 16, 2023
Time
6PM
Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson at the Brattle Theatre

Big Ideas Book Series with Simon Johnson

Date
May 18, 2023
Time
4:15PM
Big Ideas Book Series with Simon Johnson

Past Events

Learn more about past events for Power and Progress: Our Thousand-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity and watch the recordings.

From the Book

Policy Summary

The Co-Directors of the MIT Shaping the Future of Work Initiative, Daron Acemoglu, David Autor, and Simon Johnson, have released a plan to choose the best path for AI development, answering the question: “Can We Have Pro-Worker AI?” Read the policy memo.

From the summary, here are the five most important federal policies to pursue at this time:

  1. Equalize tax rates on employing workers and on owning equipment/algorithms to level the playing field between people and machines.
  2. Update Occupational Safety and Health Administration rules to create safeguards (i.e., limitations) on the surveillance of workers. Finding ways to elevate worker voice on the direction of development could also be helpful.
  3. Increase funding for human-complementary technology research, recognizing that this is not currently a private sector priority.
  4. Create an AI center of expertise within the government, to help share knowledge among regulators and other officials.
  5. Use that federal expertise to advise on whether purported human-complementary technology is appropriate to adopt in publicly provided education and healthcare programs, including at the state and local level.

Research that underlies this policy memo has been supported by many different funding organizations over the last decade. Acemoglu gratefully acknowledges financial support for related projects from Accenture, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, the Army Research Office, the Bradley Foundation, the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, the Department of Economics at MIT, Google, the Hewlett Foundation, IBM, Microsoft, the National Science Foundation, Schmidt Sciences, the Sloan Foundation, and the Toulouse Network on Information Technology. Autor gratefully acknowledges financial support for related projects from Google, the Hewlett Foundation, the NOMIS Foundation, and the Washington Center for Equitable Growth. Johnson gratefully acknowledges support from the Sloan School, MIT.

Read the Prologue

Prologue
What Is Progress?

Every day, we hear from executives, journalists, politicians, and even some of our colleagues at MIT that we are heading relentlessly toward a better world, thanks to unprecedented advances in technology. Here is your new phone. There goes the latest electric car. Welcome to the next generation of social media. And soon, perhaps, scientific advances could solve cancer, global warming, and even poverty.

Of course, problems remain, including inequality, pollution, and extremism around the globe. But these are the birth pains of a better world. In any case, we are told, the forces of technology are inexorable. We couldn’t stop them if we wanted to, and it would be highly inadvisable to try. It is better to change ourselves—for example, by investing in skills that will be valued in the future. If there are continuing problems, talented entrepreneurs and scientists will invent solutions—more-capable robots, human-level artificial intelligence, and whatever other breakthroughs are required. People understand that not everything promised by Bill Gates, Elon Musk, or even Steve Jobs will likely come to pass. But, as a world, we have become infused by their techno-optimism. Everyone everywhere should innovate as much as they can, figure out what works, and iron out the rough edges later.

WE HAVE BEEN here before, many times. One vivid example began in 1791, when Jeremy Bentham proposed the panopticon, a prison design. In a circular building and with the right lighting, Bentham argued, centrally positioned guards could create the impression of watching everyone all the time, without themselves being observed supposedly a very efficient (low-cost) way of ensuring good behavior.

The idea at first found some traction with the British government, but sufficient funding was not forthcoming, and the original version was never built. Nevertheless, the panopticon captured the modern imagination. For the French philosopher Michel Foucault, it is a symbol of oppressive surveillance at the heart of industrial societies. In George Orwell’s 1984, it operates as the omnipresent means of social control. In the Marvel movie Guardians of the Galaxy, it proves to be a flawed design that facilitates an ingenious prison breakout.

Before the panopticon was proposed as a prison, it was a factory. The idea originated with Samuel Bentham, Jeremy’s brother and an expert naval engineer then working for Prince Grigory Potemkin in Russia. Samuel’s idea was to enable a few supervisors to watch over as many workers as possible. Jeremy’s contribution was to extend that principle to many kinds of organizations. As he explained to a friend, “You will be surprised when you come to see the efficacy which this simple and seemingly obvious contrivance promises to be to the business of schools, manufactories, Prisons, and even Hospitals. . . .”

The panopticon’s appeal is easy to understand—if you are in charge—and was not missed by contemporaries. Better surveillance would lead to more compliant behavior, and it was easy to imagine how this could be in the broader interest of society. Jeremy Bentham was a philanthropist, animated by schemes to improve social efficiency and help everyone to greater happiness, at least as he saw it. Bentham is credited today as the founder of the philosophy of utilitarianism, which means maximizing the combined welfare of all people in society. If some people could be squeezed a little in return for a few people gaining a great deal, that was an improvement worth considering.

The panopticon was not just about efficiency or the common good, however. Surveillance in factories implied inducing workers to labor harder, and without the need to pay them higher wages to motivate greater effort.

The factory system spread rapidly in the second half of the eighteenth century across Britain. Even though they did not rush to install panopticons, many employers organized work in line with Bentham’s general approach. Textile manufacturers took over activities previously performed by skilled weavers and divided them up more finely, with key elements now done by new machines. Factory owners employed unskilled workers, including women and small children, to perform simple repetitive tasks, such as pulling a handle, for as many as fourteen hours per day.They also supervised this labor force closely, lest anyone slow down production. And they paid low wages.

Workers complained about conditions and the backbreaking effort. Most egregious to many were the rules they had to follow in factories. One weaver put it this way in 1834: “No man would like to work in a power-loom, they do not like it, there is such a clattering and noise it would almost make some men mad; and next, he would have to be subject to a discipline that a hand-loom weaver can never submit to.”

New machinery turned workers into mere cogs. As another weaver testified before a parliamentary committee in April 1835, “I am determined for my part, that if they will invent machines to supersede manual labour, they must find iron boys to mind them.”

To Jeremy Bentham, it was self-evident that technology improvements enabled better-functioning schools, factories, prisons, and hospitals, and this was beneficial for everyone. With his flowery language, formal dress, and funny hat, Bentham would cut an odd figure in modern Silicon Valley, but his thinking is remarkably fashionable. New technologies, according to this view of the world, expand human capabilities and, when applied throughout the economy, greatly increase efficiency and productivity. Then, the logic goes, society will sooner or later find a way of sharing these gains, generating benefits for pretty much everybody.

Adam Smith, the eighteenth-century founding father of modern economics, could also join the board of a venture capital fund or write for Forbes. In his view, better machines would lead to higher wages, almost automatically:

In consequence of better machinery, of greater dexterity, and of a more proper division and distribution of work, all of which are the natural effects of improvement, a much smaller quantity of labour becomes requisite for executing any particular piece of work, and though, in consequence of the flourishing circumstances of the society, the real price of labour should rise very considerably. . . .

In any case, resistance is futile. Edmund Burke, contemporary of Bentham and Smith, referred to the laws of commerce as “the laws of nature, and consequently the laws of God.”

How can you resist the laws of God? How can you resist the unstoppable march of technology? And anyway, why resist these advances?

ALL OF THIS optimism notwithstanding, the last thousand years of history are filled with instances of new inventions that brought nothing like shared prosperity:

• A whole series of technological improvements in medieval and early modern agriculture, including better plows, smarter crop rotation, more use of horses, and much improved mills, created almost no benefits for peasants, who constituted close to 90 percent of the population.

• Advances in European ship design from the late Middle Ages enabled transoceanic trade and created massive fortunes for some Europeans. But the same kinds of ships also transported millions of enslaved people from Africa to the New World and made it possible to build systems of oppression that lasted for generations and created awful legacies persisting today.

• Textile factories of the early British industrial revolution generated great wealth for a few but did not raise worker incomes for almost a hundred years. On the contrary, as the textile workers themselves keenly understood, work hours lengthened and conditions were horrible, both in the factory and in crowded cities.

• The cotton gin was a revolutionary innovation, greatly raising the productivity of cotton cultivation and turning the United States into the largest cotton exporter in the world. The same invention intensified the savagery of slavery as cotton plantations expanded across the American South.

• At the end of the nineteenth century, German chemist Fritz Haber developed artificial fertilizers that boosted agricultural yields. Subsequently, Haber and other scientists used the same ideas to design chemical weapons that killed and maimed hundreds of thousands on World War I battlefields.

• As we discuss in the second half of this book, spectacular advances in computers have enriched a small group of entrepreneurs and business tycoons over the last several decades, whereas most Americans without a college education have been left behind, and many have even seen their real incomes decline.

Some readers may object at this point: Did we not in the end hugely benefit from industrialization? Aren’t we more prosperous than earlier generations, who toiled for a pittance and often died hungry, thanks to improvements in how we produce goods and services?

Yes, we are greatly better off than our ancestors. Even the poor in Western societies enjoy much higher living standards today than three centuries ago, and we live much healthier, longer lives, with comforts that those alive a few hundred years ago could not have even imagined. And, of course, scientific and technological progress is a vital part of that story and will have to be the bedrock of any future process of shared gains. But the broad-based prosperity of the past was not the result of any automatic, guaranteed gains of technological progress. Rather, shared prosperity emerged because, and only when, the direction of technological advances and society’s approach to dividing the gains were pushed away from arrangements that primarily served a narrow elite. We are beneficiaries of progress, mainly because our predecessors made that progress work for more people. As the eighteenth-century writer and radical John Thelwall recognized, when workers congregated in factories and cities, it became easier for them to rally around common interests and make demands for more equitable participation in the gains from economic growth:

The fact is, that monopoly, and the hideous accumulation of capital in a few hands, like all diseases not absolutely mortal, carry, in their own enormity, the seeds of cure. Man is, by his very nature, social and communicative—proud to display the little knowledge he possesses, and eager, as opportunity presents, to encrease his store. Whatever presses men together, therefore, though it may generate some vices, is favourable to the diffusion of knowledge, and ultimately promotive of human liberty. Hence every large workshop and manufactory is a sort of political society, which no act of parliament can silence, and no magistrate disperse.

Electoral competition, the rise of trade unions, and legislation to protect workers’ rights changed how production was organized and wages were set in nineteenth-century Britain. Combined with the arrival of a new wave of innovation from the United States, they also forged a new direction of technology—focused on increasing worker productivity rather than just substituting machinery for the tasks they used to perform or inventing new ways of monitoring them. Over the next century, this technology spread throughout Western Europe and then the world. Most people around the globe today are better off than our ancestors because citizens and workers in early industrial societies organized, challenged elite-dominated choices about technology and work conditions, and forced ways of sharing the gains from technical improvements more equitably.

Today we need to do the same again.

The good news is that incredible tools are available to us, including magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), mRNA vaccines, industrial robots, the internet, tremendous computational power, and massive amounts of data on things we could not measure before. We can use these innovations to solve real problems—but only if these awesome capabilities are focused on helping people. This is not the direction in which we are currently heading, however.

Despite what history teaches us, the predominant narrative today has shifted back toward something remarkably close to what was prevalent in Britain 250 years ago. We are living in an age that is even more blindly optimistic and more elitist about technology than the times of Jeremy Bentham, Adam Smith, and Edmund Burke. As we document in Chapter 1, people making the big decisions are once again deaf to the suffering created in the name of progress.

We wrote this book to show that progress is never automatic. Today’s “progress” is again enriching a small group of entrepreneurs and investors, whereas most people are disempowered and benefit little.

A new, more inclusive vision of technology can emerge only if the basis of social power changes. This requires, as in the nineteenth century, the rise of counterarguments and organizations that can stand up to the conventional wisdom. Confronting the prevailing vision and wresting the direction of technology away from the control of a narrow elite may even be more difficult today than it was in nineteenth-century Britain and America. But it is no less essential.

Resources

Impacts of AI, Regulatory Frameworks

The MIT Shaping the Future of Work Initiative has calculated preliminary estimates of the workforce effects from automation driven by generative AI platforms like ChatGPT. Read the policy memo. Here is an excerpt:

Roughly 1.6–3.2 million workers could lose their jobs over the next 20+ years, around 1–2% of total US employment via May 2022 OEWS. These are gross job losses, we expect many of these people will find new employment. Based on the observed effects from other, similar employment shifts in US history, this may coincide with wage declines of ~33–47% for the demographic groups which are engaged in occupations most-exposed to generative AI, relative to others who are less exposed to this form of automation. 

 

Initiative Co-Director Daron Acemoglu has a new NBER working paper, cowritten with Todd Lensman, proposing a framework for “Regulating Transformative Technologies.” Here is a summary:

Transformative technologies like generative AI promise to accelerate productivity growth across many sectors, but they also present new risks of potential misuse. We develop a multi-sector technology adoption model to study the optimal regulation of transformative technologies when society can learn about these risks over time. Socially optimal adoption is gradual and convex. If social damages are proportional to the productivity gains from the new technology, a higher growth rate leads to slower optimal adoption. Equilibrium adoption is inefficient when firms do not internalize all social damages. Sector-independent regulation is helpful but generally not sufficient to restore optimality. 

 

View Presentation Slides

View the Power and Progress slide deck that Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson have used to present their findings to a range of audiences.

 

Sample the Audiobook

Hear the official excerpt from HachetteAudio on SoundCloud, as read by Malcolm Hillgartner.

Listen to the full audiobook on your platform of choice.

 

Read an Excerpt

“The antidemocratic turn of technology, and how we turn it back.” 

Available via ChangeThis from Porchlight Books.

 

“It’s time to rechart the course of technology. Here are 4 ways to start.”

Available via Ideas Made to Matter from MIT Sloan.

FAQs

Find answers to frequently asked questions and a list of key definitions from the book, based on over 100 presentations and talks given around the world since Power and Progress was published in May 2023.

About the Authors

Daron
Acemoglu

Daron Acemoglu is Institute Professor of Economics at MIT, the university’s highest faculty honor. For the last twenty-five years, he has been researching the historical origins of prosperity, poverty, and the effects of new technologies on economic growth, employment, and inequality. Acemoglu is the recipient of several awards and honors, including the John Bates Clark Medal, awarded to economists under forty judged to have made the most significant contribution to economic thought and knowledge (2005); the BBVA Frontiers of Knowledge Award in economics, finance, and management for his lifetime contributions (2016), and the Kiel Institute’s Global Economy Prize in economics (2019). He is author (with James Robinson) of The Narrow Corridor and the New York Times bestseller Why Nations Fail.

Follow Daron on Twitter: @DAcemogluMIT

Simon
Johnson

Simon Johnson is the Kurtz Professor of Entrepreneurship at MIT and a former chief economist to the IMF. His much-viewed opinion pieces have appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, the Atlantic, and elsewhere. With law professor James Kwak, Simon is the co-author of the bestsellers 13 Bankers and White House Burning and a founder of the widely-cited economics blog The Baseline Scenario.

Follow Simon on Twitter: @baselinescene

Press

For any media requests please contact Michelle Fiorenza.

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The bestselling co-author of Why Nations Fail and the bestselling co-author of 13 Bankers deliver a bold reinterpretation of economics and history that will fundamentally change how you see the world