MIT Economist Daron Acemoğlu Takes on Big Tech: "Our Future Will Be Very Dystopian"
MIT Economist Daron Acemoğlu Takes on Big Tech: "Our Future Will Be Very Dystopian"
The rich and powerful have hijacked progress throughout history, says Daron Acemoğlu. They did so back in the Middle Ages and also now in the age of artificial intelligence. In an interview, the MIT economist dives into the question of whether Silicon Valley is plunging humanity into destitution.
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What I like about this interview is that it demonstrates the absurd, thought-terminating clichés that modern elites use...and Acemoğlu just steamrolls them. Like this:
DER SPIEGEL: But it is true that humankind has indeed benefited a lot from new technologies.
Acemoğlu: That is the reason we have to go so far back in history. The argument that you just gave is wrong. In the past, we’ve always had struggles over the uses of innovation and who benefits from them. Very often, control was in the hands of a narrow elite. Innovation often did not benefit the broad swaths of the population.
There was no argument. A sentence does not an argument make. But regular people trying to argue from a similar perspective would say "...well, yes, but..." whereas Acemoğlu is just like "Nope. You're wrong."
Edit: After a several hours and many responses, it demonstrates that the terminating cliché of "...but humanity has benefited from progress" isn't a counter-argument. What are the premises of the asserted conclusion? Had Der Spiegel been more clear about how he'd arrived at that conclusion in context, the conversation would've been significantly easier to follow. So, remember that: don't just assert shit; explain yourself.
I am sorry, but I am not buying his point. Every technological change that had significant impact on our economy (fire, iron making, machinery, electronics, computers, internet) benefited most of the people. I challenge you to name even one counter example.
But that's not the point. It did have a significant impact. Acemoğlu's point is about the distribution over time of that impact. Elites tend to accrue for themselves the benefits of technological change.
In terms of AI, it makes some people more productive that others. So, right now, only some people are benefiting from the introduction of AI. Jobs with a $1 million salary are being advertised to replace striking Hollywood writers. It's easy to say technological change creates winners and losers as I learned in my econ classes. But in the midst of such change, how long winners remain winners and losers remain losers matters a great deal to both.
In other words, the transition to cleaner energy sources puts coal miners out of a job until the sun goes out and the wind stops blowing. And it's foolish claim the trade for higher quality air and a decline of associated respiratory illnesses is worth a miner's despair and depression because they're forever unemployed, their skills worthless.
You are making very different argument, with which I actually agree. But his point was counter argument to the statement that technology benefited us in the past. And his counter argument is bad and just wrong.
AI is nothing like what was in the past. That should be the argument, not that in the past technology did not benefited us.
From the article:
Take medieval windmills, a very transformative technology. It changed the organization of textile manufacturing, but especially agriculture. But you didn’t see much improvement in the conditions of the peasants. The windmills were controlled by landowners and churches. This narrow elite collected the gains. They decided who could use the windmills. They killed off competition
Except technological innovation didn't benefit "us", it benefited elites.
Der Spiegel's implicit argument (in the one sentence of ("But it is true that humankind has indeed benefited a lot from new technologies") is that technological change benefited "us" over time and, therefore, technological change is good. Acemoğlu offers a different amount of time to survey to determine the effects of innovation, which challenges the idea that technological change is always good.
I find his statement about wind mills without any merit. I am not historian and forgive me for being lazy, but if If I ask ChatGPT4 about it, here is the answer I get:
The invention of the windmill had a substantial impact on peasant life, particularly in medieval Europe. Before windmills, much of the labor-intensive tasks like grinding grain, pumping water, and other mechanical work were done manually or with the help of animals. The introduction of windmills automated these processes to some extent, making life easier for peasants by reducing their labor burden.
The windmill can be considered one of the key innovations that started moving societies away from purely manual labor, allowing people to focus on other tasks and thereby improving overall quality of life. While it didn't entirely revolutionize the peasant lifestyle overnight, it was a step towards greater efficiency and productivity.
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Yes, I understand that it is not really a proof, but at least some evidence that his statement is simply hot air.
Allow me to respond in kind.
Here's Perplexity.ai's response (based on GPT-4) to your response:
In the provided link, Daron Acemoğlu's argument focuses on how the distribution of the impact of technological change tends to favor elites over time, as they accrue the benefits for themselves. The response you provided, however, discusses the impact of the invention of the windmill on peasant life in medieval Europe, emphasizing how it improved efficiency and productivity. This response does not address Acemoğlu's main point about the distribution of benefits from technological change and how it is influenced by the power dynamics between elites and the general population. Instead, it focuses on the general impact of a specific technology (windmills) on the lives of peasants, which is not the central argument in Acemoğlu's discussion.
And then I asked Perplexity.ai to expand on the last two sentences. I thought they were too condensed.
In the Spiegel article, Acemoğlu argues that the benefits of technological innovations tend to accrue disproportionately to elites and people in power over time. He provides historical examples like the spinning jenny and the steam engine, which initially benefited workers but over decades the gains shifted toward factory owners and capitalists as they consolidated economic and political power.
The key point is that technology alone does not determine how the gains are distributed - it depends on the relative power dynamics between different groups. Powerful elites are often able to co-opt innovations to serve their own interests, rather than broadly sharing the benefits.
In contrast, the response about windmills focuses narrowly on how a specific medieval technology improved efficiency for peasants through automation. It does not address the distribution of gains from windmills over time, nor does it consider how elites may have captured the benefits. The windmill example is about the general productivity impacts of technology, not the argument Acemoğlu makes about unequal distribution based on existing power structures.
tl;dr: Technological innovation has improved the lives of elites and peasants. This is undeniable and is not under consideration. What is under consideration is who benefits from technological innovation at its introduction (or over some relatively other short time period that isn't "the past").
Also, as a beneficiary of it, AI is so fucking cool.
You can't use ChatGPT to rebut an argument made by an expert who just wrote an entire book about the topic. He even explains in that article why this isn't right, which the person you're replying to quoted in their comment:
Take medieval windmills, a very transformative technology. It changed the organization of textile manufacturing, but especially agriculture. But you didn’t see much improvement in the conditions of the peasants. The windmills were controlled by landowners and churches. This narrow elite collected the gains. [emphasis added] They decided who could use the windmills. They killed off competition
You are making very different argument,
But they're not. They're making these ame point, an you just said you agreed with it. What is the point of the rest of your responses?
Like, the person you're responding to laid out the argument from the article, you said "nah, but if they said that I would totally be on their side".
Then, they pointed out how the article definitely made the point they're saying it made and gave you a citation.
Then, you went, " nah, fam. RE: Windmills - That's crazy talk".
Brother, you demonstrably said you agreed with them if they were making the point they obviously made. What are you doing?
Nuclear weapons, the maxim gun, lead paint, lead gasoline, basically all lead-based products, thalidomide, CFCs, the electric chair, agent orange, asbestos, oxycodone, zyklon b, refined sugar, high fructose corn syrup, disposable plastics, cigarettes, trans fats, ...
I think @[email protected] is doing a great job of pointing to the actual substance of the argument, so I'll leave that to them, but it's actually really easy to come up with a long list of technological horrors that absolutely did not benefit most people but had huge impacts on our economy.
I do think "impact on our economy" is a pretty squishy phrase that'll give you some wiggle room, but many of these nightmare technologies are inextricably and inseparably tied to the way we've structured our economy. Likewise, I think it's easy to define "technology" in convenient ways for these kinds of arguments, but also ends up being circular pretty quick.
Yes, arguably I was talking about technologies that had paramount impact on economy on the level AI will have, and none of those can be considered like this.
I have also answered to PeepinGoodArgs about windmills.
This is what I mean when I say it's going to end up being a circular argument.
Both the maxim gun and nuclear weapons had the biggest possible impacts possible on the economy. The maxim gun (and other war technologies) were hugely important in the viability of colonial administration. Nuclear weapons made the US one of two superpowers, which defined 20th century economic debate.
High fructose corn syrup has had a paramount impact on the entire American food system, probably the single most important part of an economy, from our agriculture to our food processing.
Plastics have so transformed our economy that we rely on it to get basically any physical good to the consumer, and the resulting trash now exists in every part of Earth, including our own bodies.
Is there harm side from technologies? Of course. But say plastic overall has much more economic good for an average person. And I do not think that war and war technologies is part of this discussion. By definition everything relating to war is waste of resources on civilization scale. It was always so, has nothing to do with technology and our discussion.
"But see, if you draw all these bizarre, arbitrary lines around things, I'm absolutely correct. We're talking about technology, not economics when it comes to war, because then I'd have to acknowledge that imperialism drives economics and it immediately defeats my argument."
"Plastic doesn't count because it does more good than harm and -- STOP GESTURING EXCITEDLY AT GLOBAL WARMING!!! WE'RE NOT TALKING ABOUT THAT!"
That's what you sound like. Why are the things that invalidate your point out of bounds?
I could prove to you that war is actually a good thing as long as we don't discuss the loss of human life, or the losing side of any of them in any way. Should we have that discussion next?
Ahh the the cynics hindsight. I’ll just leave with you’re right but you’re far more wrong. The advancements will always come, no matter the form, those highlighted led to enlightenment on the benefits AND dangers that we were unaware of. We refined them increased our understanding of new risks making them easier to avoid and ended up better off while furthering our understanding . All a knowledge that benefited us further than just it’s application to better humanity with knowledge.
We needed nuclear arms to teach us that giant bombs that could vaporize cities and irradiate significant portions of the globe were bad? We needed asbestos to teach us to be careful what we used to insulate things? We didn't learn that from the untreated tin cans we stored foodstuffs in that poisoned people in the 1800's?
You phrased this as a "gott'em", but it's really bizarre logic.
Nuclear arms brought us nuclear power and the flow on effects like leaving our planet for the first time, medicines, list goes on and on and on.
What’s sad here is your cynical view on life. Name 3 good things to come from the military industry. If you cant you should consider seeking help. Depression should not be treated any differently than your physical health.
I can, totally, see AI only benefitting the people who own the code and make policies for it. Despite the fact that it may be used to "benefit" most people, the ones who will benefit the most are the people who own it. Similar to targeted ads. It's a multi-billion dollar industry that gathers insane swathes of information on individuals, and that information is bought and sold to the highest bidder. You could make the argument that it's easier to buy shoes online, but is it worth having literally everything about you sold to whoever is willing to buy it? It's usually a ruse crafted by people with the ability to profit off of others, making the majority think they're benefiting in some minute way.
What Acemoglu is saying is fundamentally a Marxist argument, and I'm saying that with no value judgments attached, I'm just pointing out factually that he's essentially saying the same thing as Marx. In summary, technology tends to disproportionately benefit the people who can afford to implement it (the owners). AI is a means of production. While it's currently possible for anyone to download the means of production for free, no violence required, currently you've got several large AI companies (like OpenAI) trying to pull the ladder up behind themselves under the guise of safety and ethics concerns. They're trying to protect themselves from the tendency of the rate of profit to fall by angling to limit the pool of competitors. Indeed, much of whether a technology benefits society at large is dictated by the barriers to entry to using that technology. If they are successful, the barriers to entry will be made much higher, and it will all but guarantee that the benefits of AI stay at the top.