Thread by @DAcemogluMIT

My book, co-authored with @baselinescene, Power and Progress: Our Thousand-Year Struggle over Technology and Prosperity is out today (shapingwork.mit.edu/power-and-prog…).

Here is a thread to explain why we wrote it (and why we are excited to share the ideas that are basis of the book).

The book is a corrective against a particular brand of techno-optimism that is commonplace in US tech circles, journalism and academia.

We wrote it because we think this techno-optimism is not just wrong, but also dangerous.

The techno-optimism we have in mind is not unmoored enough to claim that technology is going to create singularity and make everybody fabulously wealthy, healthy and happy (though there are some who claim that).

It is the more “reasonable” sounding version: that every technological advance creates transition costs, but then there are automatic processes that make sure that those costs become smaller and most people start benefiting from these advances.

This is the default position of many tech entrepreneurs and most computer scientists and AI specialists. Surprisingly, it is also common among journalists.

It is also widespread within the economics profession. I know, I almost subscribed to a version of it myself.

Neither my textbook on economic growth, nor Why Nations Fail, cowritten with my friend and collaborator James Robinson, delves into the question of damaging directions of technological change and how losers from technological change are compensated.

The common interpretation of the British Industrial Revolution illustrates this point. Yes, there was hardship and inequality. But the rough edges were smoothed out and industrialization became the tide that lifted all boats.

The reality is much more complex. The first 80 or so years of the IR made the working class significantly worse off, because of small real income gains, much longer and harsher working conditions and worse health outcomes. Capital owners became fabulously wealthy.

Things did NOT improve automatically. It was political struggle, institutional change and a major redirection of technological change away from pure automation, towards technologies that improved marginal worker productivity that turned things around.

We document in #PowerAndProgress that there are many other examples of this sort. There is no guarantee that technological change will be broadly beneficial, especially when it focuses predominantly on automation and surveillance.

This is not just history for history’s sake. We are living through a similar period. Digital technologies over the last 40 years and AI now are re-creating some of the same tensions as the spinning jenny and the factory system unleashed in the 18th century.

We wrote the book because we believe that, as in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, an alternative path is open to us. Now, as then, this necessitates a struggle over the control of technology. We need countervailing powers and redirection of technological change.

We are troubled by techno-optimism because it pacifies people and makes it much more likely that control over technology remains in the hands of a small group. It is not just wrong. It makes shared prosperity less likely.

All of these questions are much more urgent in the age of generative AI. A better path forward requires broad discussion about these issues, which we hope to encourage with the book.

We hope that you will become part of this conversation, and thanks from me and @baselinescene for your support and engagement.