Daron Acemoglu: prediction

Transcript context

…Your prediction. Well, to put my prediction into perspective, you’ve mentioned 1995, 1998, but we had been making those investments that led to that for the previous 20 years. It depends on what period you take. If you take 1980, or some people actually started in the mid-’70s, to, say, 2008, before the financial crisis, during that period, our productivity isn’t super rapid. There are periods in which it’s rapid. That’s exactly what I expect. In the next, when I wrote in 2024, so that would be next 10 years, so 2024 to 2034, I would expect exactly the same thing, that there will be one or two years of very rapid growth. Okay, my estimates were definitely AI is increasing GDP and TFP, which is great. We don’t have many levers to increase GDP and TFP. That’s fantastic, but it’s not going to be the kind of game-changer that McKinsey or OpenAI or Anthropic are thinking about. If someone is 20 years old today, they’re well educated, and they don’t buy a motorcycle, what do you think is their life expectancy? I think it’s 100. What’s your view? In part because of AI and computational biology, which in a sense is a broader vision of AI. I think people will die of old age or motorcycle accidents.…

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