Thank you Francesco: important notes and, in particular, questions to continue the debate on rebuilding unions and democratic tables!
In a sentence: How to “direct” innovation when the its protagonists (platforms, big tech etc) have a firm grip on the democratic process and on the diffusion (or not) of information? 12/12
I would have asked Acemoglu: a) How to restore shared prosperity in a world of pervasive rents? b) How can democracy regain its hand in the age of Musk & co? c) How to prevent vested interests to steer the AI revolution towards control of economic and political processes? 11/12
He seems to have a diagnosis that is very similar to e.g. Thomas Piketty on what made that period so special. But, precisely Piketty, argues that these three decades were an outlier, and that before and after we lived (and live) in Gilded ages of predatory capitalism 10/12
Then, I found interesting Acemoglu's reference to the golden age of the Trente Glorieuses, and the fact that that like many others he points to the role of government (I like to call it the "Regulatory State", more than just standard Keynesianism) in making that possible. 9/12
The talk was rich in historical examples and references, and I truly enjoyed it. Yet, concerning the conclusion, I am left with more questions than answers For a start, I am unclear on how this idea of "directing" technology differs from standard government intervention 8/12
But, Acemoglu argues, this is not enough. There is the need to "orient" technological progress and AI. He makes the example of the dramatic decrease of the cost of production of renewables that, he says, could not have happened just relying on markets 7/12
This led to the final part of the lecture in which he argued that to return to shared prosperity in this phase of AI development, we need On one side to rely like in the Trente Glorieuses on the public hand (regulation, taxation etc). On the other, on restoring union power 6/12
The next step of the lecture is to highlight how in the 1980s the power balance shifts (Acemoglu uses Friedman as the personification of that shift) and how prosperity ceased to be shared (on the contrary, real wages at the bottom lost ground) 5/12