Microsoft publishes Nobel economist's bearish AI forecast of just 1.5% GDP growth over a decade

Microsoft publishes Nobel economist's bearish AI forecast of just 1.5% GDP growth over a decade

Microsoft published a pretty bearish take on AI from Nobel Prize-winning economist Daron Acemoglu. He predicts AI will boost GDP by about 1.5 percent over ten years and replace at most five percent of jobs, far less than some AI labs forecast. He admits the pace of AI development is hard to predict.

The bottleneck, Acemoglu says, is human nature. Companies have to reassign tasks, upskill workers, and restructure before productivity gains kick in, a process that could drag on longer than electrification did. Bigger models won't fix that. What's missing are easy-to-deploy apps that change how things get made, he says.

AI that extends human skills will beat full automation on productivity, he argues, since even 99 percent accuracy often isn't enough once you factor in last-mile problems and real user needs. For Microsoft, that's a convenient thesis. The company can bolt AI onto existing products without betting on large-scale automation. The article ran in Microsoft's eccentric corporate blog "The Humanist Review of AI," where authors sign their pieces by hand.Ad

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