Acemoglu, Daron

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    When It Comes to Investing, Is A.I. Worth the Hype?

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    After the arrival of a less costly A.I. model from China, U.S. markets and academics are wrestling with the ultimate economic value of the technology.A.I. chatbots are fun, sometimes even useful and, until recently, endowed with the uncanny ability to mesmerize investors and fuel the U.S. stock market.But the excellent performance of a new, relatively cheap artificial intelligence engine from a Chinese start-up, DeepSeek, has perturbed the market and complicated the A.I. story.Investors are re-evaluating prominent companies swept up in A.I. fever, including Nvidia, Meta, Alphabet, Microsoft, Amazon, Tesla and the private start-up OpenAI. The notion that full-blown superhuman intelligence is imminent has spurred the-sky-is-the-limit valuations, as well as concerns about the political and social risks posed by advanced intelligence.One immediate question: Is the main approach to developing A.I. in the United States — pouring billions of dollars into chips and infrastructure — worth the expenditure for all companies if similar results can be achieved far more cheaply? DeepSeek’s lower-cost innovations add urgency to bigger, longstanding financial questions: How much are artificial intelligence companies really worth, and what will the broader economic value of A.I. ultimately be?Daren Acemoglu, a winner of the 2024 Nobel in economic science, gave me some answers. “There is a lot of hype in the industry,” he told me in a telephone conversation. Yes, he said, A.I. companies have made some “impressive achievements,” but he added that many financial and economic calculations were being based on mere “projections into the future that are sometimes exaggerated.”Professor Acemoglu, an M.I.T. economist with an interest in the impact of technical innovations on global economics, is skeptical about the more fervent A.I. claims. He ranks A.I. as a significant advance, perhaps with a macroeconomic effect akin to the telephone, which was no small thing.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      82 American Nobel Prize Winners Endorse Kamala Harris

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      More than 80 American Nobel Prize winners in physics, chemistry, medicine and economics have signed an open letter endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris for president.“This is the most consequential presidential election in a long time, perhaps ever, for the future of science and the United States,” reads the letter, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times. “We, the undersigned, strongly support Harris.”The letter praises Ms. Harris for understanding that “the enormous increases in living standards and life expectancies over the past two centuries are largely the result of advances in science and technology.” Former President Donald Trump, by contrast, would “jeopardize any advancements in our standards of living, slow the progress of science and technology and impede our responses to climate change,” the letter said.Eighty-two Nobel laureates — from a physicist who helped discover leftover light from the Big Bang to an immunologist who paved the way for one type of Covid-19 vaccine — have signed the letter. The laureates include the molecular biologist Gary Ruvkun, the chemist David Baker, the physicist John Hopfield and the economist Daron Acemoglu, all of whom won Nobels this month.Read the Letter from Nobel Laureates Endorsing Kamala Harris for PresidentMore than 80 American Nobel Prize winners in physics, chemistry, medicine and economics have signed an open letter endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris for president.Read Document 4 pagesJoseph Stiglitz, an economist at Columbia University who won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 2001, drafted the endorsement. He said he was motivated by the “enormous cuts in science budgets” Mr. Trump proposed during his presidency, as well as what Dr. Stiglitz described as the former president’s “anti-science” and “anti-university” stances.While in office, Mr. Trump proposed a budget that would have led to a severe loss of funds for federal health and science agencies, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Science Foundation and the Environmental Protection Agency. On the campaign trail this year, Mr. Trump has suggested shutting down the Department of Education.“I hope it’s a wake-up call for people,” Dr. Stiglitz said of the letter. “A consequence of this election is the really profound impact that his agenda has on science and technology.”The letter also praised Ms. Harris’s recognition of the role that immigrants play in advancing science and technology, both nationally and on a global scale. Immigration has been a key issue in this year’s election, with both candidates promising a stricter approach than their prior presidential campaigns.Many scientists are inclined to “stick to their knitting,” Dr. Stiglitz said — focusing on their research rather than politics, and on knowledge for knowledge’s sake instead of the real-world applications that result from it.“But they’ve recognized this is a moment where you can’t be silent,” he said. More

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      What if the A.I. Boosters Are Wrong?

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      A skeptical paper by Daron Acemoglu, a labor economist at M.I.T., has triggered a heated debate over whether artificial intelligence will supercharge productivity.Despite the advent of personal computers, the internet and other high-tech innovations, much of the industrialized world is stuck in an economic growth slump, with O.E.C.D. countries expected to expand on aggregate just 1.7 percent this year. Economists sometimes call this phenomenon the productivity paradox.The big new hope is that artificial intelligence will snap this mediocrity streak — but doubts are creeping in. And one especially skeptical paper by Daron Acemoglu, a labor economist at M.I.T., has triggered a heated debate.Acemoglu concluded that A.I. would contribute only “modest” improvement to worker productivity, and that it would add no more than 1 percent to U.S. economic output over the next decade. That pales in comparison to estimates by Goldman Sachs economists, who predicted last year that generative A.I. could raise global G.D.P. by 7 percent over the same period.The bullish camp has great hopes for A.I. Sam Altman of the ChatGPT maker OpenAI sees A.I. wiping out poverty. Jensen Huang, the C.E.O. of Nvidia, the dominant maker of the chips used to power A.I., says the technology has ushered in “the next industrial revolution.”But if the boosters are wrong, it could be trouble for the developed world, which is in desperate need of a productivity breakthrough as its work force ages and declines.A.I. won’t reverse stagnation, Acemoglu told DealBook. One reason: The technology can automate only about 5 percent of an office worker’s tasks, he found. “A.I. has much more to offer to help with the productivity problem. But it will not do that on its current path, that’s why I’m so troubled by the hype,” he said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More