Acemoglu AI Forecast: Just 1.5% GDP Growth in a Decade
Microsoft has given space on one of its own blogs to a forecast that sits well below the industry's usual optimism. Daron Acemoglu, an economist who has won the Nobel Prize, expects artificial intelligence to raise GDP by roughly 1.5 percent across a ten-year period. He also expects AI to replace no more than five percent of jobs.
Both numbers are far below what some AI labs have been forecasting. Acemoglu adds one caveat: the speed of AI development is hard to predict, and his numbers depend on that uncertainty.
A modest number, on purpose
The headline figure is not 1.5 percent per year. It is 1.5 percent in total over a decade. For an industry that often describes AI as a force that will remake the global economy within a few years, that is a sober estimate.