MIT economist to lecture on automation & the future of work at MSU
From MSU News Service
Renowned economist and New York Times bestselling author Daron Acemoglu will deliver a free public lecture at 7pm on Monday, October 14th in the ballrooms of Montana State University’s Strand Union Building.
Acemoglu will present “Automation, AI and the Future of Work,” as the speaker for the second annual Distinguished Lecture Program, put on by MSU’s Initiative for Regulation and Applied Economic Analysis in the Department of Agricultural Economics and Economics in the College of Agriculture and College of Letters and Science. Acemoglu is the Elizabeth and James Killian Professor of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and one of the most frequently cited economists in the world.
It’s an industrial age-old question: Will machines replace human labor? Economists have long debated the effect of technology and automation on jobs, but recent progress is pushing what machines can do, changing the face of work and rearranging the labor market.
“But with these advances come concern about their economic effects,” Acemoglu said.
According to Acemoglu, as society looks to the future of automation, artificial intelligence and work itself, we must first look to the past. Drawing on decades of data, Acemoglu will discuss the effects of widespread automation on the labor market and rising economic inequality and will explore what policy responses to these changes might look like.
An MIT faculty member since 1993, Acemoglu was recently named Institute Professor, the highest title awarded to MIT faculty. He has been a lecturer at the London School of Economics and is a member of the Economic Growth Program of the Canadian Institute of Advanced Research. His work is broad, ranging from income and wage inequality to human capital and training.
“Daron’s research challenges the way people think about how technologies intersect with the labor market,” said IRAEA co-director Wendy Stock. “He is the leading thinker on the labor market implications of artificial intelligence, robotics, automation and new technologies.”
Acemoglu’s work has been published in the American Economic Review and the Journal of Political Economy, among others. He is the author of the bestseller “Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty” and “The Narrow Corridor: States, Societies, and the Fate of Liberty.”
In 2005, Acemoglu received the prestigious John Bates Clark Medal, awarded for significant achievement by an American economist under age 40. In 2010, he was listed 88th on Foreign Policy’s list of Top 100 Global Thinkers.
The IRAEA Distinguished Lecture Program brings world-renowned scholars to MSU to give public talks on current policy and regulatory topics. The series is aimed at providing the MSU and greater Montana communities access to leading experts in a variety of research disciplines.
The inaugural lecture in 2018 featured Nobel Prize-winning economist Sir Angus Deaton, who discussed the link between income inequality and increasing mortality rates.
The IRAEA was established in 2016 to study the societal impact of economic regulation and policy. The Initiative provides resources and research support to faculty and students from across MSU and brings visiting scholars to conduct research in regulation and policy analysis. The IRAEA sponsors five research programs and three outreach programs.
“Outreach is central to the initiative’s mission,” Stock said. “Our exceptional capacity to share high-quality, objective, evidence-based insights about regulation and policy issues derives from the initiative’s support of the work of MSU’s exceptional faculty and student scholars.”
In 2018-19, the IRAEA supported 16 undergraduate and graduate students and 14 faculty members from five MSU colleges and partnered with 26 academic institutions. Twenty papers authored by faculty and students supported by the initiative were published in peer-reviewed journals.
For more information, visit www.montana.edu/regecon. •