epochai.substack.com/p/what-ai-can-currently-do-is-not-the
1 correction found
Acemoglu estimates that we can expect economic output to go up by 0.7% over the next ten years due to AI.
This misstates Acemoglu’s estimate. The ~0.7% figure in his paper is for total factor productivity, not economic output/GDP; the paper’s GDP/output estimate is higher, roughly around 1% over 10 years.
Full reasoning
Acemoglu’s paper distinguishes total factor productivity (TFP) from GDP/economic output.
- The NBER page for The Simple Macroeconomics of AI says the paper finds "no more than a 0.66% increase in total factor productivity (TFP) over 10 years".
- MIT Sloan’s summary of the same paper likewise says the "total increase in AI-driven productivity over the next 10 years will be roughly 0.7%", and then separately says this "would translate into" GDP growth of about 1.1% in a realistic scenario.
- MIT News also summarizes Acemoglu’s estimate as GDP between 1.1 to 1.6 percent over the next 10 years, with a much smaller annual productivity gain.
So the article’s sentence is incorrect because it turns Acemoglu’s productivity/TFP estimate into an economic output/GDP estimate. Those are not the same quantity in the paper.
3 sources
- The Simple Macroeconomics of AI | NBER
Using existing estimates on exposure to AI and productivity improvements at the task level, these macroeconomic effects appear nontrivial but modest—no more than a 0.66% increase in total factor productivity (TFP) over 10 years.
- A new look at the economics of AI | MIT Sloan
Acemoglu estimates that the total increase in AI-driven productivity over the next 10 years will be roughly 0.7%. This would translate into a maximum growth in GDP of about 1.8%; a more realistic finding under this scenario is about 1.1%.
- What do we know about the economics of AI? | MIT News
Acemoglu estimates that over the next decade, AI will produce a 'modest increase' in GDP between 1.1 to 1.6 percent over the next 10 years, with a roughly 0.05 percent annual gain in productivity.