Nobel economist Acemoglu identifies three areas where AI's real-world impact remains uncertain: agentic AI's ability to handle whole jobs, tech companies hiring economists to shape AI narrative, and lack of easy-to-use AI applications.

Daron Acemoglu, who won the Nobel Prize in economics in 2024, published a paper estimating that AI would give only a small boost to US productivity and would not eliminate human work. He maintains this measured view despite recent industry hype about AI job displacement.

AI companies are building in-house economics teams: OpenAI hired Ronnie Chatterji as chief economist in 2024 and announced he will work with Jason Furman to research AI and jobs; Anthropic convened a group of 10 leading economists; Google DeepMind hired Alex Imas as director of AGI economics. Acemoglu expresses concern that companies may hire economists primarily to shape favorable narratives rather than conduct independent research.

Acemoglu identifies three signals of whether AI will transform work: whether agentic AI (autonomous tools that operate independently rather than just answering questions) can orchestrate between the multiple different tasks within a single job; whether the economics narrative remains independent from company influence; and whether developers create AI applications with the ease of use comparable to earlier software like PowerPoint and Word.