Free with a sign-in.
The best 4 min of 41
Nobel-Prize Winning Economist Daron Acemoglu on Musk, AI and Democracy | The Mishal Husain Show
Daron Acemoglu argues the center-left can renew liberal democracy by rebuilding shared prosperity and directing AI toward workers.
The Mishal Husain Show · Mishal Husain
- Daron Acemoglu is an MIT professor and 2024 Nobel Prize in economics co-winner.
The best minutes
Every moment plays free. PRO marks a write-up that's in Pro.
Also worth watching
- 17:25Taxing capital income can curb incentives to over-automate3 min
- 22:35Mamdani's politics may not generalize beyond New York3 min
Skip the opening book and family background, and the closing remarks on political models, democracy and show credits.
Full analysis · 5 min read
Real Alpha · Nov 7
Daron Acemoglu says half of US cohorts lack college degrees
- Acemoglu says half of current US cohorts are college graduates, leaving the other half less well-off.
- His account links that divide to weakened coalitions, but offers no test of which policies rebuild them.
- For AI leaders, the question is whether deployment raises worker productivity and earns broader consent.
Free with an account
Read the rest of the analysis
6 sections, the 4 other voices it tests Acemoglu against, and what it means for you. Every episode we cut gets one.
Check your inbox
We sent a link to your address. Click it to finish signing up. Not there in a minute? Look in spam.
or
Signed up before? The same buttons sign you in. The episode, its moments and the transcript stay free.
The coalition still fails to represent half of US cohorts
Acemoglu says 50% of current US cohorts are college graduates. He describes the remaining 50% as much less well-off, then asks who will speak for them.
His answer is structural, not just rhetorical. He says college graduates and working-class people increasingly live separate lives, with fewer shared neighborhoods, workplaces, networks, and values.
He also says inflation-adjusted wages for men without degrees fell from 1980 to around 2013 or 2014, while the US economy expanded. That supports his account of economic exclusion, but does not establish which policy restores representation.
Garrison Lovely, on the Future of Life Institute Podcast in October 2026, separately said replacing workers can reduce political power because labor supplies leverage. That comparison sharpens the stakes, but it is Lovely's warning, not Acemoglu's argument here.
“That means another 50%, much less well-off, are not.”
Our read
Acemoglu's evidence supports a representation problem tied to social separation and wage loss. Lovely's separate warning extends the question to labor's political leverage.
AI adoption evidence remains thinner than the rhetoric
The host challenged Acemoglu's slow-rollout view, citing changes across professions. Acemoglu replied that personal chatbot use is not the same as AI entering production.
He says coding is the only occupation completely transformed so far, while acknowledging uncertainty and the possibility that he is mistaken again. His answer is a limited observation, not a full measure of adoption.
Acemoglu says China is more active in applying AI to production and investing in robotics. He says Chinese language models are behind by something like six to 16 months, explicitly hedging that comparison.
Arvind Jain, Glean's CEO, told Knuckle Up with Nakul in September 2026 that firms may not succeed by cutting teams while maintaining market success. That forecast supports augmentation as a business possibility, but does not show current productivity gains.
Our read
The interview offers a warning about adoption priorities, not proof of broad worker gains. Buyers should compare task-level output with deployment, headcount, and quality measures.
Acemoglu wants AI investment redirected toward workers
Acemoglu says frontier labs and technology leaders direct too much effort toward artificial general intelligence. He wants more talent and investment focused on tools that make workers more productive and citizens more employable.
He imagines that if even 50% of AI talent redirected toward those goals, different applications would follow. That is a conditional scenario, not a forecast or a measure of how talent is currently allocated.
For example, Acemoglu told Silicon Valley Girl in October 2026 to imagine 100 employees. He compared making workers 5% more productive with automating 5% of jobs and halving costs on those jobs.
That comparison makes the business test clearer, but leaves questions about quality, demand, and who captures the added value. A productivity target matters only if firms can measure its results.
“we don't envisage, we don't invest, we don't try pro-worker AI”
Our read
The proposal changes the success metric from labor saved to output expanded. But the episode supplies no spending totals or results showing that investment can be redirected at scale.
Tax rules can reward machines over workers
Acemoglu says capital income is taxed less heavily than labor income in some cases. He links that difference to incentives for firms to choose capital over workers and automate excessively.
His proposed direction is to tax income at source, regardless of whether it is labeled capital or labor. He says that could simplify accounting while reducing the tax advantage for capital.
For instance, Greg Jensen, Bridgewater's managing chief investment officer, proposed on Odd Lots in September 2026 taxing AI work in proportion to taxes on equivalent human work. Jensen's mechanism targets machine labor more directly.
The host raised the risk that businesses or wealthy people might leave. Acemoglu called that a real concern, distinguishing local tax increases from national rules while acknowledging that businesses could still move.
Our read
Tax symmetry is a policy direction, not a budget score. The interview gives no rates, revenue estimates, or estimate of how much automation would change.
Mamdani may not build a broad coalition
Acemoglu praises Mamdani's charisma and focus on affordability. But he says a politics rooted in New York's activist, college-educated base may not generalize to working-class communities.
His prescription is not simply to moderate economic policy. He calls for radical solutions, especially on AI, alongside greater moderation on issues that can widen the coalition.
The $5 million property-tax threshold came from the host's example, not Acemoglu's endorsement. He says such taxes depend on how they are presented and whether people consent.
That distinction makes legitimacy part of policy design, rather than a communications step afterward. The episode provides no polling or electoral evidence showing which messages can bridge the divide.
Our read
Acemoglu treats coalition breadth as a condition for durable policy. That leaves leaders with a practical test, whether economic change can be paired with shared values and consent.
Acemoglu would target feeds, not individual speech
Acemoglu distinguishes individual speech from algorithmic amplification. He says people should remain free to post, while platforms should not automatically promote the most outrageous or envy-generating material.
He favors banning algorithmic feeds as simpler and more powerful than changing Section 230. The host noted the role of platform protections in the internet's growth, and Acemoglu acknowledged that reversing them would be harder.
The proposal leaves an implementation gap. The interview does not define which recommendation systems count as algorithmic feeds, or how a ban would apply to different services.
At the close, Acemoglu says he thinks it is 90% correct that AI will transform every aspect of life. He says even half as transformative a technology demands democratic involvement.
Our read
The speech distinction gives regulators a narrower target than content bans, but the operational boundary remains unclear. His closing case for involvement rests on an explicit 90% agreement about AI's transformative reach.
What it means for you
- Measure worker output. For each AI pilot, track output per worker, quality, and demand served alongside labor costs. That tests a pro-worker standard without assuming automation itself raises productivity.
- Compare deployment scenarios. Model the 100-person example against a narrow automation case. State assumptions and measure whether added capacity improves output or opens work the team could not previously handle.
- Map tax incentives. Ask finance to map how labor and capital income receive different treatment in current decisions. Separate tax rules from the company's make-or-buy incentives.
- Check coalition consent. Before changing roles or automation targets, ask affected teams what they understand about the change and its benefits. Acemoglu's case centers on shared values and consent.
What to watch
- Whether firms can show gains in output per worker, rather than only reduced labor costs.
- Whether national tax proposals can narrow capital's tax advantage without driving mobile activity away.
- Whether rules can target algorithmic amplification without restricting individual speech.
Send this to product, finance and policy leaders setting AI deployment priorities.
Watch the minute Acemoglu gives the college graduate figure
Written by Real Alpha from the episode's transcript and the other moments it links, then checked against the transcript. Quotes are the speaker's exact words.
Minute by minute
A Pro write-up, open to you here. Try Pro free for 7 days
A Pro write-up. The minute by minute is in Real Alpha Pro; the episode, its moments and the transcript stay free.
Read it with Pro, 7 days free- 2:55Early experiences shaped Acemoglu's politics
Daron Acemoglu says his interest in dictatorship, democracy and their economic effects grew from childhood in Turkey under military rule. He says feeling repression and animosity toward Armenians helped draw him to liberal ideas that emphasize plurality.
- 7:39Liberalism must address its own weakness
Acemoglu says his book looks for an alternative to right-wing politics by asking how liberal ideas can be renewed. He argues that liberal democracy’s internal weaknesses, rather than the strength of its opponents, have made it vulnerable.
- 20:23Wealth taxes need public consent
Acemoglu gives no blanket answer on taxes affecting people with valuable homes, saying liberal ideas leave room for local compromises. He argues that higher taxes are less likely to trigger backlash when people debate and agree on them together than when a politician imposes a threshold without broad consent.
- 22:35Build a broader center-left coalition
Acemoglu praises Zohran Mamdani’s charisma and focus on affordability, but says his politics may not generalize beyond New York’s left-leaning activist base. He argues that Democrats should pair radical economic thinking, especially on AI, with greater moderation that makes room for more people.
- 24:46AI should raise worker productivity
Acemoglu says chatbot use is not the same as AI adoption in production, which he describes as slow; he says coding is the only occupation completely transformed so far. He argues that the focus on AGI distracts from using AI and robotics to help workers, and says China is more active in integrating AI into production.
- 29:37Media should platform tech leaders less
Acemoglu says media should cover Elon Musk and Sam Altman less blindly, comparing the attention Musk receives to the coverage that helped raise Donald Trump’s profile in 2015. He objects to treating Musk as an authority on European politics because he has succeeded in investing in companies.
- 35:19Keep corporate money out of politics
Acemoglu says individuals should be free to donate to candidates but corporations should not. He says public funding for parties and candidates would be better, and argues that corporate structures allow wealth to avoid taxation while companies spend on political agendas.
- 37:29Shared values can renew liberal democracy
Acemoglu says people can unite around a deep sense of fairness, despite polarization, and names Ro Khanna and John Ossoff as US politicians who combine economic thinking with an emphasis on unity. He argues that citizens have a democratic responsibility to shape AI’s direction rather than leave it to technology companies.
Published Oct 30, 2026.
Transcript · 30 min read
The Mishal Husain Show, hosted by Mishal Husain, with Daron Acemoglu.
From the transcript The Mishal Husain Show publishes with the episode. Where the podcast’s audio and the video part ways, some times are a minute or so off.
Michelle Hussain. We're in the midst of a pretty intense period right now for the democratic process in a number of parts of the world. The US midterms are upon us. We've just had elections in Brazil, Serbia, Israel. There's unrest in France that shows the pressure leaders are under to deliver for the people, especially the young. And in the UK there's been a budget which shows how the government there is grappling with how to deliver amid economic realities. Against that backdrop there is no shortage of theories on what politics could or should do better. But the one that caught my eye and led to this episode is from a new book by a Nobel Prize winning economist who drills right down into the actions he'd like to see politicians take. He is the MIT professor Daron Acemoğlu, whose latest book is called What Happened to Liberal Democracy?
Remaking a Politics of Shared Prosperity. And he tells me from the outset of this conversation that He's from the centre-left. What he's really interested in is what he calls the left-leaning corner of the big tent of liberalism. What he means by that is the kind of politics that led to Roosevelt's New Deal or social democracy in Europe. He has got plenty to say about AI, tech titans, algorithmic social media, and even The Economist, which recently had a go at him. What I found really compelling is that he is a celebrated economist known for work on institutions and shared prosperity and automation versus human labor. And he feels strongly enough about our times to come out with what is essentially a political prescription. Remember, you can read my notes on this episode. As always, it's where you'll get the added context and a sense of my reading list before and after we record it. There's a link in the show notes. And let's dive into this exactly at the point that Daron Acemoğlu settled into his seat here in the studio. I tell you one thing I wondered about. I mean, congratulations on the book, obviously. I wanted to ask you about the dedication, Irma and Kervorg.
Yes, those are my parents. Your parents, who I guess are no longer alive. They are not, yes. To Irma and Kervorg, with whom I would have so much liked to share this book. It is your first solo book, right?
Read the whole transcript
Yes, correct. Oh, well, I did write a textbook. A graduate level. Why particularly do you say you would have liked to share this book with them?
Oh, because that's my baby right now. When I write the next one, perhaps I'll think, oh, well, this is the one I really like.
Did they see you win the Nobel? Were they still alive? No, they died when I was 19 and 21. So a long time ago. Long time ago. Gosh, you were very young. So you were still a student when you lost your parents. And they were still living in Istanbul at the time. Yeah. You lost them within a very short space of time. Such is life. Yeah. So thank you for coming in to talk to us about the new book, which is clearly making waves. One thing I was curious about before we talk about the ideas you put forward, it's whether your heritage has played a role at all in your work on inclusivity and shared prosperity. Because I realize, of course, that you grew up in Turkey as part of a minority community, the Armenian community. Is there a link?
There is definitely a link to my early work. My interest in dictatorship, democracy, and the economic consequences that they create, I think, was very much shaped by my early and late childhood, where Turkey was under a military dictatorship and was having lots of political, social, and economic problems.
You were about 13, I think, when the coup happened. I was about 13, yes, exactly. And especially when I was in middle school, so between the ages of 13 and 16, the military presence was very palpable. So those really were shaping experiences for me. I think once you start developing your own ideas, so from, say, the time I finished my PhD, the next three, four years, I think that formation probably was also influenced. But after that, I don't know whether It has had as much of an impact, but perhaps it has. I don't know.
But that period of Turkey in the 1980s, the tensions, I think you felt them more as a minority community. Your father ended up leaving his job at the university and you said that that played a role.
Correct. Absolutely. Yes, I did. I was fortunate. I was in a reasonably well-off family, not rich at all. But after especially my father left the university, you know, we could at least afford stuff. But I felt the repression more, and there was animosity towards Armenians at the time in some quarters. So you could sort of feel that. But I never, you know, identified with any ethnic or religious group as a child. And that probably has played some role in me being attracted to liberal ideas that sort of emphasize and celebrate plurality.
And you've lived a very international life, a student in the UK, and now you teach in the US. Further back, would your grandparents have lived through the beginning of the 20th century?
Not my grandparents, but their parents, yes. So does that become part of the family story?
Yes and no, because it was a sensitive topic. In Turkey. In Turkey. And as a result, often even within families, you don't discuss the issues. So I didn't actually know about my family's history until one of my cousin's father wrote something about that history and shared it with me. So it was much, much later. I mean, I knew about the Armenian Genocide and the issues surrounding it, but it wasn't discussed later. at home.
And when you did discover, what did you discover about, was there a narrow escape and what was the impact on you learning about that time?
Yeah, it was a narrow escape, but it was so long ago that I don't think it touched me as much as it would have done, for example, if I was 10 at the time. Yes, indeed, it was a narrow escape indeed.
How old were you when you finally put the pieces together? I mean, I've started reading about the history of the Ottoman Empire and all of the events around then when I was in my late teens, early 20s. But when I received that document and I read it, I was, I think, in my mid to late 20s. So it's quite a bit after.
Okay, so well into your academic career. Yeah, so that's why it's like its impact was a bit less than it would have been had it been, you know, say 10, 15 years ago.
I still don't understand that you've seen politics and economics... as interwoven. And this is, you are a Nobel laureate in economics, but I think this book, What Happened to Liberal Democracy, is a very political book and its ideas are absolutely relevant for our times. I wanted to ask whether it is a response to right-wing populist politics, because you have Viktor Orban right at the start of the book, and you're charting the fact that in 1989, he's a passionate Democrat, and by 2014, he's talking proudly about wanting an illiberal state.
Yeah, that's actually... good beginning. Of course, it became a little bit more nuanced because as the book was going to the printers, he lost the election, which is great, but it did require a few sentences to be rewritten in the book just before it went to the press. But in some sense, the book is seeking an alternative to right-wing ideas, and the aim is to contribute to the emergence of a new governing philosophy for liberal ideas, for liberal democracy. On the other hand, I do make an explicit choice of not discussing ethno-nationalism, alternative right, quasi-fascist ideas, or Trump is only mentioned once or twice in the book.
That's because I want to put the spotlight on the center left and the core of liberal democracy itself, not its alternatives. And if you want to sort of think of an analogy, there's a debate about why Rome collapsed. And some people say, oh, well, because of the barbarians. But the barbarians weren't so mighty as Rome at its peak. It was Rome's internal weakness that made it so vulnerable to the barbarians. So that's what I think about the citadel of liberalism, that it is its own weakness that has made it weak against these barbarians. sordid movements. And that's why I want to put the spotlight and say, how can liberal ideas be updated and revived for our modern age?
You want the center-left to be better. Much, much better. That's politically where you are. Exactly, yes. And you say that part of the reason that it has gone wrong, liberal democracy, the center-left... liberalism in this context is self-inflicted? Because you point to identity politics and you say that the centre-left should never have got so caught up with issues.
Yes, but that's in some sense the upper layer. I want to start from how we ended up there. I see cultural politics or identity politics as a consequence of changes in the social fabric of post-industrial society. And it comes coupled with economic as well as political changes. And it is this ensemble that we have to understand. So post-industrial society made shared prosperity, one of the key promises of liberal democracy, much harder because of digital technologies and globalization. You could now, as a business person, make a lot of profits, expand your market, but at the same time lay off workers because either you're automating their jobs or you're sending them to some cheap labor far away. In The last half century, we've seen college graduates, people like me, who have good education, well-off social and material conditions, living in urban centers, become much more important in numbers and in social standing. And that has really changed political dynamics, especially at the center-left, which used to get its majority of its votes from the working class. Now, the college graduates in urban centers support the centre-left, the working class has shifted out of the centre-left to mild or sometimes hard-right.
But isn't some of that a natural form of progress? Why do we have so many college graduates, too many college graduates perhaps, because people aspired for their children to go to university? And this was a sign of social mobility. This was a step away from the fields and the factories into the white-collar work. I don't know what the alternative would have been. 100%.
You are 100% correct, first of all. Living conditions, working conditions are so much better for college graduates. Economic opportunities are so much better. And the economy needed college graduates. And college graduates also bring a number of additional benefits. But two things. First of all, I don't think it's either feasible or desirable to have everybody go to college. People have different talents, different interests. Second... While college graduates themselves became more and more better off, they also started living separate lives from the rest of society. So in the United States, 50% of the current cohorts are college graduates.
That means another 50%, much less well-off, are not. So who's going to speak for them? That is the problem. In the past, that question wasn't so alive. First, because the two groups were in the governing coalition together. And secondly, because they live in the same neighborhoods. They work in the same firms. They had the same social networks. They married between whatever, cross-married. And they had broadly similar values. All of this has changed. And that has created, I think, a very important part of the crisis of liberalism. And that's why I think cultural politics or identity politics, whatever you want to call it, isn't something that you have to you should analyze in isolation. It has to be put into this context.
So I imagine you're not saying that it's not worth investigating discrimination and trying to tackle it, because that's where some of what is often dismissed as identity politics might come from. If you send out a CV with a certain kind of name in some societies, you might get rejected on the basis of that name.
100% discrimination is real. And in fact, I emphasize, I have a full chapter on this in the book, that dealing with inclusion, intolerance, and how to actually educate people, ignorance, have always been dilemmas for liberalism. So liberalism started as an elite project by aristocrats and very well of very comfortable conditions. So all of these are real, and it was inevitable and socially beneficial that we should discuss these issues and try to improve inclusion and deal with certain aspects of intolerance. But the problem was that it took a particular top-down manner, which perhaps provocatively I call social engineering, because it evolved into a form in which a group of socially powerful, sometimes economically powerful groups were trying to change the values of the never works.
Do you mean DEI? You're against DEI initiatives? Well, I'm not against the objectives of DEI, but I'm certainly against the way that DEI came to be practiced.
I mean, you do have a lot in common with Donald Trump in that case on this front.
Well, no, no, because it's a big difference, because he doesn't sympathize with the objectives. I sympathize with the objectives, and I think we need to work towards inclusion. I'm an immigrant myself, and I think integrating immigrants into society is key. But I I object to the way that it got to be practiced, and I object to the way, the form that it took in particular, looking down upon the values of traditional communities, working class communities. And that, I think, again, you have to understand in the context of post-industrial society. College graduates, once they become 50% of the population, they're not a uniform entity at all. There is such wide difference between people who are doing so well in, for example, in technical fields, going and working in Silicon Valley or Wall Street, and people who are burdened by a large amount of student debt. There are people who have very right-wing ideas. There are people who have very left-wing ideas among the college graduates. But one thing united them, that was cultural issues. Because of the way that They themselves are cosmopolitan, and the university imparts those cosmopolitan values. They were much more open to immigration.
They were much more attuned with issues of minority rights, etc. So that's the reason why they rallied around that issue and ignored economic problems that are so important. Like in the United States, and the UK has similar trends, but not perhaps as jarring as the US, but in the United States from 1980 to around 2013, 2014, every year, the real problem wages, inflation-adjusted wages of men without a college degree fell in the midst of a period where essentially the economy expanded quite a bit. That has no equivalent in history, so as I know. And at the same time, they were also told your traditional values are no good. You have to change them. You cannot use the language that's not right. I think you can see how discombobulating that's going to be. And that backlash is exactly what we are seeing. So even if you agree fully, as I do, with many of the aims of diversity programs, that was the wrong way to go about it. And it's more importantly to me, it's also a way that's not consistent with the emphasis on individual freedoms and self-government.
That should be at the heart of liberalism and liberal democracy. Well, that is essentially your diagnosis of the problem. So obviously, I want to turn to your prescription because you do have ideas about what you'd like to change and you call it working class liberalism. The UK has a new prime minister. I think he would very much be ideologically aligned with you. What should he do? Give Andy Burnham some advice.
“that also removes the incentive to over-automate, excessively automate, because you are essentially subsidizing firms to use capital rather than labor.”
What about wealth taxes that are not just about the billionaires, but about a much broader base of people who, say, live in properties worth $ 5 million in the US or the equivalent in the UK? I'm saying $ 5 million because that's the property tax that's coming in in New York. Are you in favor of that kind of tax? What about people who might be retired and living in a property like that?
Yeah, I mean, I think those are much more gray areas. And one of the things I emphasize in the book is that liberal ideas don't come with a rulebook that provide clear answers to every question. For example, you can ask me even a harder question, and you can say, is the level of social welfare spending in Sweden or the United States more consistent with liberal ideas. And I can't give you an answer because liberal ideas create a big tent. We have to reach compromises and we have to make local decisions on local issues.
But I'm still not sure whether you're in favor of that kind of tax on assets, on which would be a wealth tax on a broader base of people.
I'm not giving an answer precisely because it depends on how it's presented and how it's perceived. So if that kind of tax is imposed by one group, without the consent of anybody else, I think definitely, no, that's not going to work. It's going to create backlash and it's going to create much bigger exodus of people from local areas because now they can really avoid those taxes by moving. But if people come together, just like during wartime, imagine during wartime, people take so much more taxes. They work so much harder. Why? Because they understood that they were in a boat together and they had a sense of fairness and duty And so if we can have a debate that supports higher taxes on people's property, even for those less than a billionaire, that's a very different affair than one charismatic politician with a small group of supporters says, I think the line should be at 5 million and not at 4 million. I think that's much more problematic.
That's why liberalism really calls for us to rise up to the responsibility of self-government. That's what self-government is about.
“And his brand of politics emphasizing socialism or other issues that are really so foreign to working class communities' daily concerns, I think, is not going to generalize.”
AI is part of the critique that The Economist recently published about your work, which I think you said at the time feels like a hit piece. But I am curious about how you see AI, because you're talking about it now. I've heard you describe it as this amazingly powerful technology, but also say that you think the rollout is going to be slow. And it doesn't feel like the rollout is slow right now. It's changing so many professions around us every day.
Well, I actually, I mean, certainly the rollout accelerated since I wrote, for example, about three years ago about how large the productivity impacts of AI is going to be. You know, I didn't at the time, see how quickly agentic AI would come. But the rollout is still not that fast. We sometimes confuse the adoption of chat GPT or other chatbots in people's personal lives, like answering questions, helping making decisions, versus AI being used in the production process. That's very, very slow. If you look at which occupations have been completely transformed by AI. There's only one that's coding.
I'm not sure that's true. I think you've already acknowledged you've underestimated AI before, so you could be underestimating.
“we don't envisage, we don't invest, we don't try pro-worker AI, which is the one that's going to really make workers more productive.”
And by very charismatic people, you mean the AI bosses, you mean Sam Altman, you mean Dario Amodei, you mean Elon Musk, I assume. So what are you saying to all of us media organizations? Like, cover them less or don't lionize them. Yeah, cover them less and. These are incredibly valuable companies.
They are. No, no, but cover them less blindly. First of all, you know, remember Trump. Part of the reason why Trump rose to prominence in 2015 was because every word he said was covered. And some of it critically, some of it uncritically. That's what we're doing to Elon Musk. That's what we're doing to Sam Altman. You know, The Economist magazine, bless them. They are absolutely... in their right to attack me, although they should have done a little better. I welcome a hit piece, but probably a better one could have been at least more intellectually engaging. But it was one or two weeks before then, they gave their entire issue to Elon Musk. Elon Musk's ideas about politics and how Europe should be organized. Why is that? Why are we taking Elon Musk's ideas rather than talking about taxing his enormous wealth?
He faced some quite tough questioning. Oh, no, not really. Oh, no, absolutely. I disagree.
On the film that he shared, the anti-Muslim film that he shared. I haven't seen him questioned about that anywhere else.
Mild, mild criticisms after you platform these people. Yeah, you ask them a few hard questions, but you're giving them enormous platform.
I just don't think an interview is the same as a platform. I interviewed Elon Musk last year. I think I asked him some pretty tough questions. I think it was good to see him questioned because generally he's on X and he's just bashing forth with whatever he says.
I know. It's great to push him. But if you provide him the authority as if he is somebody who knows how Europeans should organize their politics just because he's been successful in investing in a few companies, I think there is something wrong with that.
Which takes me to social media. Elon Musk obviously owns X as it is now. He bought what was Twitter. And in your book, you talk about your worries about algorithmic social media feeds, that essentially you would like to stop. Ideally, you'd like to stop algorithmic social media feeds. Why do you think they're so problematic?
So let's go back to the late 1990s or early 2000s. Many people, many, many smart people, very knowledgeable about tech, thought that online communication, social media wikis would democratize communication, would democratize journalism, would create new communities for us to build trust. Exactly the opposite has happened. Social media has replaced real-world communities. People spend less than half of what they did with friends. But the great thing about communities is they build trust. There is nobody who builds trust on social media. Communities share information. Social media doesn't share information.
It shares misinformation. It shares emotional outrage. How did we get here? Were the people completely silly when they thought 25 years ago that something very different could have emerged? No, they weren't silly. They were perhaps naive that that would be sort of the direction at the end. But what they outlined was feasible. Social media could have had a very different path. And the reason why it went this way is very much because algorithmically manipulating people's attention has been a big business. And if you get rid of the algorithms role in structuring people's emotion, I think we have a much better basis. And there's a very important reason for why targeting algorithms is very important. Regulating social media in a liberal society is a delicate balance. You do not want in any way to clamp down on freedom of speech. I am all for people saying whatever they want on social media, as long as it's not a call to violently attack other groups or anything like that.
But algorithms don't have a freedom of speech. It's the problem that we have people saying outrageous things, and then the algorithm finds the most outrageous ones or the most envy generating ones, and it feeds them to you so that you become even more polarized or more triggered. That's the problem. That's why we need to target algorithms, not people's freedom of speech.
If we took X and Facebook back to the way they were originally. Or to MySpace's days, yeah. You would follow certain people and in your feeds you would only ever see what those people did.
So, for example, it could be Tommy Robinson who could say outrageous things. But there is no way you would see any of them unless you specifically went and followed Tommy Robinson.
I get social media is a more recent phase of the internet than the original phase. But if we go back to the beginning in the 90s, the treatment of these companies as platforms rather than publishers, that is really what allowed the flourishing of the internet. That was US law. That is what created this domain which has connected people all over the world. Your work has benefited from it like so many others.
Yeah, of course. I have also suggested an alternative path if possible. You know, we cannot be radical but also simple enough to ban algorithmic feeds. You could also get rid of the most extreme form of Section 230, which is this platform rather than publishers, so we can apply some of the same criteria to these companies. But that's harder. It would have been easier 25 years ago. It's harder to reverse some of these things. It's another feasible path. But I think banning algorithmic feed is simpler and more powerful. Okay.
I also want to ask you about your ideas on money and politics, because that's, again, something you'd like to see. You'd like to see less money flowing from corporations into politics. Absolutely. Right? So you can't make a corporate political donation.
Again, freedom of speech, freedom of individuals to contribute to candidates' work for them. That is sacrosanct.
So a billionaire can donate just out of their own pocket, not their company. Out of their own pocket, but not through corporations.
I mean, what's the difference, really? You make a lot of money from a company, you donate in your own right as a billionaire?
Well, look, we have to do this in the context of US reality. A better system would be all parties and candidates are publicly funded, but we're not going to go there. The bigger principle here is individuals are free. They have key rights that are central to liberalism. Algorithms are not individuals. Corporations are not individuals.
But people make money out of corporations and then can spend it as they wish. They can spend it as they wish. Again, we have to tax that. And that's why progressive taxation is very important. You know, again, the problem here is we have created this tax structure and fiction that corporations have their own special status, plus individuals can leave all of their money in corporations and not get the tax burden, not pay their fair share, plus corporations on behalf of them can spend on both goods and services and all political agendas. That is really the most pernicious part of it.
I can see that there is an undercurrent of worry that runs through the book, right? You say there's a specter of violence or actual violence that has been directed today against minorities and other groups. But As we come to a close, I want to ask where you see the points of light. Where do you see the leaders or the governments from whatever end of the political spectrum who are doing things that you approve of and you want to amplify?
Look, I am not going to look for a knight in white armor. The thing that gives me hope is that, A, humans are very adaptable. It takes time, but we adapt to different circumstances. And two, people, even in this polarized world, have a deep sense of fairness. And around that sense of fairness, we can come together. There are so many shared moral values between the different sides of the aisle in the UK, in the US. It's just polarization, bad leadership, social media have obscured them. And we have made mistakes as liberal democracies' most active supporters in dividing the population further. rather than uniting it. Once we take those steps, I think there is a lot more that can come. And that is the context in which leaders will emerge that build on those unities rather than divisions.
Is there really no one that you'd point to as that knight in shining armor? No, not a knight in shining armor. I mean, in the US, I can point to better models as opposed to less good models.
But not the democratic socialists, I think, not the Mamdani, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez group.
Well, look, again, they divide. I think they have some good ideas, but they divide. But if you look at somebody like Ro Khanna or John Ossoff, they are advocating more deep thinking about economic issues, but at the same time emphasizing unity. And I think that's very important.
And if we don't seize the moment the way that you would like, is the model that gains more currency not just the Trump model? Perhaps it's the China model.
Or the Gulf Arab model. I don't want to even think about that. I believe, and that's the reason why I wrote the book, and I wrote the book, in fact, in a rush relative to what I've done in the past. I think liberal democracy is one of our greatest, if not the greatest achievement. We live in complex, huge, divided societies peacefully. The state is often at our service rather than repressing us. We reach compromise, all of these, and the individual freedoms that we enjoy. And the opportunities we enjoy are all fruits of liberal democracy, and we are at the cusp of losing it. I don't want to even think of a future where liberal democracy is decimated.
We have to do our best to avoid that future. Do you think you've become more political as a result of your research or as a result of our times?
I don't know what political would mean in this context. I've always been interested in politics, and I always think, as you said, politics and economics are inseparable. And that's part of the reason why I didn't want to answer the question, which politician you support. I don't want to make this about this political faction versus that political faction. I think we all have to think about politics. I think we all have to participate in politics. And politics has to be more multidimensional, especially AI. Look, let me make one final comment. We are told every day in the United States that AI is going to transform every aspect of our lives. And I think 90% that's correct.
But Next sentence, we are told, you better stay out of the path of AI because otherwise you'll slow it down. And just let Sam Altman, Elon Musk, Dario Amodei, Mark Zuckerberg lead the charge. Those two statements cannot both be correct. In a democratic society, if something is going to be even half as transformative as AI, it is our democratic responsibility to be involved. That's what I'm hoping for. And you're willing to play a role? This is my role. Yeah. Daron Acemoğlu, thank you so much. Thank you. This was truly my pleasure. A lot to think about.
