Atkinson Memorial Lecture 2024: Daron Acemoglu


This event will be in-person and also streamed online. In either case, please register for this event - online participants will receive a link for viewing after registering. The in person event will be followed by a drinks reception, 5-6pm at the Manor Road Building. If you would like to meet with the speaker on 1st May, please email gpi-office@philosophy.ox.ac.uk (spaces are limited).

The Global Priorities Institute and the Oxford Department of Economics is pleased to announce the Atkinson Memorial Lecture 2024, delivered by Daron Acemoglu (MIT Economics).

Professor Acemoglu will deliver “RECLAIMING HUMANITY IN THE AGE OF AI”.
This talk will argue that human agency – the ability of humans to make decisions that shape their lives in environments – is a fundamental value and is under two related threats: (1) the growing emphasis on a single dimension of human talents centered on analytical skills and college-level education; (2) the perspective and practice of digital technologies and AI sidelining humans. The philosophical foundations of these two threats are mutually self-reinforcing. They have together led to a pattern of growing economic gaps, status differences and political voice between college and non-college workers in the industrialized world. The next stage of AI looks set to exacerbate these trends by prioritizing AGI, excessive automation and limiting autonomous human decision-making. I will also outline how a different trajectory for technological change in AI can re-energize human agency

3:30PM – 5PM, THURSDAY 16TH MAY 2024.
This event will be followed by a drinks reception for in-person attendees