AI Expert Spotlight: Simon Johnson - MIT Endicott House

AI Expert Spotlight: Simon Johnson

In MIT Sloan

Nobel Prize-Winner Simon Johnson was recently featured in MIT Sloan Ideas Made to Matter, which spotlighted his work on the economics and politics of artificial intelligence. The article explains how Johnson’s Shaping the Future of Work initiative urges business and policy leaders to design “pro‑worker AI” that creates new, well‑paid tasks instead of simply automating existing jobs and draws on his book Power and Progress to warn that without conscious choices, technological breakthroughs like AI can undermine middle‑class living standards rather than deliver broadly shared prosperity. Read an excerpt of the article below:

As co-faculty director of the Shaping the Future of Work initiative at MIT, Simon Johnson works on the economics and politics of AI development and deployment in the US and globally. In 2024, Johnson received the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences jointly with Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson, “for studies of how institutions are formed and affect prosperity.”

Recent Mentions