If you’d really be able to coordinate globally to enable 1. or 2. globally—extremely unlikely in the current environment and given the huge incentives for individual countries to remain weak in enforcement—then it seems you might as well try to impose directly the economic first best solution w.r.t. robots vs. labor: high global tax rates and redistribution.
If anything, this problem seems more pernicious wrt. climate change mitigation and environmental damage: it’s much more distributed, not only in US and China, but Russia and India are also big emitters, big leverage in Brazil, Congo, and Indonesia with their forests, overfishing and ocean pollution everywhere, etc.
With AI, it’s basically the question of regulating US and UK companies: EU is always eager to over-regulate relative to the US, and China is already successfully and closely regulating their AI for a variety of reasons (which Acemoglu points out). The big problem of the Chinese economy is weak internal demand, and automating jobs and therefore increasing inequality and decreasing the local purchasing power is the last thing that China wants.
But I should add, I agree that 1-3 poses challenging political and coordination problems. Nobody assumes it will be easy, including Acemoglu. It’s just another one in the row of hard political challenges posed by AI, along with the questions of “aligned with whom?”, considering/accounting for people’s voice past dysfunctional governments and political elites in general, etc.
If anything, this problem seems more pernicious wrt. climate change mitigation and environmental damage: it’s much more distributed, not only in US and China, but Russia and India are also big emitters, big leverage in Brazil, Congo, and Indonesia with their forests, overfishing and ocean pollution everywhere, etc.
With AI, it’s basically the question of regulating US and UK companies: EU is always eager to over-regulate relative to the US, and China is already successfully and closely regulating their AI for a variety of reasons (which Acemoglu points out). The big problem of the Chinese economy is weak internal demand, and automating jobs and therefore increasing inequality and decreasing the local purchasing power is the last thing that China wants.
But I should add, I agree that 1-3 poses challenging political and coordination problems. Nobody assumes it will be easy, including Acemoglu. It’s just another one in the row of hard political challenges posed by AI, along with the questions of “aligned with whom?”, considering/accounting for people’s voice past dysfunctional governments and political elites in general, etc.