Nobel Prize-winning economist Daron Acemoglu’s worst fear isn’t a future where artificial intelligence has taken over everyone’s jobs. AI that powerful may be unnerving, but at least it would uncork a tremendous amount of productivity. No, what Acemoglu finds truly terrifying is a future full of “so-so automation”: the kind that does allow companies to cut jobs but doesn’t deliver any real productivity boost. The tools are OK (at best) but never great — think self-checkout kiosks or automated customer service phone menus.
It’s a scenario that Acemoglu, a professor at MIT, has been warning about for years — and the threat appears greater now than ever. ChatGPT-5’s August debut fueled debate about whether the technology might be plateauing instead of continuing the astonishing trajectory of the past several years. Still, companies across industries have rushed to adopt AI, and while just 1% of executives surveyed by McKinsey this year said the tech is fully woven into their company’s workflows and delivering measurable returns, almost all plan to increase their spending on it. If AI performance were to stall now, we might be left with bots that are just good enough to encourage business leaders to settle for so-so automation rather than genuine innovation.