Stone Center on Inequality and Shaping the Future of Work Launches at MIT | MIT News

The James M. and Cathleen D. Stone Center on Inequality and Shaping the Future of Work was officially launched on Nov. 3, 2025, brings together academics, policy makers, and practitioners to explore important questions about economic opportunity, technology, and democracy.

Co-directed by MIT professors Daron Acemoglu, David Autor, and Simon Johnson, the new Stone Center analyzes the forces contributing to growing income and wealth inequality through the erosion of job quality and labor market opportunities for workers without college degrees. The center identifies new ways to move the economy on a more balanced path.

MIT Provost Anantha Chandrakasan opened the launch event by emphasizing the urgency and importance of the institute’s work. “As artificial intelligence tools become more powerful, and as they become more widespread,” he said, “we will need to strive to ensure that people from all backgrounds can have economic opportunity.”

Here are some of the key takeaways from participants in the afternoon’s discussions about wealth inequality, freedom, and AI supporting the worker.

Wealth inequality is driven by private enterprise and public policy

Owen Zidar of Princeton University emphasized that owners of businesses such as car dealerships, construction firms, and franchises make up the majority of the top one percent. “For every CEO of a highly regarded public company,” he explained, “there are 1,000 private business owners with at least $25 million in assets.” These business owners have gone beyond political influence through lobbying, lobbying, and donations.

Atif Mian of Princeton University has linked high inequality to the US debt crisis, arguing that high savings have not been channeled into productive investment. Instead, falling interest rates pressure the government to run large fiscal deficits.

To reduce wealth inequality, speakers highlighted policy proposals including rolling back the 20 percent tax deduction for private business owners and increasing wealth taxes.

However, policies should be carefully formulated. Antoinette Schoar of the MIT Sloan School of Management explained how mortgage subsidy policies after the 2008 financial crisis actually worsened inequality by disenfranchising poor homeowners.

Governments must provide basic public goods and economic security

Marc Dunkelman of the Watson School of International and Public Affairs at Brown University has identified excessive red tape as the central problem of modern liberal democracy. “We can’t build a high-speed rail, you can’t build enough houses,” he explained. “That encourages ordinary people who want the government to work in the camp of the majority of people. We did this to ourselves.”

Josh Cohen of Apple University/University of California at Berkeley emphasized that freedom should bring about shared prosperity and fair opportunities, not just protecting individual freedom. When people lack economic security, they may turn to leaders who completely reject the principles of freedom.

A liberal democracy needs to adapt while maintaining its core principles

Helena Rosenblatt Dhar of the City University of New York Graduate Center noted that freedom and democracy have not always been mutually exclusive. Historically, “social equality has been very important, but not political equality,” he said. “The Liberals were very wary of the people.”

Speakers emphasized that the challenge of liberalism today is to maintain its obligations to limit the power of authorization and to protect basic freedoms, while addressing its failures.

To do so, in Dunkelman’s view, would mean working to “end the seeding.” [of] the seeds of populism by making the government properly balance the rights of the people and the will of the majority.”

People-centered politics needs to be controlled by social media

In his keynote speech, US Representative Jake Auchincloss (Massachusetts Fourth District) linked these ideas of government efficiency and public trust to the impact of technology. He stressed the need to control social media.

“In my opinion, the media is at a high level in terms of culture, which is a high level of politics,” he said. “If we want a better culture, and if we want a better politics, we need a better media.”

Auchincloss proposed that regulation should include holding social media companies responsible for content and preventing targeted advertising to minorities.

He also expressed the urgency and importance of the institute’s research agenda, especially to understand if AI will supplement or replace workers.

“My bias has always been: Technology creates more jobs,” he said. “Maybe it’s different this time. Maybe I’m wrong.”

Addition is key to pro-worker AI – but it may require other AI architectures

Stone Center co-director Daron Acemoglu said expanding what humans can do, rather than automating their jobs, is critical to achieving pro-worker AI.

However, Acemoglu warned that this will not happen by itself, noting that the business models of technology companies and their focus on general artificial intelligence are not compatible with the idea of ​​AI work. This idea may require public investment in other AI architectures that focus on “domain-specific, reliable information.”

Ethan Mollick of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania noted that AI labs are clearly trying to “replace humans in all things” and he is “absolutely convinced that they can do this in the very near future.”

At the time, companies “didn’t have a model for AI adoption,” Mollick explained. “There is total confusion.” Still, “there’s enough money at stake [that] the machine keeps moving forward,” stressing the urgency of the intervention.

In a glimpse of what such an intervention might look like, Microsoft’s Zana Buçinca shared the findings of a study that quantification and understanding in AI design can enable better complementarity.

“The impact of AI on human activity is not a foregone conclusion,” he stressed. “It’s a design.”