Nobel laureate Joe Stiglitz says not only can AI take your job, it’ll make the ‘tech bro’ class richer while doing so

8 hours ago 2

As professor Joseph Stiglitz sees it, AI is not just another technology wave—it’s a force that can erode jobs and hardwire a new era of inequality. That is, unless governments and institutions deliberately push it in a different direction.

AI lets firms strip labor out of production, concentrate profits at the top, and push the risks of transition onto workers and the public—exactly the trajectory the Nobel laureate warns about in his 2024 book, the recently reissued The Road to Freedom: Economics and the Good Society. Now, the economics professor argued in a recent interview with Fortune, AI is emerging as a textbook case of how technology can turbocharge inequality.

“If we don’t do anything about managing AI, there is a threat that it will lead to more inequality,” Stiglitz said. “And since inequality is such a bad, serious problem in our society, that is a great concern to me.”

Stiglitz has spent his career watching capitalism fail the people it was supposed to serve. He’s studied financial crises, globalization’s broken promises, and the slow hollowing out of the American middle-class. Now, at 83, he is watching the next chapter unfold in real time—and he is not optimistic.