Sometimes scientific awards resemble long-awaited fireworks that burst not with the light of insight, but with the blaze of something everyone has known all along. Such is the case with this year’s Nobel Prize in Economics. It was awarded to Joel Mokyr, Philippe Aghion, and Peter Howitt — for explaining that economic growth happens thanks to… innovation.
That’s like giving a biology prize for discovering that a horse walks using its legs. Or a physics prize for the groundbreaking realization that a stone falls downward, not upward. Or a medicine prize for confirming that humans breathe air. The obviousness here doesn’t just catch the eye — it reaches the level of basic truths every first-year economics student already knows.
“Creative Destruction”: A Fancy Name for an Old Story
Half of the prize went to Joel Mokyr “for identifying the preconditions of sustained growth through technological progress.” The other half went to Philippe Aghion and Peter Howitt “for their theory of sustained growth through creative destruction.”
The phrase “creative destruction” sounds dramatic, but behind it lies a simple idea: old technologies give way to new ones, and this is what drives progress. In other words, the economy grows when one invention replaces another — when the steam engine steps aside for electricity, and typewriters yield to computers. It’s essentially the same as saying, “We move forward because we move forward.” A scientific breakthrough? Hardly — more like an academic tautology, nicely packaged.
When Science Rewards Common Sense
Undoubtedly, the works of Mokyr, Aghion, and Howitt have influenced modern economic theory, providing it with new models and terminology. But the essence of their conclusions boils down to an old truth: where there is innovation, there is growth. Awarding a prize for this is like giving a chef a medal for discovering that food tastes better with spices.
This raises a broader question: has the Nobel Prize in Economics become a ceremony for validating the obvious? Has it turned into a way of officially endorsing what markets, entrepreneurs, and ordinary people have known intuitively long before academics built models around it?
When Truths Become “Discoveries”
Perhaps this is the paradox of modern science: real breakthroughs are increasingly rare where we expect them, and committees are forced to reward those who best explain the self-evident. And so even truths long embedded in economic reality once again become “discoveries.”
But whatever our attitude, one fact remains: in 2025, the Nobel Prize in Economics reminded us that innovation drives the economy. Thank you — now we know. And perhaps next year someone will win the prize for the groundbreaking revelation that the sun rises in the east.
Time for a Real Prize: AI’s Economic Revolution
If the Nobel Committee truly wants to reward transformative ideas — not just elegant explanations of the obvious — then the next prize shouldn’t go to those who “discover” that innovation drives growth. It should go to those who show how a new kind of innovation — artificial intelligence — is already reshaping the global economy in ways deeper and faster than anything humanity has seen since the Industrial Revolution.
Because this is where the real story of economic growth is unfolding today: in the dramatic arc from ridicule to revolution.
From “AI Slop” to Strategic Necessity
Not so long ago, AI-generated content was dismissed as garbage, fake knowledge, or intellectual slop. Academics mocked it, publishers banned it, schools treated it as cheating, and many industries refused to take it seriously. The tone was one of disdain: “It’s not real work. It’s not real writing. It’s not real intelligence.”
But history always follows the same pattern: ridicule, resistance — and then inevitability. Today, those same tools are redefining productivity, education, research, and even geopolitics. AI has become not just a helpful assistant but an economic multiplier — accelerating discovery, compressing production cycles, reducing costs, and allowing one person to do the work of ten.
China’s AI Awakening — and the West’s Slow Realization
Nowhere is this shift clearer than in education. In China, entire school curricula are being rebuilt around AI literacy. From primary school onward, children learn how to use, build, and critique AI systems — not as an optional elective but as a core subject, as essential as math or language. In some provinces, even literature classes integrate large language models, while coding lessons teach students to collaborate with AI rather than compete against it.
Meanwhile, many Western schools still ban ChatGPT and similar tools, clinging to outdated notions of “original work.” The result? A generation at risk of graduating into a world they are not prepared for — a world where prompt engineering is as vital a skill as writing an email, and AI-assisted decision-making is the backbone of every competitive enterprise.
The New Engines of Growth
The economic impact of this transformation is already visible across sectors:
-
Startups that once needed 20 employees now launch globally with teams of three, using AI to handle marketing, coding, design, and legal work.
-
Pharmaceutical companies are discovering new molecules in months instead of years, thanks to AI-driven simulations and protein folding predictions.
-
Manufacturing is shifting toward self-optimizing supply chains that adapt in real time — not through human planning, but through autonomous machine reasoning.
-
Finance is no longer just about human analysts reading markets; it’s about large-scale models predicting shifts faster than any economist could dream.
In short: AI is not a factor of growth — it is quickly becoming the factor.
A Nobel Worth Giving
If there is a Nobel Prize that truly reflects the spirit of Alfred Nobel — to reward discoveries that “confer the greatest benefit to humankind” — it should go to those studying this AI-driven transformation: the sociologists who map its cultural ripple effects, the economists who quantify its impact on labor and capital, the technologists who turn models into infrastructure.
Because explaining that innovation causes growth is like explaining that water makes plants grow.
But understanding — and guiding — the AI revolution is like learning how to change the weather itself.
And that is where the future of economics — and the future of Nobel Prizes — truly lies.
No comments:
Post a Comment