Genaesis Founder Hosts Nobel Laureate Simon Johnson on AI and the Global Economy

On September 10, 2025, Genaesis Founder and CEO Erin-Michael Gill hosted an evening with Simon Johnson at the Cosmos Club in Washington, DC. Professor Johnson delivered a lecture on artificial intelligence and the global economy, then joined Gill on stage for a conversation.

Johnson shared the 2024 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for work on how institutions shape national prosperity. He teaches at MIT Sloan and served as chief economist of the International Monetary Fund.

The discussion turned on a tension at the center of his recent work. AI holds out the promise of higher productivity and broadly shared prosperity, while its default path runs toward automation and gains that concentrate in fewer hands. Which of the two arrives has historically been a matter of choice rather than inevitability.

Professor Johnson has since launched Power and Consequences, a podcast with former U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Gary Gensler.