In the Age of AI, Who Shapes Power? Daron Acemoğlu Comes to Istanbul — and the Question Has Never Been More Urgent

On 24 March 2026, Nobel laureate economist Daron Acemoğlu will share a stage in Istanbul with Hande Ocak Basev — AI strategist, WSI London Managing Partner, and one of the most consequential Turkish voices in the global AI leadership conversation. Their subject: in the age of artificial intelligence, who shapes power and who benefits from progress? TBMag previews the event and the ideas behind it.

There are questions that economic theory asks and questions that lived experience demands. Daron Acemoğlu has spent thirty years making the case that these are, at bottom, the same question — that the abstract machinery of growth, institutions, and technological change is ultimately a story about who holds power, who gets to shape the conditions in which progress happens, and whose gains are actually distributed when the productivity numbers improve. He won the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences in 2024, alongside Simon Johnson and James A. Robinson, for precisely this work: a body of research that demonstrated, with rigorous empirical force, that institutions shape prosperity, and that the quality of institutions — whether inclusive or extractive — determines whether economic gains are shared or concentrated.

On 24 March 2026, Acemoğlu will bring that framework to Istanbul for a structured dialogue co-hosted by Forbes Türkiye and WSI Digital Consulting Services, built around a question that his recent work has made central to the global AI debate: in the age of artificial intelligence, who shapes power and who benefits from progress?

The event is being hosted by Hande Ocak Basev — Managing Partner of WSI London, Deputy Chair of the WSI Global AI Leadership Committee, and one of the most active Turkish voices in the international conversation about AI strategy, governance, and leadership. Basev’s own framing of the conversation is direct: ‘For years, I have followed his research, referenced his work in my talks, and returned to his books whenever questions about power, institutions, and progress resurfaced in my own work on AI. His work has consistently challenged the assumption that technological progress automatically leads to shared prosperity.’

“In the age of artificial intelligence, who shapes power and who benefits from progress? This is not a theoretical question. It is the question that will determine whether AI becomes the greatest redistribution of economic opportunity in history, or the greatest concentration of it.”

Acemoğlu on AI: The Sceptic in the Room

Daron Acemoğlu is not an AI pessimist in the dystopian sense — he does not predict robotic takeovers or machine consciousness. He is something more analytically precise and, in some ways, more challenging: a rigorous institutional economist who has looked at the history of technological change and concluded that the benefits of new technology are not distributed automatically, but through the political and institutional frameworks that govern its deployment.

His recent work, including the co-authored paper ‘The Simple Macroeconomics of AI’ (2024), makes a carefully argued case that the productivity gains from current AI deployment are likely to be significantly smaller than the most enthusiastic projections suggest — not because the technology is not powerful, but because the ways it is currently being applied tend to automate tasks at the lower end of the value chain while concentrating the gains at the top. His concern is not with AI as such but with the institutional environment in which AI is being developed: dominated by a small number of very large companies, with minimal democratic oversight, weak competition, and structural incentives to deploy AI in ways that reduce labour costs rather than augment human capability.

This is a framework with direct application to Turkey, where the AI adoption debate — as TBMag has been reporting this week — has moved from whether to adopt to how to govern the adoption. The country’s 17% AI usage rate among adults (compared to a European average of 32%, according to F4e CEO İrem Yelkenci’s research) is not simply a technology gap. It is, in Acemoğlu’s framing, partly an institutional gap: the difference between countries that have developed public, educational, and regulatory infrastructure around AI and those in which adoption has been left primarily to market dynamics and individual initiative.

Hande Ocak Basev: Building the Bridge Between Global Theory and Local Practice

The choice of Hande Ocak Basev as host and interlocutor for the Istanbul dialogue is significant. Basev occupies a position that is genuinely unusual in the Turkish AI landscape: she is simultaneously embedded in the global AI leadership infrastructure — as Deputy Chair of the WSI Global AI Leadership Committee — and deeply engaged with the specific conditions and opportunities of the Turkish market and the Turkish diaspora business community in the UK.

Her recent activities give a sense of the breadth and coherence of her work. In February 2026, she moderated the Women in Tech Panel II at the London Embassy, held in recognition of the International Day of Women and Girls in Science and supported by the FCDO. The panel — bringing together Julia Sutcliffe on national science strategy, Ahu Ece Hartavi Karci on the academic pipeline, Ahu Purray on bridging innovation and practice, and Didem Ün Ateş on transitioning from corporate leadership to founding an AI company — addressed a question that Basev has made central to her advocacy: how do we move from mere representation to real, systemic influence for women in science and technology?

She is also leading the ‘AI Superpowered: HR Lead’ programme — developed with PERYÖN (the Turkish Human Resources Management Association) and WSI London, accredited by SHRM (Society for Human Resource Management), and specifically designed for C-Level HR leaders. Now entering its third cohort (15 April – 17 June 2026), the programme addresses the full strategic range of AI’s impact on human resources: from recruitment and performance management to talent development and digital transformation. It is, as far as Basev knows, the first and only international AI-focused certification programme in the HR field in Turkey.

Most recently, she announced a strategic partnership between WSI London and NEUROssance to build a global quantum learning ecosystem — a collaboration that positions cognitive readiness alongside technical capability as the twin imperatives of AI transformation. ‘AI transformation requires more than technological adoption,’ she noted. ‘It requires cognitive readiness.’

The Istanbul Dialogue: Two Special Conversations Around One Central Question

The 24 March event in Istanbul will feature two structured conversations, both built around the central question of power and progress in the AI age. The format — intimate, dialogic, designed for depth rather than broadcast — reflects Basev’s consistent preference for intellectual seriousness over spectacle.

The questions on the table will include: how does technological change reshape sectors and how are its gains distributed across society — from production to productivity, from efficiency to equity? What institutional frameworks are required to ensure that AI adoption in Turkey and in emerging economies more broadly produces inclusive rather than extractive outcomes? And what does Acemoğlu’s Nobel-recognised body of work on institutions and prosperity tell us about the conditions under which AI might genuinely become an engine of shared growth?

These are not questions with easy answers. They are, however, exactly the right questions — and the combination of a Nobel laureate economist, a leading AI strategist with deep Turkish-British roots, and a Istanbul audience of business leaders, policymakers, and innovators is exactly the right combination to pursue them.

TBMag will report on the dialogue following the 24 March event.

EVENT DETAILS

• Event:  Dialogue with Prof. Dr. Daron Acemoğlu — Institutions, Technology and the Future of Power
• Date:  24 March 2026  ·  Istanbul
• Co-hosts:  Forbes Türkiye  ·  WSI Digital Consulting Services
• Host / Moderator:  Hande Ocak Basev — Managing Partner, WSI London  ·  Deputy Chair, WSI Global AI Leadership Committee
• Central question:  In the age of AI, who shapes power and who benefits from progress?
• Acemoğlu:  Nobel Prize in Economics 2024  ·  MIT Professor  ·  Co-author: Why Nations Fail, Power and Progress