Prediction Machines, Updated and Expanded by Ajay Agrawal
Ajay Agrawal . Unknown Year . English
Named one of "The five best books to understand AI" by The Economist The impact AI will have is profound, but the economic framework for understanding it is surprisingly simple. Artificial intelligence seems to do the impossible, magically bringing machines to life—driving cars, trading stocks, and teaching children. But facing the sea change that AI brings can be paralyzing. How should companies set strategies, governments design policies, and people plan their lives for a world so different from what we know? In the face of such uncertainty, many either cower in fear or predict an impossibly sunny future. But in Prediction Machines, three eminent economists recast the rise of AI as a drop in the cost of prediction. With this masterful stroke, they lift the curtain on the AI-is-magic hype and provide economic clarity about the AI revolution as well as a basis for action by executives, policy makers, investors, and entrepreneurs. In this new, updated edition, the authors illustrate how, when AI is framed as cheap prediction, its extraordinary potential becomes clear: Prediction is at the heart of making decisions amid uncertainty. Our businesses and personal lives are riddled with such decisions. Prediction tools increase productivity—operating machines, handling documents, communicating with customers. Uncertainty constrains strategy. Better prediction creates opportunities for new business strategies to compete. The authors reset the context, describing the striking impact the book has had and how its argument and its implications are playing out in the real world. And in new material, they explain how prediction fits into decision-making processes and how foundational technologies such as quantum computing will impact business choices. Penetrating, insightful, and practical, Prediction Machines will help you navigate the changes on the horizon.
Categories: Productivity & Personal Development
About the Author
Joshua Gans is a professor of strategic management and the Jeffrey S. Skoll Chair of Technical Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto (with a cross appointment in the Department of Economics). From 2013 to 2019, he was area coordinator of strategic management. Prior to 2011, he was the foundation professor of management (information economics) at the Melbourne Business School, University of Melbourne. Prior to that he was at the University of New South Wales School of Economics. In 2011, Joshua was a visiting researcher at Microsoft Research (New England). Joshua has a PhD from Stanford University and an honors degree in economics from the University of Queensland. In 2012, Joshua was appointed as a research associate of the NBER in the Productivity, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship Program. At Rotman, he teaches entrepreneurial strategy to MBA and commerce students. He has also co-authored (with Stephen King, Robin Stonecash, and Martin Byford) the Australasian edition of Greg Mankiw’s Principles of Economics (published by Cengage); Core Economics for Managers (Cengage); Finishing the Job (MUP); Parentonomics (MIT Press); Information Wants to be Shared (Harvard Business Review Press); The Disruption Dilemma (MIT Press); Prediction Machines: The Simple Economics of Artificial Intelligence (Harvard Business Review Press); Scholarly Publishing and its Discontents; and Innovation + Equality (MIT Press). Most recently he is the author of The Pandemic Information Gap: The Brutal Economics of COVID-19 (MIT Press, 2020) and The Pandemic Information Solution: Overcoming the Brutal Economics of Covid-19 (Endeavour, 2020). Joshua has developed specialties in the nature of technological competition and innovation, economic growth, publishing economics, industrial organization, and regulatory economics. This research has culminated in publications in the American Economic Review, the Journal of Political Economy, the RAND Journal of Economics, the Journal of Economic Perspectives, the Journal of Public Economics, and the Journal of Regulatory Economics. Joshua serves as department editor of Management Science and associate editor at the Journal of Industrial Economics. He is on the editorial boards of Games and Economic Analysis and Policy. In 2007, Joshua was awarded the Economic Society of Australia’s Young Economist Award. In 2008, Joshua was elected as a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences, Australia. He has also written for the Financial Times, the Sloan Management Review, and more than two hundred opinion pieces published in other outlets.
