Joshua Gans on the Economics of AI

When Joshua Gans and his co-authors released their book Prediction Machines in 2018, they were writing about a topic that seemed quite niche. At this time, machine learning was just starting out. In the last year, the speed at which artificial intelligence has advanced has surprised almost everyone.

In this conversation, we hear how the analytical framework that he and his colleagues developed helps to sort through the hype. He argues artificial intelligence is best thought of as a prediction machine. You’ll hear why he’s optimistic that artificial intelligence will be able to help people remove some of the drudgery from some jobs, but at this time, doesn’t seem likely to take over full jobs. He’ll share how understanding artificial intelligence as an advance in predictive statistics will help leaders assess how artificial intelligence may or may not be useful. 

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