Competition in the Digital Age
A firm in a “pick and shovel” market produces a good or service that serves as an input to other businesses. A “frontier” pick-and-shovel supplier has made a significant technical breakthrough in applied science or engineering that has enabled capabilities in its product previously considered impractical, uneconomical, or impossible. Pick-and-shovel markets have been around for …
What can a nineteenth-century economist teach a twenty-first-century Chief Executive Officer (CEO) at one of the largest technology firms? More to the point, why is Microsoft's CEO, Satya Nadella, quoting William Stanley Jevons? Jevons was a dominant figure in economic thought in Britain during the second half of the nineteenth century, but not today. His …
Continue reading "Artificial Intelligence and the Jevons Paradox"
It is that time of year again: Time to look back at information technology in 2024 and make light of it. As with prior year-in-reviews, this one will be arranged like an award ceremony. There are three criteria for the dozen awards given out this year:• The award must be for something involving digital technology.• …
Generative AI has created a gold rush today, but that rush has not yet grown into either a productivity boom or a financial bubble. There are good reasons to think this rush could become either one.Which one is just around the corner? Could it be both? In case you forgot, we did live through a …
The commercial future of AI will soon be bigger than the actions of any firm, individual, research team, or open-source community. In the near term, a massive tailwind of potential use cases and nearly completed projects will determine the rate of progress in creating value for users and suppliers. Still, the source of the next …
Large language models (LLMs) have overrun commercial markets, more like a tsunami than a normal technical wave of interest. The topic is everywhere –news stories, blogs, podcasts, startup investments, analyst reports, hackathons, and government announcements. A virtual frenzy surrounds it. If you possess a technical background, you might find this frenzy puzzling. The technological roots …
It is time to review the year in digital technology. Oh, what fun! As with prior reviews, we will arrange this review like an award ceremony. There are three criteria for an award: It must involve digital technology. The key event must have taken place this year, 2023. And it must lend itself to sass …
What happened in the world of IT? Who deserves notoriety for their behavior? It is time to review 2019, and, while we are at it, make a mockery of the most noteworthy. After all, the world is already messed up, so at least let's have a bit of fun. Reminder: The awards generate no money, …
Today we are living through one of those heady situations in which scientific, technical, and commercial frontiers all simultaneously advance in a grand interrelated dance. Advances in computer technology in the last decade opened up the potential for big gains in applications of neural networks aimed at recognizing and diagnosing visual images. Many startups and …
Continue reading "Earning stripes in medical machine learning"
Many querulous conversations fan the flames in policy debates about artificial intelligence. Everyone agrees we are transitioning to something, but not on what that will be. Anyone want to venture a guess? It is safe to bet on widespread use of neural networks and deep learning. Anything else? Some futurists also forecast a confrontation between …
Digitopoly 