Competition in the Digital Age
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 …
If someone had said that I would be writing a blog post to consider a law that might imprison people for conducting statistical analysis on publicly available data, I would have thought that was unlikely because who would ever propose, let alone enact, such a law? The other day we got our answer: France! The …
Continue reading "The unintended consequences of France’s ban on statistical analysis of Judges"
News coverage of automation and machine learning tends to focus on extraordinary events, such as computers winning at Jeopardy and Go, and robotic arms flipping burgers in short-order restaurants. Additional headlines foster a sense of nightmares, conjuring pictures of autonomous cars killing pedestrians and newly automated establishments laying off their workforce. The combination of headlines …
Google started its annual I/O conference yesterday. It was packed full of AI applications showing that Google really is going 'AI First.' It even changed its research arm name from Google Research to Google AI. But perhaps the most draw dropping demonstration was when Google used an AI to make calls and book appointments. I …
There is a great scene in A Series of Unfortunate Events (the Lemony Snicket books and now Netflix series) where a couple live in a fashionable penthouse suite but the elevator in the building is off limits because elevators are presently ‘out.’ So everyone, happily or not, has to ascend and descend many flights of …
My book with Ajay Agrawal and Avi Goldfarb is out now. It is called Prediction Machines: The Simple Economics of Artificial Intelligence. We have written some pieces that provide little excursions into the book. "A Simple Tool to Start Making Decisions with AI," HBR Online, 17 April 2018. "Make sure AI is right for your business …
[with Ajay Agrawal and Avi Goldfarb, originally published in HBR Online under the title "Is your company's data actually valuable in the AI era?" , 17 Jan 2018. Their book, Prediction Machines, is coming out in April 2018]. AI is coming. That is what we heard throughout 2017 and will likely continue to hear throughout this year. …
One of the most compelling reasons why a superintelligent (i.e., way smarter than human), artificial intelligence (AI) may end up destroying us is the so-called paperclip apocalypse. Posited by Nick Bostrom, this involves some random engineer creating an AI with the goal of making paperclips. That AI then becomes superintelligent and in the single minded …
Continue reading "Can a superintelligence self-regulate and not destroy us?"
Digitopoly 