Eric Budish has a new paper out on "The Economic Limits of the Blockchain." He demonstrates a potentially fundamental contradiction at the heart of 'proof of work' schemes to support cryptocurrencies -- the most famous of which is, of course, Bitcoin. It is an incredibly clear issue so I figured I would recount it here. …
Should we let AI just make calls?
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 …
Is Amazon really an antitrust worry?
That was the topic of a panel I was involved in at the Chicago Booth Annual Antitrust Conference last week. One thing you get from a Chicago panel is a diverse range of opinions. The panel was motivated by an article in the Yale Law Journal by Lina Khan written when she was a student …
Can AI make you happier with clothes?
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 …
A Simple Tool to Start Making Decisions with the Help of AI
(by Ajay Agrawal, Joshua Gans and Avi Goldfarb); originally published in HBR Online 17 April 2018. There is no shortage of hot takes regarding the significant impact that artificial intelligence (AI) is going to have on business in the near future. Much less has been written about how, exactly, companies should get started with it. In …
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Prediction Machines
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 …
Some simple economics of ICOs
I have a new paper out (ungated here) with Christian Catalini (or 'Dan' as we call him) that examines initial coin offerings (or ICOs). These are the big new thing in fund raising for ventures whereby startups issue tokens that are redeemable for services that they may provide or facilitate in the future. Here is John …
