Have you ever wondered what economists do fun in Indiana? You might think that they could benefit from the global supply of digital goods like everyone else without having to worry about local effects. But you would be wrong. They are always thinking local. For Purdue University economists, Mara Faccio and John McConnell, they observed …
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?"
Technology and business forecasting is hard. I get that. That is one reason I try to avoid it except, of course, for fun or to get attention. But the one thing that continues to perplex me is why pundits keep coming back to one specific well: that Apple is doomed. The latest is surrounding the …
It is not even close. In this view (#expressyourunpopularopinion), I know that I find no agreement amongst my economist colleagues. Facebook is generally perceived to be a monopolist in something called the 'social network market.' The latest discussion of that comes in the Financial Times from Tim Harford. I rarely find myself in disagreement with …
Continue reading "Facebook DOES NOT have a monopoly on the news"
I was recently asked what books I thought any MBA must read. I figured I would share my list 5 books with everyone. OK 12 books. It's hard to pair it down. From Ray Fisman and Tim Sullivan, The Org: The Underlying Logic of the Office is a great exposition of how organisations really operate. …
For as long as I have been hearing about autonomous vehicles, I have been reading about potential lives saved if humans were no longer driving. 37,000 Americans died in car crashes last year and, in 2013, according to the World Health Organization, 1.25 million people died. These numbers seem high but given the amount of …
Continue reading "The Safety Cost Savings for Autonomous Vehicles are Way Understated"
[This article was initially published in HBR Online on 19th October, 2017] Netflix hit the industry with some bombshell moves this month. First, it announced that it plans to spend $8 billion on original content next year (including on 80 new movies). This is far more than any other online player. Obviously, this is great …
[This post originally appeared in HBR online on 3rd October, 2017] by Ajay Agrawal, Joshua Gans and Avi Goldfarb How will AI change strategy? That’s the single most common question the three of us are asked from corporate executives, and it’s not trivial to answer. AI is fundamentally a prediction technology. As advances in AI make …
Continue reading "How AI Could Change Amazon: A thought experiment"
This video produced by Vox.com on why we have QWERTY-standard keyboards was interesting but it didn't actually answer the question as to why QWERTY was over-rated. It's claim is that it was the result of collusion from typewriter manufacturers and how typing was taught. Sure, that explains how it started, but it doesn't explain why …
Twitter have decided to run an experiment. They are giving random users twice the character limit -- 280 rather than 140 characters. Their motivation was their observation that in Japanese, Korean and Chinese 140 characters conveys alot more information and so people tend to tweet more often. Here is their full statement. The instructive graph …
Digitopoly 