HOW LARGE LANGUAGE MODELS REFLECT HUMAN JUDGMENT
Harvard Business Review
Artificial intelligences are prediction machines. They can tell you the probability it will rain today, but they cannot tell you whether or not you should pack an umbrella. That’s because the umbrella decision requires more than just prediction — if the probability of rain is 10%, some people will choose to carry an umbrella, but others won’t. Why will different people behave differently even though they are faced with the same information? Because they have different preferences.
from prediction to transformation
Harvard Business Review
While the popular view is that insights are the key benefit of artificial intelligence, in truth AI creates value by improving the quality of decisions. The good news is, the opportunities for it to do that in business are countless. But because decisions in one area of an organization usually have an impact on decisions in other areas, introducing AI often entails redesigning whole systems. In that way, AI is similar to groundbreaking technologies of the past, like electricity, which initially was used only narrowly but ultimately transformed manufacturing.
Late last month, OpenAI released ChatGPT, a new AI tool that can tell stories and write code. It has the potential to take over certain roles traditionally held by humans, such as copywriting, answering customer service inquiries, writing news reports, and creating legal documents. As AI continues to improve, more and more current jobs will be threatened by automation. But AI presents opportunities as well and will create new jobs and different kinds of organizations. The question isn’t whether AI will be good enough to take on more cognitive tasks but rather how we’ll adapt.
Chat-GPT and how AI disrupts industries
Harvard Business Review
The tech world is abuzz over ChatGPT, the latest creation from artificial-intelligence company OpenAI. Whether you want to learn more about Alexis de Tocqueville, read a Shakespearean-style poem about bagels, or even generate computer code, ChatGPT can make it happen in seconds.
That is all in good fun. But ChatGPT – a software application that you can make requests of using plain language over an unimaginable variety of topics – represents more. It gives us a peak into a future where AI can turn people’s work from ordinary to extraordinary and give a significant boost to the Canadian economy.
ChatGPT, AI can boost the economy by removing language barriers for immigrants seeking employment
Experimenting with a systems approach using AI will help reveal its potential and allow immigration officials to begin asking different questions.
A broader approach to AI would cut bias in immigration decisions while adding speed
Policy Options
Surprise emergence of a ‘unicorn’ startup in Newfoundland provides a clue about AI’s near future in business
The Toronto Star
Five years ago, artificial intelligence (AI) experts would have guessed that the first AI “unicorn” startup (a venture valued at more than $1 billion) in Canada would be from Toronto, Montreal, or Edmonton. That’s where the pioneers of AI research were. That’s where Big Tech (Google, Facebook and Microsoft) did their AI research.
AI could fundamentally change the way systems are built...if we let it
Rotman Insights Hub
Everything is built on systems of constraint, and until we revisit the rules that glue these systems together, AI will only ever add incremental value.
When rules have existed for a long time, it can be hard to see the system that they are embedded in. Because rules are reliable, a myriad of rules and procedures can stick together. If something moves, they have to all move at once.
POWER & PREDICTION: THE ANTI-DISCRIMINATION OPPORTUNITY
Rotman Magazine
AI systems solutions have the potential to reduce discrimination across domains, from education to healthcare to banking.
How to Win with Machine Learning
Harvard Business Review
The past decade has brought tremendous advances in an exciting dimension of artificial intelligence—machine learning. This technique for taking data inputs and turning them into predictions has enabled tech giants such as Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google to dramatically improve their products.
A Simple Tool to Start Making Decisions with the Help of AI
Harvard Business Review
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 our research and in our book, we begin by distilling AI down to its very simplest economics, and we offer one approach to taking that first step.
When Steve Jobs paced the stage in January 2007 introducing the world to his latest creation, the iPhone, not a single observer reacted by saying, “Well, it’s curtains for the taxi industry!” Fast forward to 2018 and that appears to be precisely the case.
ADDING ‘REAL’ VALUE
Indian Management
Regardless of whether one adopts a pessimistic or optimistic view of artificial intelligence, policy will shape how it affects society. This column looks at both the policies that will influence the diffusion of AI and policies that will address its consequences. One of the most significant long-run policy issues relates to the potential for artificial intelligence to increase inequality.
Economic Policy for Artificial Intelligence
VoxEU
Earlier this month, Google unveiled remarkable new capabilities for its automated assistant. They’re based on Google’s growing expertise in artificial intelligence (AI).
Perhaps the most dramatic, and, to look at the deluge of commentary, troubling, demonstration was the ability of Google AI to make phone calls that imitate a human.
Google’s AI Assistant Is a Reminder that Privacy and Security Are Not the Same
Harvard Business Review
Just because you "work with people" doesn't mean your job won't change with AI
Quartz
Human Resource (HR) managers often view their job as dealing with people. They believe that in order to do it well, they must know people, read emotional cues, and respond with empathy. Therefore, they conclude, should artificial intelligence (AI) put jobs at risk, they’ll be the ones delivering bad news, not receiving it.
Well, I am sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but HR jobs are actually quite likely to be impacted by artificial intelligence.
If someone were to provide you with an oracle to tell you the future, where would you use it first? A common answer is to predict moves in the stock market.
The new revolution in artificial intelligence promises to hand everyone an oracle, whether for investing or another decision.
AI will change stock-market trading, but it can’t wipe out the human touch
Market Watch
For the last few years the talk has been on Big Data. The world has taken a step forward again – and now the buzz is on AI – artificial intelligence. The very phrase conjures images of Hollywood Robocops, Hals and Hers. But what is the reality?
Artificial Intelligence for Beginners
IEDP Viewpoint
Companies are suddenly declaring themselves "AI first." Why it’s a problem for their current customers
LinkedIn Pulse
In March 2017, in a keynote speech at its annual I/O event, Google CEO Sundar Pichai announced that the company was shifting from a “mobile-first world to an AI-first world.” Then a series of announcements followed involving AI in various ways: from the development of specialized chips for optimizing machine learning, to the use of deep learning in new applications including cancer research, to putting Google’s AI-driven assistant on as many devices as possible. Pichai claimed the company was transitioning from “searching and organizing the world’s information to AI and machine learning.”
To answer this question, consider this thought experiment. Most people are familiar with shopping at Amazon. As with most online retailers, you visit its website, shop for items, place them in your cart, pay for them – and then Amazon ships them to you. Right now, Amazon’s business model is “shopping then shipping.”
Artificial Intelligence is Here. Is it time to rethink your business strategy?
UofT Magazine
Make Sure AI is Right for Your Business before taking the plunge
The Globe and Mail
“AI is the next big thing,” your boss tells you. “Go out and get me some of that AI.” What do you do? Is AI something you can just go out and purchase? Is it like a robot you can buy and then just plug in and put it to work? To read the popular press on the coming AI revolution and the opportunity or threat that AI is coming for jobs, you could be forgiven for having that notion. But that is far from the reality of artificial intelligence today. Instead, as with many technologies, AI does one thing really well. You need to understand what that is and where it fits in before you can “get some AI.”
Toward a National Policy on AI
Policy Options
Advances in AI technology will improve our capacity for prediction and help to develop an AI policy toward deciding on the many trade-offs we want to take as a society.
Navigating the AI Maze is a challenge for governments
The Conversation
New developments in artificial intelligence are proceeding apace. As an economist who has researched the AI revolution, I see 2018 as similar to 1995 when the commercial internet was born. The technology is advancing rapidly, but most businesses are only just starting to figure out how to put it to work.
Artificial intelligence in the Boardroom
The Corporate Board
In January 2007, when Steve Jobs paced the stage and introduced the world to the iPhone, not a single observer reacted with, “Well, it’s curtains for the taxi industry.” Yet fast forward to 2018 and that appears to be precisely the case.
Is your company's data actually valuable in the AI Era?
Harvard Business Review
AI is coming. That is what we heard throughout 2017 and will likely continue to hear throughout this year. For established businesses that are not Google or Facebook, a natural question to ask is: What have we got that is going to allow us to survive this transition?
The Simple Economics of Machine Intelligence
Harvard Business Review
The year 1995 was heralded as the beginning of the “New Economy.” Digital communication was set to upend markets and change everything. But economists by and large didn’t buy into the hype. It wasn’t that we didn’t recognize that something changed. It was that we recognized that the old economics lens remained useful for looking at the changes taking place. ...
How AI will change strategy: a thought experiment
Harvard Business Review
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 prediction cheaper, economic theory dictates that we’ll use prediction more frequently and widely, and the value of complements to prediction – like human judgment – will rise. But what does all this mean for strategy? ...
It doesn’t take a tremendous amount of training to begin a job as a cashier at McDonald’s. Even on their first day, most new cashiers are good enough. And they improve as they serve more customers. Although a new cashier may be slower and make more mistakes than their experienced peers, society generally accepts that they will learn from experience. ...
The trade-off every AI company will face
Harvard Business Review
How AI will change the way we make decisions
Harvard Business Review
With the recent explosion in AI, there has been the understandable concern about its potential impact on human work. Plenty of people have tried to predict which industries and jobs will be most affected, and which skills will be most in demand. (Should you learn to code? Or will AI replace coders too?)
Rather than trying to predict specifics, we suggest an alternative approach. Economic theory suggests that AI will substantially raise the value of human judgment. People who display good judgment will become more valuable, not less. But to understand what good judgment entails and why it will become more valuable, we have to be precise about what we mean. ...
What to expect from Artificial Intelligence
Sloan Management Review
To understand how advances in artificial intelligence are likely to change the workplace — and the work of managers — you need to know where AI delivers the most value. ...
On October 12, 2016, President Obama’s Executive Office published two reports that laid out its plans for the future of artificial intelligence (AI). The reports received less media attention than they might have otherwise because the United States was gripped by the final weeks of a presidential campaign race. But depending on one’s view of AI’s potential impact, the work described by these reports may be more influential on the long arc of history than the outcome of that election. Combined, the two reports include eighty-eight pages and twenty-five recommendations. Here are the highlights.
The US AI Policy Roadmap
Harvard Business Review