{"id":206944,"date":"2017-07-21T12:16:31","date_gmt":"2017-07-21T16:16:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/prometheism-transhumanism-posthumanism\/how-ai-is-already-changing-business-harvard-business-review\/"},"modified":"2017-07-21T12:16:31","modified_gmt":"2017-07-21T16:16:31","slug":"how-ai-is-already-changing-business-harvard-business-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/prometheism-transhumanism-posthumanism\/ai\/how-ai-is-already-changing-business-harvard-business-review\/","title":{"rendered":"How AI Is Already Changing Business &#8211; Harvard Business Review"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><p>    Erik Brynjolfsson, MIT Sloan School professor,    explains how rapid advances in machine learning are presenting    new opportunities for businesses. He breaks down how the    technology works and what it can and cant do (yet). He also    discusses the potential impact of AI on the economy, how    workforces will interact with it in the future, and suggests    managers start experimenting now. Brynjolfsson is the    co-author, with Andrew McAfee, of the HBR Big Idea article,    The    Business of Artificial Intelligence. Theyre also the    co-authors of the new book, Machine,    Platform, Crowd: Harnessing Our Digital Future.  <\/p>\n<p>        Download this podcast  <\/p>\n<p>    SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: Welcome to the HBR IdeaCast from    Harvard Business Review. Im Sarah Green Carmichael.  <\/p>\n<p>    Its a pretty sad photo when you look at it. A robot, just over    a meter tall and shaped kind of like a pudgy rocket ship,    laying on its side in a shallow pool in the courtyard of a    Washington, D.C. office building. Workers  human ones  stand    around, trying to figure out how to rescue it.  <\/p>\n<p>    The security robot had just been on the job for a few days when    the mishap occurred. One entrepreneur who works in the office    complex wrote: We were promised flying cars. Instead we got    suicidal robots.  <\/p>\n<p>    For many people online, the snapshot symbolized something about    the autonomous future that awaits. Robots are coming, and    computers can do all kinds of new work for us. Cars can drive    themselves. For some people this is exciting, but there is also    clearly fear out there about dystopia. Tesla CEO Elon Musk    calls artificial intelligence an existential threat.  <\/p>\n<p>    But our guest on the show today is cautiously optimistic. Hes    been watching how businesses are using artificial intelligence    and how advances in machine learning will change how we work.    Erik Brynjolfsson teaches at MIT Sloan School and runs the MIT    Initiative on the Digital Economy. And hes the co-author with    Andrew McAfee of the new HBR article, The Business of    Artificial Intelligence.  <\/p>\n<p>    Erik, thanks for talking with the HBR IdeaCast.  <\/p>\n<p>    ERIK BRYNJOLFSSON: Its a pleasure.  <\/p>\n<p>    SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: Why are you cautiously optimistic about    the future of AI?  <\/p>\n<p>    ERIK BRYNJOLFSON: Well actually that story you told about the    robot that had trouble was a great lead in because in many ways    it epitomizes some of the strengths and weaknesses of robots    today. Machines are quite powerful and in many ways, theyre    superhuman you know just as a calculator can do arithmetic a    lot better than me, were having artificial intelligence thats    able to do all sorts of functions in terms of recognizing    different kinds of cancer images, or now getting superhuman    even in speech recognition in some applications but theyre    also quite narrow. They dont have general intelligence the way    people do. And thats why partnerships of humans and machines    are often going to be the most successful in business.  <\/p>\n<p>    SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: You know its funny, cause when you    talk about image recognition I think about a fantastic image in    your article that is called Puppy or Muffin. I was amazed at    how much puppies and muffins look alike in sort of even more    amazed that robots can tell them apart.  <\/p>\n<p>    ERIK BRYNJOLFSSON: Yeah, its a funny image. It always gets a    laugh and encourage people to go take a look at it. And there    are lots of things that humans are pretty good at in    distinguishing different kinds of images. And for a long time,    machines were nowhere near as good as recently as seven, eight    years ago, machines made about a 30 percent error rate on image    net, this big database that Fei Fei Li created of over 10    million images. Now machines are down less, you know, less than    5%, 3-4% depending on how its set up. Humans still have about    a 5% error rate. Sometimes they get those puppies and nothings    wrong. Be careful what you reach for next time youre at that    breakfast bar. But thats a good example.  <\/p>\n<p>    The reason its improved so much in the past few years is    because of this new approach using deep neural nets thats    gotten much more powerful for image recognition and really all    sorts of different applications. I think thats a big reason    why theres so much excitement these days.  <\/p>\n<p>    SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: Yeah, its one of those things where we    all kind of like to make fun of machines that get it wrong but    also its sort of terrifying when they get it right.  <\/p>\n<p>    ERIK BRYNJOLFSSON: Yeah. Machines are not going to be perfect    drivers, theyre not going to be perfect at making credit    decisions that are going to be perfect at distinguishing you    know muffins and puppies. And so, we have to make sure we build    systems that are robust to those imperfections. But the point    we make an article, Andy and I point out that you know humans    arent perfect at any of those tasks either. And so, the    benchmark for most entrepreneurs and managers is: whos going    to be better for solving this particular task or better yet can    we create a system that combines the strengths of both humans    and machines and does something better than either of them    would do individually.  <\/p>\n<p>    SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: With photo recognition and facial    recognition, I know that Facebook facial recognition software    cant tell the difference between me wearing makeup and me not    wearing makeup, which is also sort of funny and horrifying    right? But at the same time, you know, I think a lot of us    struggle to recognize people out of context, we see someone at    the grocery store and we think you know, I know that person    from somewhere. So, its something that humans dont always get    right either.  <\/p>\n<p>    ERIK BRYNJOLFSSON: Oh yeah. Im the worlds worst. You know at    conferences I would love it if there was a little machine    whispering in my ear who this person is and how I met them    before. So there, you know, there are those kinds of tradeoffs.    But it can lead to some risks. For instance, you know if    machines are making bad decisions on important things, like who    should get parole or who gets credit or not. That could be    really problematic. Worse yet, sometimes they have biases that    are built in from the data sets they use. If the people you    hire in the past all had a certain kind of ethnic or gender    tilt to them, then if you use a training set and teach the    machine how to hire people it will learn the same biases that    the humans had previously. And, of course, that can be    perpetuated and scaled up in ways that we wouldnt like to see.  <\/p>\n<p>    SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: There is a lot of hype right now around    AI or artificial intelligence. Some people say machine    learning, other people come along and say: hold on hold on hold    on, like a lot of this is just software and weve been using it    for a long time. So how do you kind of think through the    different terms and what they really mean?  <\/p>\n<p>    ERIK BRYNJOLFSSON: Well theres a really important difference    between the way the machines are working now versus previously    you know any  McAfee and I wrote this book The Second    Machine Age where we talked about having machines do more    and more cognitive tasks. And for most of the past 30 or 40    years thats been done by us painstakingly programming, writing    code of exactly what we want the machine to do. You know if    its doing tax preparation, add up this number and multiply it    by that number, and of course we had to understand exactly what    the task was in order to specify it.  <\/p>\n<p>    But now the new machine learning approaches literally have the    machines learn on their own things that we dont know how to    explain  the face recognition is a perfect example. It would    be really hard for me to describe you know my mothers face,    you know how far apart are her eyes or what does her ear look    like.  <\/p>\n<p>    ERIK BRYNJOLFSSON: I can recognize it but I couldnt really    write code to do it. And the way the machines are working now    is, instead of having us write the code, we give them lots and    lots of examples. You know here are pictures of my mom from    different perspectives, or here pictures of cats and dogs or    heres a piece of speech you know with the word yes and the    word no. And if you give them enough examples the machine    learning algorithms figure out the rules on their own.  <\/p>\n<p>    Thats a real breakthrough. It overcomes what we call Polanyis    paradox. Michael Polanyi the Polymath and philosopher from the    1960s famously said We all know more than we can tell but with    machine learning we dont have to be able to tell or explain    what to do. We just have to show examples. That change is    whats opening up so many new applications for machines and    allowing it to do a whole set of things that previously only    humans could do.  <\/p>\n<p>    SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: So, its interesting to think about    kind of the human work that has to just go into training the    machines like someone who would sit there literally looking at    pictures of blueberry muffins and tagging them muffin, muffin,    muffin so the machine you know learns thats not a Chihuahua,    thats a blueberry muffin. Is that the kind of thing where in    the future you could see that kind of rote algorithm, machine    training work being kind of a low-paid dead-end job whereas    maybe that person once would have had a more interesting job    but now the machine has the more interesting job.  <\/p>\n<p>    ERIK BRYNJOLFSSON: I dont think thats going to be a big    source of employment, but it is true there are places like    Amazons Mechanical Turk where thousands of people do exactly    what you said, they tag images and label them. Thats how    ImageNet the database of millions of images got labeled. And    so, there are people being hired to do that. Companies    sometimes find that training machines by having humans tagged    the data is one way to proceed.  <\/p>\n<p>    But often they can find ways of having data thats already    tagged in some way, thats generated from their enterprise    resource planning system or from their call center. And if    theyre clever, that will lead to the creation of this tag    data, and I should back up a bit and say that machines, one of    their big weaknesses is that they really do need tag data.    Thats the most powerful kind of algorithm, sometimes called    supervised learning, where humans have the advanced tag and    explained what the data means.  <\/p>\n<p>    And then the machine learns from those examples and eventually    can extrapolate it to other kinds of examples. But unlike    humans, they often need thousands or even millions of examples    to do a good job whereas you know, a two-year-old probably    would learn after one or two times what a cat was versus a dog    was that you wouldnt have to show, you know, 10,000 pictures    of a cat before they got it.  <\/p>\n<p>    SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: Right. Given where we are with AI and    machine learning right now, on balance, do you feel like this    is something that is overhyped and people talk too much about    sort of too science fiction terms or is it something thats not    quite hyped enough and actually people are underestimating what    it could do in the relatively near future.  <\/p>\n<p>    ERIK BRYNJOLFSSON: Well its actually both at the same time, if    you can believe it. I think that people have unrealistic    expectations about machines having all these general    capabilities kind of from watching science fiction like the    Terminator. And if a machine can understand Chinese characters    you might think it also could understand Chinese speech and it    could recommend a good Chinese restaurant, know a little bit    about the Xing dynasty and none of that would be true. A    machine that can play expert chess cant even play checkers or    go or other games. So, in a way theyre very narrow and    fragile.  <\/p>\n<p>    But on the other hand, I think the set of applications for    those narrow capabilities is quite large, using that supervised    learning algorithms, I think there are a lot more specific    tasks that could be done that weve only scratched the surface    of and because theyve improved so much in the past five or 10    years, most of those opportunities have not yet really been    explored or even discovered yet. Theres a few places where the    big giants like Google and Microsoft and Facebook have made    rapid progress, but I think that there are literally tens of    thousands of more narrow applications that small and medium    businesses could start using machine learning for in their own    areas.  <\/p>\n<p>    SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: What are some examples of ways that    companies are using this technology right now?  <\/p>\n<p>    ERIK BRYNJOLFSSON: Well one of my favorite ones I learned from    my friend Sebastian Thrun Hes the founder of Udacity, the    online learning course, which by the way is a good way to learn    more about these technologies. But he found that when people    were coming to his site and asking questions on the chat room,    some of the sales people were doing a really good job of come    to the right course and closing the sale and others, well, not    so much. This created a set of training data.  <\/p>\n<p>    He and his grad student realized that if they took the    transcripts they would see that certain sets of words in    certain dialogues lead to success and sales and others didnt.    And he fed that information into a machine learning algorithm    and it started identifying which patterns of phrases and    answers were the most successful.  <\/p>\n<p>    But what happened next was I think especially interesting    instead of just trying to build a bot that would answer all the    questions, they built a bot that would advise the human    salespeople. So now when people go to the site the bot kind of    looks over the shoulder of the human and when it sees some of    those key words it whispers into his or her ear: hey, you know    you might want to try this phrase or you might want to point    him to this particular course.  <\/p>\n<p>    And that works well for the most common kinds of queries, but    the more obscure ones that the bot has never seen before the    human is much better at. And this kind of partnership is a    great example of an effective use of AI and also how you can    use existing data to turn into a tag data set that the    supervised learning system benefits from.  <\/p>\n<p>    SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: So how did these people feel about    being coached by a bot?  <\/p>\n<p>    ERIK BRYNJOLFSSON: Well, its helped them close their sales so    its made them more productive. Sebastian says its about 50%    more successful when theyre using the bot. So I think its    been its been beneficial in helping them learn more rapidly    than they would have if they just kind of stumbled all along.  <\/p>\n<p>    Going forward, I think this is an example of how the bots are    often good at the more routine repetitive kinds of tasks, the    machines can do the ones that they have lots of data for. And    the humans tend to excel at the more unusual tasks for most of    us. I think thats kind of a good trade-off. Most of us would    prefer having kind of more interest in varied work lives rather    than doing the same thing over and over.  <\/p>\n<p>    SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: So, sales is a form of knowledge work    right and you sort of gave an example there. One of the big    challenges in that kind of work is that you cant  its really    hard to scale up one persons productivity if you are a law    firm, for example, and you want to serve more clients have to    hire more lawyers. It sounds like AI could be one way to get    finally around that conundrum.  <\/p>\n<p>    ERIK BRYNJOLFSSON: Yeah AI certainly can be a big force    multiplier. Its a great way of taking some of your best, you    know, lawyers or doctors and having them explain how they go    about doing things and give examples of successes and the    machine can learn from those and replicate it or be combined    with people who are already doing the jobs and help in a way    coached them or handle some of the cases that are most common.  <\/p>\n<p>    SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: So, is it just about being more    productive or did you see other examples of human machine    collaboration that tackled different types of business    challenges?  <\/p>\n<p>    ERIK BRYNJOLFSSON: Well in some cases its a matter of being    more productive, in many cases, a matter of doing the job    better than you could before. So there are systems now that can    help read medical images and diagnose cancer quite well, the    best ones often are still combined with humans because the    machines make different kinds of mistakes in the humans so that    the machine often will create what are called false positives    where it thinks theres cancer but its really not and the    humans are better at ruling those out. You know maybe there was    an eyelash on the image or something that was getting in the    way.  <\/p>\n<p>    And so, by having the machine first filter through all the    images and say hey here are the ones that look really    troubling. And then having a human look at those ones and focus    more closely on the ones that are problematic, you end up    getting much better outcomes than if that person had to look at    all the images herself or himself and maybe, maybe overlook    some potentially troubling cases.  <\/p>\n<p>    SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: Why now? Because people predicted for a    long time that I was just around the corner and sounds like    its finally starting to happen and really make its way into    businesses. Why are we seeing this finally start to happen    right now?  <\/p>\n<p>    ERIK BRYNJOLFSSON: Yes, thats a great question. Its really    the combination of three forces that have come together. The    first one is simply that we have much better computer power    than we did before. So, Moores Law, the doubling of computer    power is part of it. Theres also specialized chips called GPUs    and TPUs that are another tenfold or even a hundredfold faster    than ordinary chips. As a result, training a system that might    have taken a century or more if you done it with 1990s    computers can be done in a few days today.  <\/p>\n<p>    And so obviously that opens up a whole new set of possibilities    that just wouldnt have been practical before. The second big    force is the explosion of digital data. Data is the lifeblood    of these systems, you need them to train. And now we have so    many more digital images, digital transcripts, digital data    from factory gauges and keeping track of information, and that    all can be fed into these systems to train them.  <\/p>\n<p>    And as I said earlier, they need lots and lots of examples. And    now we have digital examples in a way we didnt previously and    in the end with the Internet are things you can imagine its    going to be a lot more digital data going forward. And last but    not least, there have been some significant improvements in the    algorithms the men and women working in these fields have    improved on the basic algorithms. Some of them were first    developed literally 30 years ago, but theyve now been tweaked    and improved, and by having faster computers and more data you    can learn more rapidly what works and what doesnt work. When    you put these three things together, computer power, more data,    and better algorithms, you get sometimes as much as a    millionfold improvement on some applications, for instance    recognizing pedestrians as they cross the street, which of    course is really important for applications like self-driving    cars.  <\/p>\n<p>    SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: If those are sort of the factors that    are pushing us forward, what are some of the factors that might    be inhibiting progress?  <\/p>\n<p>    ERIK BRYNJOLFSSON: Whats not holding us back is the    technology, what is holding us back is the imagination of    business executives to use these new tools in their businesses.    You know, with every general-purpose technology, whether its    electricity or the internal combustion engine the real power    comes from thinking of new ways of organizing your factory, new    ways of connecting to your customers, new business models.    Thats where the real value comes. And one of the reasons we    were so happy to write for Harvard Business Review was to reach    out to people and help them be more creative about using these    tools to change the way they do business. Thats where the real    value is.  <\/p>\n<p>    SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: I feel like so much of the broader    conversation that AI is about, will this create jobs or destroy    jobs? And Im just wondering is that a question that you get    asked a lot, and are you sick of answering it?  <\/p>\n<p>    ERIK BRYNJOLFSSON: Well of course it gets asked a lot. And Im    not sick of answering because its really important. I think    the biggest challenge for our society over the next 10 years is    going to be, how are we going to handle the economic    implications of these new technologies. And you introduced me    in the beginning as a cautious optimist, I think you said, and    I think thats about right. I think that if we handle this well    this can and should be the best thing that ever happened to    humanity.  <\/p>\n<p>    But I dont think its automatic. Im cautious about that. Its    entirely possible for us to not invest in the kind of education    and retraining of people to not do the kinds of new policies,    to encourage business formation and new business models even.    Income distribution has to be rethought and tax policy things    like the earned income tax credit in the United States and    similar wage subsidies in other countries.  <\/p>\n<p>    ERIK BRYNJOLFSSON: We need to make a bunch of changes across    the board at the policy level. Businesses need to rethink how    they work. Individuals need to take personal responsibility for    learning the new skills that are going to be needed going    forward. If we do all those things Im pretty optimistic.  <\/p>\n<p>    But I wouldnt want people to become complacent, because    already over the past 10 years a lot of people have been left    behind by the digital revolution that weve had so far. And    looking forward, Id say we aint seen nothing yet. We have    incredibly powerful technologies especially in artificial    intelligence that are opening up new possibilities. But I want    us to think about how we can use technology to create shared    prosperity for the many, not just the few.  <\/p>\n<p>    SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: Are there tasks or jobs that machine    learning, in your opinion, cant do or wont do?  <\/p>\n<p>    ERIK BRYNJOLFSSON: Oh, there are so many. Just to be totally    clear, most things, machine learning cant do. Its able to do    a few narrow areas really, really well. Just like a calculator    can do a few things really, really well, but humans are much    more general, much more broad set of skills, and the set of    skills that humans can do it is being encroached on.  <\/p>\n<p>    Machines are taking over more and more tasks are combining,    teaming up in more and more tasks but in particular, machines    are not very good at very broad-scale creativity you know.    Being an entrepreneur or writing a novel or developing a new    scientific theory or approach, those kinds of creativity are    beyond what machines can do today by and large.  <\/p>\n<p>    Secondly, and perhaps for an even broader impact, is    interpersonal skills, connecting with the humans. You know    were wired to trust and care for it and be interested in other    humans in a way that we arent with other machines.  <\/p>\n<p>    So, whether its coaching or sales or negotiation or caring for    people, persuading, people those are all areas where humans    have an edge. And I think there will be an explosion of new    jobs whether its for personal coaches or trainers or team    oriented activities. I would love to see more people learning    those kinds of softer skills that machines are not good at.    Thats where theyll be a lot of jobs in the future.  <\/p>\n<p>    SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: I was surprised to see in the article    though, that some of these AI programs are actually    surprisingly good at recognizing human emotions. I was really    startled by that.  <\/p>\n<p>    ERIK BRYNJOLFSSON: I have to be careful. One of the main things    I learned working with Andy and going to visit all these places    is never say never, any particular thing that one of us said    oh this will never happen, you know, we find out that someone    is working in a lab.  <\/p>\n<p>    So my advice is that their relative strengths and relative    weaknesses and emotional intelligence, I still think is a    relative strength of humans, but there are particular narrow    applications where machines are improving quite rapidly.    Affectiva, a company here in Boston has gotten very good at    reading emotions, is part of what you need to do to be a good    coach to be a caring person, is not the whole picture, but it    is one piece of the interpersonal skills that machines are    helping with.  <\/p>\n<p>    SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: What do you see as the biggest risks    with AI?  <\/p>\n<p>    ERIK BRYNJOLFSSON: I think there are a few. One of the big    risks is that these machine learning algorithms can have    implicit biases and they can be very hard to detect or correct.    If the training data is biased, has some kind of racial or    ethnic or other biases in its data, then those can be    perpetuated in the sample. And so, we need to be very careful    about how we train the systems and what data we give them.  <\/p>\n<p>    And its especially important because they dont have the kind    of explicit rules that earlier waves of technology had. So,    its hard to even know. Its unlikely to have a rule that says,    you know, dont give loans to black people or whatever, but it    may implicitly have its thumb on the scale in one way or the    other if the training data were biased.  <\/p>\n<p>    SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: Right. Because it might notice for    instance that, statistically speaking, black people get turned    down more for loans that kind of thing.  <\/p>\n<p>    ERIK BRYNJOLFSSON: Yeah, if the people who you had made those    decisions before were biased in a use for the training data    that could end up creating a biased training set. And you know,    maybe nobody explicitly says that they were biased, but it sort    of shows up in other subtle ways based on the, you know, the    zip code that someones coming from or their last name or their    first name or whatever. So that would be subtle things that you    need to be careful of.  <\/p>\n<p>    The other thing is what we touched on earlier just the whole,    whats happening with income inequality and opportunity as the    machines get better at many kinds of tasks, you know, driving a    truck or handling a call center. The people who had been doing    those jobs need to find new things to do. And often those new    jobs wont be paying as well if we arent careful. So that    could be a real income hit. Already we see growing income    inequality.  <\/p>\n<p>    We have to be aggressive about thinking how we can create    broadly shared prosperity. One of the things we did at MIT is    we launched something called the Inclusive Innovation Challenge    which recognizes and rewards organizations that are using    technology to create shared prosperity, theyre innovating in    ways that do that. Id love to see more and more entrepreneurs    think in that way not just how they can create concentrated    wealth, but how they can create broadly shared prosperity.  <\/p>\n<p>    SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: Elon Musk has been out there saying    artificial intelligence could be an existential threat to human    beings. Other people have talked about fears that the machines    could take over and turn against us. How do you feel about    those kinds of concerns?  <\/p>\n<p>    ERIK BRYNJOLFSSON: Well, like I said earlier, you can never say    never and, you know, as machines kept getting more and more    powerful I can imagine them having enormous powers especially    as we delegate more of the operations of our critical    infrastructure in our electricity and our water system and our    air traffic control and even our military operations to them.    But the reason I didnt list it is I dont see it as the most    immediate risk right now, the technologies that are being    rolled out right now, they have effects on bias and decision    making their effect on jobs and income. But by and large they    dont have those kinds of existential risks.  <\/p>\n<p>    I think its important that we have researchers working in    those areas and thinking about them but I wouldnt want to, to    panic Congress or the people right now into doing something    that would probably be counterproductive if we overreacted    right now.  <\/p>\n<p>    I think its an area for research but in terms of devoting    billions of dollars of effort, I would put that towards    education and retraining and handling bias  the things that    are facing us right now and will be facing us for the next five    and 10 years.  <\/p>\n<p>    SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: What do you feel is the appropriate    role of regulation as AI develops?  <\/p>\n<p>    ERIK BRYNJOLFSSON: I think we need to be watchful, because    theres the potential for AI to lead to more concentration of    power and more concentration of wealth. The best antidote to    that is competition.  <\/p>\n<p>    And what weve seen the tech industries, for most of the past    10, 20, 30 years is that as one monopolist, whether its IBM or    Microsoft, gets a lot of power, another company comes along and    knocks it off its perch. I remember teaching a class where    about 15 years ago a speaker said you know Yahoo has search    locked up no ones ever going to displace Yahoo. So you know we    need to be humble and realize that the giants of today face    threats and could be overturned.  <\/p>\n<p>    That said, if there becomes a sort of a stagnant loss of    innovation and these companies have a stranglehold on markets    and maybe have other adverse effects in areas like privacy,    then it would be right for government to step in. My instinct    right now would be sort of watchful waiting, keeping an eye on    these companies and doing what we could to foster innovation    and competition as the best way to protect consumers.  <\/p>\n<p>    SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: So, if all of this still sounds quite    futuristic to the average manager, if theyre kind of like: OK,    you know this is sort of way outside of what Im working on in    my role, what are the sort of things that youd advise people    to keep in mind or think about?  <\/p>\n<p>    ERIK BRYNJOLFSSON: Well it starts with realizing this is not    futuristic and way out there. There are lots of small and    medium sized companies that are learning how to apply this    right now, whether its, you know, sorting cucumbers to be more    effective, somebody wrote an application that did that, to    helping with recommendations online. Theres a company Im    advising called Infinite Analytics that is giving customers    better recommendations about what products they should be    choosing, to helping with, you know, credit decisions.  <\/p>\n<p>    There are so many areas where you can apply these technologies    right now you can take courses or you can have people in your    organization take courses or you can hire people at places like    Udacity or fast.ai, my friend Jeremy Howard runs a great course    in that area, and put it to work right away and start with    something small and simple.  <\/p>\n<p>    But definitely dont think of this as futuristic. Dont be put    off by the science fiction movies whether, you know, the    Terminator or other AI shows. Thats not whats going on. Its    a bunch of very specific practical applications that are    completely feasible in 2017.  <\/p>\n<p>    SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: Erik, thanks so much for talking with    us today about all of this.  <\/p>\n<p>    ERIK BRYNJOLFSSON: Its been a real pleasure.  <\/p>\n<p>    SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: Thats Erik Brynjolfsson. Hes the    director of the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy. And hes    the co-author with Andrew McAfee of the new HBR article,  The    Business of Artificial Intelligence.  <\/p>\n<p>    You can read their HBR article, and also read about how    Facebook uses AI and Machine learning in almost everything you    see, and you can watch a video  shot in my own kitchen!     about how IBMs Watson uses AI to create new recipes. Thats    all at hbr.org\/AI.  <\/p>\n<p>    Thanks for listening to the HBR IdeaCast. Im Sarah Green    Carmichael.  <\/p>\n<p><!-- Auto Generated --><\/p>\n<p>Here is the original post:<\/p>\n<p><a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/hbr.org\/ideacast\/2017\/07\/how-ai-is-already-changing-business\" title=\"How AI Is Already Changing Business - Harvard Business Review\">How AI Is Already Changing Business - Harvard Business Review<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p> Erik Brynjolfsson, MIT Sloan School professor, explains how rapid advances in machine learning are presenting new opportunities for businesses. He breaks down how the technology works and what it can and cant do (yet) <a href=\"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/prometheism-transhumanism-posthumanism\/ai\/how-ai-is-already-changing-business-harvard-business-review\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[187743],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-206944","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ai"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/prometheism-transhumanism-posthumanism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206944"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/prometheism-transhumanism-posthumanism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/prometheism-transhumanism-posthumanism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/prometheism-transhumanism-posthumanism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/prometheism-transhumanism-posthumanism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=206944"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/prometheism-transhumanism-posthumanism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206944\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/prometheism-transhumanism-posthumanism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=206944"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/prometheism-transhumanism-posthumanism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=206944"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.euvolution.com\/prometheism-transhumanism-posthumanism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=206944"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}