How AI Is Making Prediction Cheaper

Avi Goldfarb, a professor at the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management, explains the economics of machine learning, a branch of artificial intelligence that makes predictions. He says as prediction gets cheaper and better, machines are going to be doing more of it. That means businesses -- and individual workers -- need to figure out how to take advantage of the technology to stay competitive. Goldfarb is the coauthor of the book Prediction Machines: The Simple Economics of Artificial Intelligence. CURT NICKISCH: Welcome to the HBR IdeaCast, from Harvard Business Review. YOUTUBE: [Two women speaking] We've got this all tabbed up? In it, three young English-speaking women use Google Translate to order food in Hindi from an Indian restaurant. They copy and paste their order in English into the computer, and it translates items like "samosas" and reads them aloud in the foreign language.