The holiday travel season is once again upon us! It's the magical time of the year that combines standing in airport security lines with incrementally losing your mind as the hands of your watch perpetually tick closer to a boarding time that somehow moved up 45 minutes since you left the house and the goober in front of you is, in the year of our lord 2022, still somehow confused about why we have to take our shoes off in security and, goddamit dude, stop arguing with the TSA and untie your laces already these tickets are nonrefundable. AI can help fix this. It can perhaps even give regular folks a taste of the effortless airport experience that more well-heeled travelers enjoy -- the private jet set who don't ever have to worry about departure times or security lines like the rest of us schmucks stuck flying Spirit. In their latest book POWER AND PREDICTION: The Disruptive Economics of Artificial Intelligence, University of Toronto economists and professors Ajay Agrawal, Joshua Gans and Avi Goldfarb examine the foundational impact that AI/ML systems have on human decision making as we increasingly rely on automation and big data predictions.

The holiday travel season is once again upon us! It's the magical time of the year that combines standing in airport security lines with incrementally losing your mind as the hands of your watch perpetually tick closer to a boarding time that magically moved up 45 minutes since you left the house and the goober in front of you is in the year of our lord 2022 still somehow confused about why we have to take our shoes off in security and goddamit dude stop arguing with the TSA and untie your laces already these tickets are nonrefundable. Ai can help fix this. It can perhaps even give regular folks a taste of the effortless airport experience that more well-heeled travelers enjoy -- the private jet set who don't ever have to worry about departure times or security lines like the rest of us schmucks stuck flying Spirit. In their latest book POWER AND PREDICTION: The Disruptive Economics of Artificial Intelligence, University of Toronto economists and professors Ajay Agrawal, Joshua Gans, and Avi Goldfarb examine the foundational impact that AI/ML systems have on human decision making as we increasingly rely on automation and big data predictions.

I firmly believe that artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to be among the most disruptive technologies we will ever develop. So why – more than 50 years since the first machine learning research – is its impact still, in many ways, limited? This is the question at the heart of a new book called Power and Prediction - The Disruptive Economics of Artificial Intelligence, co-authored by Joshua Gans, along with Ajay Agrawal and Avi Goldfarb. I got the chance to once again catch up with Gans, holder of the Jeffrey S Skoll Chair of Technical Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Toronto's Rotman School of Management. The last time I spoke to Joshua, he had just released his first book, Prediction Machines – The Simple Economics of Artificial Intelligence.

CURT NICKISCH: Welcome to the HBR IdeaCast from Harvard Business Review. A shiny new piece of technology is not good enough on its own. It needs to be implemented at the right time, used in the right context, and accepted in the right culture, applied in the right way. In short, it needs to be part of the right system. AI can help individuals and teams make better predictions, combine that with judgment and you get better decisions. But those decisions have ripple effects on other parts of the system, ripple effects that can undermine the very prediction that was made. Our guest today says, "If organizations want to take artificial intelligence to the next level, they need to get better at coordinating optimal decisions over a wider network."

Named one of the "Top Ten Technology Books of 2018" by Peter High, Forbes.com "Compared with the amount of ink spilled over the prospects of artificial general intelligence and all its accompanying fears--the singularity!--there's "…a readily understandable guide to artificial intelligence and the immensely consequential effects it could have on our economy, our society and our political system." -- Robert E. Rubin, former U.S. Treasury secretary and co-chair Emeritus, Council on Foreign Relations This 2018 book…on the timely topic of AI - tops my summer reading list. "This is a timely book, well written, and accessible putting forward their insights, and is well worth reading." Lawrence H. Summers, Charles W. Eliot Professor, former president, Harvard University; former secretary, US Treasury; and former chief economist, World Bank-- "AI may transform your life.

This 2018 book…on the timely topic of AI - tops my summer reading list. "This is a timely book, well written, and accessible putting forward their insights, and is well worth reading." Lawrence H. Summers, Charles W. Eliot Professor, former president, Harvard University; former secretary, US Treasury; and former chief economist, World Bank-- "AI may transform your life. And Prediction Machines will transform your understanding of AI. This is the best book yet on what may be the best technology that has come along."

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." During the shopping process, Amazon's artificial intelligence offers suggestions of items that it predicts you will want to buy. The AI does a reasonable job.