Erik Brynjolfsson

Last updated

Erik Brynjolfsson
Erik Brynjolfsson at MIT Sloan CIO Symposium 2013 (cropped).jpg
Brynjolfsson in 2013
Born1962 (age 61–62)
CitizenshipUnited States
Alma mater Harvard University
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Known for Productivity paradox
The Long Tail
Bundling of Information Goods
Cyberbalkanization
Scientific career
Fields Information Systems
Economics
Technological Change
Institutions Stanford University
Notable students Shuman Ghosemajumder
Lorin Hitt
Yu (Jeffrey) Hu
Michael D. Smith
Marshall Van Alstyne
Xiaoquan (Michael) Zhang

Erik Brynjolfsson (born 1962) is an American academic, author and inventor. He is the Jerry Yang and Akiko Yamazaki Professor and a Senior Fellow [1] at Stanford University where he directs the Digital Economy Lab at the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI, with appointments at SIEPR, [2] the Stanford Department of Economics and the Stanford Graduate School of Business. He is also a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research [3] and a best-selling author of several books. [4] From 1990 to 2020, he was a professor at MIT.

Contents

Brynjolfsson is known for his contributions to the world of IT productivity research and work on the economics of information, the economics of AI, and the digital economy more generally. [5] According to Martin Wolf, "No economist has done more to promote the revolutionary implications of information technology than MIT’s Erik Brynjolfsson." [6]

Biography

Erik Brynjolfsson was born to Marguerite Reman Brynjolfsson and Ari Brynjolfsson, a nuclear physicist. He earned his A.B., magna cum laude , in 1984 and his S.M. in applied mathematics and decision sciences at Harvard University in 1984. He received a Ph.D. in Managerial Economics in 1991 from the MIT Sloan School of Management. [7]

At the age of 23, he taught courses on Building Expert Systems and on Applications of Artificial Intelligence at Harvard Extension School with Tod Loofbourrow. [7] In 1987, he co-founded the Expert Systems subgroup of the Boston Computer Society [8] and shortly there after, co-authored a series of articles on the topic. [9]

Brynjolfsson served on the faculty of MIT from 1990 to 2020, where he was a professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management and Director of the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy, and Director of the MIT Center for Digital Business. [10] Previously, he was at Harvard from 1985 to 1995 and Stanford from 1996 to 1998. [11] In 2001 he was appointed the Schussel Family Professor of Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management. [12] In February 2020, Stanford announced that Brynjolfsson would join its faculty in July, 2020. [13] He lectures and consults worldwide, and serves on corporate boards.

Brynjolfsson is of Icelandic descent. [14]

Teaching

At Stanford, Brynjolfsson teaches a graduate course on "The AI Awakening: Implications for the Economy and Society" [15] which has included guest lectures by Mira Murati, Jeff Dean, Eric Schmidt, Alexandr Wang, Mustafa Suleyman and others. [16] At MIT, he taught the popular course 15.567, The Economics of Information: Strategy, Structure, and Pricing, at MIT. [17] He hosts a related blog, Economics of Information.

Public Service

Along with Tom Mitchell, Brynjolfsson co-chaired two committees for the National Academies of Sciences, one on "Automation and the US Workforce" [18] and one on "AI and the US Workforce". [19] He also directed the analysis of AI for the National Network for Critical Technology Assessment. [20]

Brynjolfsson has testified [21] about AI for the United States Congress and participated in AI Summits at the White House. [22]

In 2016, he co-founded the AI Index and serves on its Steering Committee [23] and was a co-author of the original (2016) report [24] for the One Hundred Year Study of Artificial Intelligence.

Awards

His research has been recognized with nine "best paper" awards by fellow academics, including the John DC Little Award for the best paper in Marketing Science. [25] Along with Andrew McAfee, he was awarded the top prize in the Digital Thinkers category at the Thinkers 50 Gala on November 9, 2015. [26] In 2015, he received the Herb Simon Award for his work on digital economics, [27] and in 2020 he was recognized with an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Turku for his research on the effects of information technology and AI on innovation, productivity and future work. [28] Brynjolfsson was one of the inaugural fellows of the AI2050 initiative. [29]

Research

Brynjolfsson is widely cited for studying the economics of information systems [30] and the economics of AI. [31] He was among the earliest researchers to measure productivity contributions of IT and the complementary role of organizational capital and other intangibles. [32] [33] Brynjolfsson has done research on digital commerce, the Long Tail, bundling and pricing models, intangible assets and the effects of IT on business strategy, productivity and performance. [34] In several of his books and articles, Brynjolfsson has argued that technology is racing ahead, and called for greater efforts to update our skills, organizations and institutions more rapidly. [35]

Books

Brynjolfsson is the author of several books, including Wired for Innovation with Adam Saunders, and Race Against the Machine , The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies and Machine, Platform, Crowd with Andrew McAfee.

The Second Machine Age was described as "pioneering a fundamentally new economics, one based not on the old reality of scarcity but on a new reality of abundance that we are only just beginning to comprehend." [36]

Information technology and productivity

At the urging of Robert Solow, the Nobel Laureate who first called attention to the gap between the computerization and productivity, [37] Brynjolfsson wrote an influential review of the "IT Productivity Paradox". [32]

In separate research, he documented a correlation between IT investment and productivity. His work provides evidence that the use of Information Technology is most likely to increase productivity when it is combined with complementary business processes and human capital. [33]

A subsequent article coined the term the Productivity J-Curve to describe how these intangible investments might initially lead to stagnant or even lower productivity followed by a take-off. [38]

Measuring the Digital Economy

Working with Avinash Collis, Felix Eggers, and others, Brynjolfsson developed new methods for measuring the digital economy using "massive online choice experiments". [39] The insight from this work is that even when goods like Wikipedia or email have zero price, and therefore may have little or no direct contribution to GDP as it is conventionally measured, they may still contribute significantly to well-being and consumer surplus. [40] Brynjolfsson's method seeks to measure the consumer surplus from these goods and assess how it changes over time.

Using AI to augment and extend human capabilities

Brynjolfsson gave a TED talk on the economic implications of AI in the opening session of TED in 2013 where he argued that the key to economic growth was to use AI to augment human capabilities rather than replace them. [41] Brynjolfsson was called a “techno optimist” after this debate, [42] though he prefers the moniker “mindful optimist” [43] noting that he concluded his TED talk with the words “Technology is not Destiny.  We shape our Destiny.”

In 2018, he gave an Invited Talk at the International Conference on Learning Representations on “What Can Machine Learning Do? Workforce Implications” where he challenged AI researchers to create systems that augment and extend human capabilities, rather than merely imitate them. [44]

In 2022, he wrote an influential article coining the term "The Turing Trap", arguing that too often technologists, business executives and policymakers focus on using AI to automate and replace humans, which can limit the benefits of the technology and increase inequality, and that they should look for opportunities to augment human capabilities. [45]

Entrepreneur and Inventor

Brynjolfsson has been the founder of three companies (Foundation Technologies, Inc. Flexplay Technologies, Inc. and Workhelix, Inc) and has been awarded five U.S. patents. [46] He also served on the Boards of Directors of two publicly-traded companies, Computer Science Corporation (2010-2015) and CSK Holdings, Inc. (2005-2008). [46]

At age 23, Brynjolfsson designed the game software Dragonfire II. As an inventor, he's been awarded 11 patents for forecasting of skills and tasks, as well as optical storage media. [47]

Workhelix

Brynjolfsson co-founded Workhelix, Inc, a venture-backed firm that helps companies assess their opportunities for using generative AI and other technologies. [48] It applies the “task-based approach”, a methodology developed by Brynjolfsson, Tom M. Mitchell and Daniel Rock for analyzing various technologies’ ability to augment or automate individual tasks. [49]

Inclusive Innovation Challenge

Brynjolfsson was the co-founder of the MIT Inclusive Innovation Challenge (IIC), a global tournament for entrepreneurs harnessing technology to ensure a more equitable future. IIC winners have collectively generated over $170 million in revenue, raised over $1 billion in capital, created more than 7,000 jobs, and served 350 million people. [50]

Books

Selected Publications

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marvin Minsky</span> American cognitive scientist (1927–2016)

Marvin Lee Minsky was an American cognitive and computer scientist concerned largely with research of artificial intelligence (AI). He co-founded the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's AI laboratory and wrote several texts concerning AI and philosophy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John McCarthy (computer scientist)</span> American scientist (1927–2011)

John McCarthy was an American computer scientist and cognitive scientist. He was one of the founders of the discipline of artificial intelligence. He co-authored the document that coined the term "artificial intelligence" (AI), developed the programming language family Lisp, significantly influenced the design of the language ALGOL, popularized time-sharing, and invented garbage collection.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rodney Brooks</span> Australian roboticist

Rodney Allen Brooks is an Australian roboticist, Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science, author, and robotics entrepreneur, most known for popularizing the actionist approach to robotics. He was a Panasonic Professor of Robotics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and former director of the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. He is a founder and former Chief Technical Officer of iRobot and co-Founder, Chairman and Chief Technical Officer of Rethink Robotics and currently is the co-founder and Chief Technical Officer of Robust.AI.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">AI takeover</span> Hypothetical artificial intelligence scenario

An AI takeover is a scenario in which artificial intelligence (AI) becomes the dominant form of intelligence on Earth, as computer programs or robots effectively take control of the planet away from the human species. Possible scenarios include replacement of the entire human workforce due to automation, takeover by a superintelligent AI, and the popular notion of a robot uprising. Stories of AI takeovers are popular throughout science fiction. Some public figures, such as Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk, have advocated research into precautionary measures to ensure future superintelligent machines remain under human control.

The productivity paradox, also referred to as the Solow paradox, could refer either to the slowdown in productivity growth in the United States in the 1970s and 1980s despite rapid development in the field of information technology (IT) over the same period, or to the slowdown in productivity growth in the United States and developed countries from the 2000s to 2020s; sometimes the newer slowdown is referred to as the productivity slowdown, the productivity puzzle, or the productivity paradox 2.0. The 1970s to 1980s productivity paradox inspired many research efforts at explaining the slowdown, only for the paradox to disappear with renewed productivity growth in the developed countries in the 1990s. However, issues raised by those research efforts remain important in the study of productivity growth in general, and became important again when productivity growth slowed around the world again from the 2000s to the present day.

Microsoft Research (MSR) is the research subsidiary of Microsoft. It was created in 1991 by Richard Rashid, Bill Gates and Nathan Myhrvold with the intent to advance state-of-the-art computing and solve difficult world problems through technological innovation in collaboration with academic, government, and industry researchers. The Microsoft Research team has more than 1,000 computer scientists, physicists, engineers, and mathematicians, including Turing Award winners, Fields Medal winners, MacArthur Fellows, and Dijkstra Prize winners.

The 'MIT Center for Digital Business' is an industry-funded research center headquartered at the MIT Sloan School of Management.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Steve Omohundro</span> American computer scientist

Stephen Malvern Omohundro is an American computer scientist whose areas of research include Hamiltonian physics, dynamical systems, programming languages, machine learning, machine vision, and the social implications of artificial intelligence. His current work uses rational economics to develop safe and beneficial intelligent technologies for better collaborative modeling, understanding, innovation, and decision making.

<i>The End of Work</i> Book by Jeremy Rifkin

The End of Work: The Decline of the Global Labor Force and the Dawn of the Post-Market Era is a non-fiction book by American economist Jeremy Rifkin, published in 1995 by Putnam Publishing Group.

The AI effect occurs when onlookers discount the behavior of an artificial intelligence program by arguing that it is not "real" intelligence.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Technological revolution</span> Period of rapid technological change

A technological revolution is a period in which one or more technologies is replaced by another novel technology in a short amount of time. It is a time of accelerated technological progress characterized by innovations whose rapid application and diffusion typically cause an abrupt change in society.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Andrew Ng</span> American artificial intelligence researcher

Andrew Yan-Tak Ng is a British-American computer scientist and technology entrepreneur focusing on machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI). Ng was a cofounder and head of Google Brain and was the former Chief Scientist at Baidu, building the company's Artificial Intelligence Group into a team of several thousand people.

Joshua Brett Tenenbaum is Professor of Computational Cognitive Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is known for contributions to mathematical psychology and Bayesian cognitive science. According to the MacArthur Foundation, which named him a MacArthur Fellow in 2019, "Tenenbaum is one of the first to develop and apply probabilistic and statistical modeling to the study of human learning, reasoning, and perception, and to show how these models can explain a fundamental challenge of cognition: how our minds understand so much from so little, so quickly."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Technological unemployment</span> Unemployment caused by technological change

Technological unemployment is the loss of jobs caused by technological change. It is a key type of structural unemployment. Technological change typically includes the introduction of labour-saving "mechanical-muscle" machines or more efficient "mechanical-mind" processes (automation), and humans' role in these processes are minimized. Just as horses were gradually made obsolete as transport by the automobile and as labourer by the tractor, humans' jobs have also been affected throughout modern history. Historical examples include artisan weavers reduced to poverty after the introduction of mechanized looms. During World War II, Alan Turing's bombe machine compressed and decoded thousands of man-years worth of encrypted data in a matter of hours. A contemporary example of technological unemployment is the displacement of retail cashiers by self-service tills and cashierless stores.

<i>Race Against the Machine</i> 2011 non-fiction book by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee

Race Against the Machine is a non-fiction book from 2011 by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee about the interaction of digital technology, employment and organization. The full title of the book is: Race Against the Machine: How the Digital Revolution Is Accelerating Innovation, Driving Productivity, and Irreversibly Transforming Employment and the Economy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Andrew McAfee</span> American digital technology research scientist (born 1967)

Andrew Paul McAfee is a principal research scientist at MIT and cofounder and codirector of the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy at the MIT Sloan School of Management. He studies how digital technologies are changing the world.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Terah Lyons</span> American technology policy scholar

Terah Lyons is known for her expertise in the field of artificial intelligence and technology policy. Lyons was the executive director of the Partnership on AI and was a policy advisor to the United States Chief Technology Officer Megan Smith in President Barack Obama's Office of Science and Technology Policy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">James Manyika</span> Zimbabwean-American consultant, researcher and writer

James M. Manyika is a Zimbabwean-American academic, consultant, and business executive. He is known for his research and scholarship into the intersection of technology and the economy, including artificial intelligence, robotics automation, and the future of work. He is Google's first Senior Vice President of Technology and Society, reporting directly to Google CEO Sundar Pichai. He focuses on "shaping and sharing" the company's view on the way tech affects society, the economy, and the planet. In April 2023, his role was expanded to Senior Vice President for Research, Technology & Society and includes overseeing Google Research and Google Labs and focusing more broadly on helping advance Google’s most ambitious innovations in AI, Computing and Science responsibly. He is also Chairman Emeritus of the McKinsey Global Institute.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Louis B. Rosenberg</span> American engineer and entrepreneur, born 1969

Louis Barry Rosenberg is an American engineer, researcher, inventor, and entrepreneur. He researches augmented reality, virtual reality, and artificial intelligence. He was the Cotchett Endowed Professor of Educational Technology at the California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. He founded the Immersion Corporation and Unanimous A.I., and he wrote the screenplay for the 2009 romantic comedy film, Lab Rats.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Karin Kimbrough</span> American economist

Karin Janel Kimbrough is an American economist and Chief Economist at LinkedIn. She serves on the board of directors at Fannie Mae, and has previously worked at Google and Bank of America. She was named one of the world's most Powerful Women in Business in 2017.

References

  1. ↑ "Report of the Stanford University President". Stanford. December 9, 2020. Retrieved July 4, 2021.
  2. ↑ "Erik Brynjolfsson to join Stanford faculty | Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR)". February 25, 2020.
  3. ↑ "Erik Brynjolfsson, Research Associate as National Bureau of Economic Research". May 20, 2023.
  4. ↑ "The Second Machine Age". May 20, 2023.
  5. ↑ "Erik Brynjolfsson Joins Stanford Faculty". May 20, 2023.
  6. ↑ "The long wait for a productivity resurgence". www.ft.com. Retrieved March 8, 2024.
  7. 1 2 Curriculum Vitae Erik Brynjolfsson Archived March 27, 2013, at the Wayback Machine February, 2010.
  8. ↑ Rotenberg, Jonathan (1987). "323 People Who Made the BCS" (PDF). Computer Update (March/April): 43.
  9. ↑ Brynjolfsson, Erik & Loofbourrow, Tod (1988). "PC tools: An overview of expert system building tools for PCs". PC AI (September/October): 31–32.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  10. ↑ Curriculum Vitae Erik Brynjolfsson Archived March 27, 2013, at the Wayback Machine February, 2010.
  11. ↑ Curriculum Vitae Erik Brynjolfsson Archived March 27, 2013, at the Wayback Machine February, 2010.
  12. ↑ Curriculum Vitae Erik Brynjolfsson Archived March 27, 2013, at the Wayback Machine February, 2010.
  13. ↑ University, © Stanford; Stanford; California 94305 (February 24, 2020). "Erik Brynjolfsson to Join Stanford Faculty". Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence. Retrieved March 2, 2020.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  14. ↑ "SÍMTALIР... ER VIÐ ERIK BRYNJÓLFSSON Tölvuvæðing og framleiðni". www.mbl.is. Retrieved January 2, 2016.
  15. ↑ "Stanford University Explore Courses". explorecourses.stanford.edu. Retrieved January 5, 2024.
  16. ↑ "Teaching". Erik Brynjolfsson. Retrieved January 5, 2024.
  17. ↑ "The Economics of Information: Strategy, Structure and Pricing | Sloan School of Management | MIT OpenCourseWare". ocw.mit.edu. Retrieved December 12, 2017.
  18. ↑ www.nationalacademies.org https://www.nationalacademies.org/our-work/information-technology-automation-and-the-us-workforce . Retrieved January 6, 2024.{{cite web}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
  19. ↑ www.nationalacademies.org https://www.nationalacademies.org/our-work/automation-and-the-us-workforce-an-update . Retrieved January 6, 2024.{{cite web}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
  20. ↑ "Erik Brynjolfsson". nncta.org. Retrieved January 6, 2024.
  21. ↑ Brynjolfsson, Erik (September 24, 2019). "Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Work" (PDF). Congress.gov. Retrieved January 6, 2024.
  22. ↑ "CSAIL director invited to White House AI summit | MIT CSAIL". www.csail.mit.edu. Retrieved January 6, 2024.
  23. ↑ "AI Index 2023 | Stanford HAI". hai.stanford.edu. Retrieved January 6, 2024.
  24. ↑ "2016 Report | One Hundred Year Study on Artificial Intelligence (AI100)". ai100.stanford.edu. Retrieved January 6, 2024.
  25. ↑ "Erik Brynjolfsson". INFORMS . Retrieved December 3, 2019.
  26. ↑ "Thinkers 50". Thinkers 50. November 9, 2015. Retrieved November 10, 2015.
  27. ↑ Bence, Stubnya (April 7, 2016). "Tömegek munkáját veszik majd el a robotok". index.hu (in Hungarian). Retrieved January 6, 2024.
  28. ↑ "University of Turku Confers 15 Honorary Doctors in May | University of Turku". www.utu.fi. Retrieved December 3, 2023.
  29. ↑ Medina, Gabe (February 16, 2022). "Schmidt Futures Launches AI2050 to Protect Our Human Future in the Age of Artificial Intelligence". Schmidt Futures. Retrieved January 6, 2024.
  30. ↑ "Google Scholars in Economics of Information systems". Google Scholar. Retrieved July 4, 2021.
  31. ↑ "Google Scholars of Economics of AI". scholar.google.com. Retrieved January 20, 2024.
  32. 1 2 "Productivity Paradox". Communications of the ACM. OCLC   310949457 . Retrieved July 4, 2021.
  33. 1 2 Bresnahan, Timothy F.; Brynjolfsson, Erik; Hitt, Lorin M. (February 2002). "IT and Workplace Organization". Quarterly Journal of Economics. 117 (1): 339–376. doi:10.1162/003355302753399526 . Retrieved July 4, 2021.
  34. ↑ "SIEPR Profile of Erik Brynjolfsson". Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research. Retrieved July 4, 2021.
  35. ↑ "Washington Post Review of The Second Machine Age". Washington Post. Retrieved July 4, 2021.
  36. ↑ Pearlstein, Steven (May 17, 2023). "Book Review: 'The Second Machine Age,' by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee". Washington Post. ISSN   0190-8286 . Retrieved March 7, 2024.
  37. ↑ "Erik Brynjolfsson: 'This could be the best decade in history — or the worst'". www.ft.com. Retrieved March 8, 2024.
  38. ↑ Brynjolfsson, Erik; Rock, Daniel; Syverson, Chad (January 2021). "The Productivity J-Curve: How Intangibles Complement General Purpose Technologies". American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics. 13 (1): 333–372. doi:10.1257/mac.20180386. ISSN   1945-7707.
  39. ↑ Brynjolfsson, Erik; Collis, Avinash; Eggers, Felix (2019). "Using Massive Online Choice Experiments to Measure Changes in Well-Being". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 116 (15): 7250–7255. Bibcode:2019PNAS..116.7250B. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1815663116 . PMC   6462102 . PMID   30914458.
  40. ↑ Brynjolfsson, Erik; Collis, Avinash (2019). "How Should We Measure the Digital Economy?" (PDF). Harvard Business Review. 97 (6): 140–148.
  41. ↑ Brynjolfsson, Erik (April 23, 2013), The key to growth? Race with the machines , retrieved January 5, 2024
  42. ↑ Aeppel, Timothy. "Techno-optimist Erik Brynjolfsson Takes on Robert Gordon in Growth Debate". WSJ. Retrieved March 7, 2024.
  43. ↑ "The AI "awakening"". hai.stanford.edu. October 4, 2019. Retrieved March 7, 2024.
  44. ↑ Erik Brynjolfsson: What Can Machine Learning Do? Workforce Implications (ICLR 2018) , retrieved March 15, 2024
  45. ↑ "The Turing Trap: The Promise & Peril of Human-Like Artificial Intelligence". Stanford Digital Economy Lab. Retrieved March 15, 2024.
  46. 1 2 Brynjolfsson, Erik (June 2, 2020). "Curriculum Vitae". Stanford University. Retrieved December 2, 2023.
  47. ↑ "Erik Brynjolfsson Inventions, Patents and Patent Applications - Justia Patents Search". patents.justia.com. Retrieved March 10, 2024.
  48. ↑ "The Batch: What Matters Right Now". Deeplearning.ai. September 20, 2023. Retrieved November 7, 2023.
  49. ↑ Brynjolfsson, Erik; Mitchell, Tom; Rock, Daniel (2018). "What Can Machines Learn, and What Does It Mean for Occupations and the Economy?". AEA Papers and Proceedings. 108 (May): 43–47. doi:10.1257/pandp.20181019. hdl: 1721.1/120302 .
  50. ↑ "MIT Inclusive Innovation Challenge drives a more equitable economy". MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. December 23, 2019. Retrieved December 3, 2023.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.