New Releases by Erik Brynjolfsson

La révolution technologique vient seulement de commencer ! Tel est le propos de ce livre, écrit par deux grands experts américains des nouvelles technologies. Leur optimisme se fonde sur la fameuse loi de Moore, qui veut que les capacités de calcul des ordinateurs doublent tous les dix-huit mois. Une loi exponentielle qui accouche d’un monde nouveau tous les dix-huit mois... Des voitures autonomes se jouant des aléas de la circulation aux robots capables de nous remplacer dans les tâches ménagères, en passant par toutes les innovations de la santé et de l’information, ce livre nous entraîne au cœur de la Silicon Valley avant de nous faire pénétrer les arcanes de ce que les auteurs appellent le « deuxième âge de la machine » : une révolution industrielle sans précédent, qui mêle intelligence artificielle, robotique et économie numérique. Très accessible, ce livre est une contribution décisive au débat sur la croissance et la productivité. Et même s’il n’annonce pas encore la disparition du travail, il en appelle cependant aux entreprises et aux gouvernements pour accompagner ces mutations et répartir l’abondance. Erik Brynjolfsson est économiste et dirige le Center for Digital Business du MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology). Andrew McAfee dirige la recherche scientifique du Center for Digital Business du MIT.

Une présentation de la révolution technologique en cours, qui allie intelligence artificielle, robotique et économie numérique. Experts des nouvelles technologies, les auteurs présentent les développements à prévoir, tels que les robots, les voitures sans conducteur, les appareillages médicaux, etc. et les enjeux pour les gouvernements qui doivent accompagner ces mutations.

„Úspěch naší civilizace v 21. století bude záležet na způsobu, jakým budeme tvořit a používat naše digitální výtvory, a také, jak se nimi naučíme žít. Přinesou nám všem blahobyt, nebo naopak mnoho lidí odsunou stranou? Druhý věk strojů je základním průvodcem k pochopení, jak můžeme dosáhnout úspěchu, nebo proč můžeme selhat.“ – Garry Kasparov, šachový velmistr # O knize Chcete uspět v závodě s umělou inteligencí? Chcete vědět, co mají studovat vaše děti, aby v budoucnu našly práci? Vstoupili jsme do zcela nové doby. Počítače a roboti začínají sami řídit auta, psát články, optimalizovat daně, obsluhovat výrobní linky nebo diagnostikovat nemoci přesněji než lékaři. V posledních deseti letech se skokově zvýšily jejich schopnosti a čím dál častěji zvládají činnosti dosud vyhrazené pouze lidem. Díky tomu se zvyšuje produktivita a firmám rostou zisky, ale také narůstá nezaměstnanost a klesají reálné mzdy mnoha profesí. Jak bude vypadat naše budoucnost za deset let? Co vlastně čekat od inteligentních strojů a jak se na ně připravit? Světový bestseller Druhý věk strojů Erika Brynjolfssona a Andrewa McAfeeho z MIT objasňuje masivní změny, které díky digitálním inovacím právě nyní podstupuje ekonomika a celý náš svět. Mnohé jsou pozitivní, neboť přinášejí větší blahobyt, jiné ale představují vážná rizika pro stabilitu společnosti: zánik bezpočtu profesí a prohlubování nerovnosti. Autoři přesvědčivě argumentují, co mohou udělat státy, aby zachovaly svým občanům zaměstnání, a jak by se na éru umělé inteligence měli adaptovat jednotlivci. Tento čtivý, zasvěcený, spíše optimistický a v USA velice diskutovaný výhled do budoucnosti by měl patřit k povinné četbě všech lidí, kterým není lhostejný svět, v němž budeme brzy žít. # Druhý věk strojů vás připraví na následující témata: - Proč se právě nyní nacházíme na počátku druhé průmyslové revoluce - O neuvěřitelných schopnostech nejnovějších digitálních technologií - Které profese zřejmě v dohledné době zaniknou - Jaké schopnosti budou naopak velmi ceněny - Proč v digitální ekonomii platí, že vítěz bere vše a ostatní chudnou - Že státy budou muset zvažovat garantování příjmu svým občanům - Proč je zadarmo dobře pro blahobyt, ale špatně pro HDP - Který typ práce zvládají stroje lépe a který hůře než člověk - Proč se zamyslet nad zápornou daní z příjmu - Kdy může být nečinnost horší než smrt - Proč je lépe být zahradníkem, než právníkem - Proč se nemusíme trápit s vypotřebováním inovací - Proč vybrat dítěti skvělého učitele - Co učit děti, aby v konkurenci inteligentních strojů uspěly ## Více o knize http://melvil.cz/kniha-druhy-vek-stroju

Dozens of markets of all types are in the early stages of a revolution as the Internet and related technologies vastly expand the variety of products that can be produced, promoted and purchased. Although this revolution is based on a simple set of economic and technological drivers, the authors argue that its implications are far-reaching for managers, consumers and the economy as a whole. This article looks at what has been dubbed the "Long Tail" phenomenon, examining how customers derive value from an important characteristic of Internet markets: the ability of online merchants to help consumers locate, evaluate and purchase a far wider range of products than they can typically buy via the traditional brick-and-mortar channels. The article examines the Long Tail from both the supply side and the demand side and identifies several key drivers. On the supply side, the authors point out how e-tailers' expanded, centralized warehousing allows for more offerings, thus making it possible for them to cater to more varied tastes. On the demand side, tools such as search engines, recommender software and sampling tools are allowing customers to find products outside of their geographic area. The authors also look toward the future to discuss second order amplified effects of Long Tail, including the growth of markets serving smaller niches.

We demonstrate how data from search engines such as Google provide an accurate but simple way to predict future business activities. Applying our methodology to predict housing market trends, we find that a housing search index is strongly predictive of future housing market sales and prices. For state-level predictions in the US, the use of search data produces out-of-sample predictions with a smaller mean absolute error than the baseline model that uses conventional data but lacks search data. Furthermore, we find that our simple model of using search frequencies beat the predictions made by experts from the National Association of Realtors by 23.6% for future US home sales. We also demonstrate how these data can be used in other markets, such as home appliance sales. In the near future, this type of “nanoeconomic” data can transform prediction in numerous markets, and thus business and consumer decision-making.

The Internet has significantly reduced the marginal cost of producing and distributing digital information goods. It also coincides with the emergence of new competitive strategies such as large scale bundling. In this paper, we show that bunding can create "economies of aggregation" for information goods if their marginal costs are very low, even in the absence of network externalities or economies of scale or scope. We find that these economies of aggregation have several important competitive implications: 1. When competing for upstream content, larger bundlers are able to outbid smaller ones. 2. When competing for downstream consumers, the act of bundling information goods makes an incumbent seem "tougher" to single-product competitors selling similar goods. The resulting equilibrium is less profitable for potential entrants, and can discourage entry in the bundler's markets even when the entrants have a superior cost structure or quality. 3. Conversely, by simply adding an information good to an existing bundle, a bundler may be able to profitaby enter a new market and dislodge an incumbent who does not bundle, capturing most of the market share from the incumbent firm and even driving the incumbent out of business. 4. Because a bundler can potentially capture a large share of profits in new markets, single-product firms may have lower incentives to innovate and create such markets. However, bundlers may have higher incentives to innovate. For most physical goods, which have non-trivial marginal costs, the potential impact of large-scale aggregation is limited. However, we find that these effects can be decisive for the success or failure of information goods. Our results have particular empirical relevance to the markets for software and Internet content.

We explore the effect of computerization on productivity and output growth using data from 527 large US firms over 1987-1994. We find that computerization makes a contribution to measured productivity and output growth in the short term (using one year differences) that is consistent with normal returns to computer investments. However, the productivity and output contributions associated with computerization are up to five times greater over long periods (using five to seven year differences). The results suggest that the observed contribution of computerization is accompanied by relatively large and time-consuming investments in complementary inputs, such as organizational capital, that may be omitted in conventional calculations of productivity. The large long-run contribution of computers and their associated complements that we uncover may partially explain the subsequent investment surge in computers in the late 1990s.

Internationale bestseller over de impact van technologie op ons leven: Google Glasses, zelfrijdende auto's, computers die het menselijk brein vervangen... De digitalisering heeft ons leven drastisch veranderd, en we staan nog maar aan het begin van deze revolutie. 'Vanaf nu wordt de verandering pas echt duizelingwekkend', aldus Erik Brynjolfsson en Andrew McAfee, beiden verbonden aan het prestigieuze MIT. 'En het is aanpassen of verliezen.' Miljoenen mensen dreigen hun baan te verliezen, precaire machtsevenwichten verschuiven en de sociale ongelijkheid groeit. Dit tweede tijdperk der machines kan echter ook zorgen voor meer welvaart. Maar dan moeten we nu de juiste keuzes maken.

Beschrijving van het leven van mensen in het digitale tijdperken en strategieën voor het succesvol combineren van digitale technieken met menselijk vernuft.

工業革命揭開第一次機器時代的序幕，機器取代人力，衝擊工廠的藍領勞工；智慧科技引領第二次機器時代的開展，機器取代人腦，辦公室的白領工作是否即將不保？ 在下一波智慧科技榮景裡，與其擔心機器人搶走你的飯碗，不如思考如何分到最大的一塊餅。 未來，最懂得與機器合作的人贏！ 當許多過去只存在於科幻電影裡的情節，如今一幕幕走進我們的真實世界，我們除了讚嘆科技帶來的驚奇，也難免心生人腦被機器替代的恐懼。 關於智慧科技，《金融時報》首席經濟評論馬丁‧沃夫（Martin Wolf）認為，除非我們瞭解其中的風險，否則人類將會付出慘重的代價。智慧科技蘊涵下一波經濟榮景的豐沛動能，但也暗藏貧富不均的潛因。不管是經濟、基礎建設、生物、社會、存在主義等各層面，我們勢必遭遇種種挑戰。而不管是個人、企業和政府，都有必須面對的課題。 身處第二次機器時代的我們，擁有更多改變世界的機會，但也應更深入思考，我們究竟想要什麼？人類真正的價值是什麼？唯有審慎選擇，才有樂觀的可能。

The big stories -- The skills of the new machines : technology races ahead -- Moore's law and the second half of the chessboard -- The digitization of just about everything -- Innovation : declining or recombining? -- Artificial and human intelligence in the second machine age -- Computing bounty -- Beyond GDP -- The spread -- The biggest winners : stars and superstars -- Implications of the bounty and the spread -- Learning to race with machines : recommendations for individuals -- Policy recommendations -- Long-term recommendations -- Technology and the future (which is very different from "technology is the future").

Researchers have recently been able to understand organizations at an unprecedented level of detail using new digital records and electronic communication data. However, while digital communication is important in the modern workplace, face-to-face interaction still represents a large and important share of organizational communication, information exchange, socialization and informal coordination. Unfortunately, few techniques exist to collect face-to-face communication data at the same level of granularity as electronic communication. In this essay, we introduce and discuss a new set of research tools and methodologies collectively known as Sociometric Badges - wearable sensing devices designed to collect data on face-to-face communication and interaction in real time. To highlight opportunities and challenges for IS research, we discuss a) the design and function of the technology, b) potential opportunities for IS and management research, c) key trade-offs, challenges and research design choices, and d) important limitations of the tools and techniques. We believe this set of technologies, which will soon be publicly available for research purposes at low cost, could portend a dramatic improvement in our understanding of human behavior at unprecedented levels of granularity and therefore enable IS researchers to explore new research questions and more accurately address existing lines of research.

The success of online games such as “Second Life” and “World of Warcraft” shows the popularity of virtual worlds and reveals the economic systems embedded in them. A large number of players interact with each other in cyberspace, giving rise to an interesting phenomenon where players voluntarily create their own economies that involve trading virtual items or game money for real money. This real-for-virtual-money trading itself has become a several billion-dollar business. In this study, located in Korea, we analyze the economic impacts of the trading of virtual properties and the management strategies of the virtual economy (game) operators by using a two-period game theoretic model between the game players and game operators. In this model, players endogenously switch between seller and buyer roles. We find that real-money trading benefits game operators, and there exists an optimal amount in the supply of game items that maximizes their profits. We also find that the income disparity in the real world can be reduced when real-money trading is allowed. An empirical analysis with data from popular virtual worlds also confirms our findings that real-money trading benefits the game operators. Moreover, we find that playtime and the trading price of game items have a positive relationship. Our findings, from both the analytical and empirical analysis, strongly imply the importance of the embedded economic systems in virtual worlds.

Information technology can link geographically separated people and help them locate interesting or useful resources. These attributes have the potential to bridge gaps and unite communities. Paradoxically, they also have the potential to fragment interaction and divide groups. Advances in technology can make it easier for people to spend more time on special interests and to screen out unwanted contact. Geographic boundaries can thus be supplanted by boundaries on other dimensions. This paper formally defines a precise set of measures of information integration and develops a model of individual knowledge profiles and community affiliation. These factors suggest specific conditions under which improved access, search, and screening can either integrate or fragment interaction on various dimensions. As IT capabilities continue to improve, preferences - not geography or technology - become the key determinants of community boundaries.

Revolutions in measurement inevitably revolutionize science and practice. Over 300 years ago, Anton van Leeuwenhoek developed a better microscope to verify thread counts on imported carpets. Using this new tool, he discovered microorganisms he called “animalcules” in drops of water and individual blood corpuscles in drops of blood. Biology and medicine have never been the same. Just as the microscope gave rise to the germ theory of disease and the remarkable advances that followed, our new-found ability to observe fine-grained information flows in electronic data portends a revolution in our understanding of information work. Managers who harness this new Digital Lens will uncover a wealth of insights into performance improvement for individuals, teams and organizations - insights that will ultimately affect the economy as a whole. In this article, we draw on our own research, and that of others, to describe tools and techniques for tracking information work in unprecedented detail. The result is a step change in our ability to manage information work and information workers. During the course of our research, we used these tools to uncover lessons for individuals on information novelty, workload and transformation, as well as for organizations on automation, decentralization, and incentives. Perhaps more importantly, this fine-grained view of work provides a toolkit for deriving new lessons, many of which will vary from company to company, but each of which will be grounded in detailed, actionable data.

We test for three-way complementarities among information technology (IT), performance pay, and HR analytics practices. We develop a principal-agent model examining how these practices work together as an incentive system that produces a larger productivity premium when the practices are implemented in concert rather than separately. We assess our model by combining fine-grained data on Human Capital Management (HCM) software adoption over 11 years with detailed survey data on incentive systems and HR analytics practices for 189 firms. We find that the adoption of HCM software is greatest in firms that have also adopted performance pay and HR analytics practices. Furthermore, HCM adoption is associated with a large productivity premium when it is implemented as a system of organizational incentives, but has less benefit when adopted in isolation. The system of three-way complements produces disproportionately greater benefits than pairwise interactions, highlighting the importance of including all three complements. Productivity increases significantly when the HCM systems “go live” but not when they are purchased, which can be years earlier. This helps rule out reverse causality as an explanation for our findings.

The Internet and related information technologies are transforming the distribution of product sales across products, and the effects are likely to grow in coming years. Both the Long Tail and the Superstar effect are manifestations of these changes, yet researchers lack consistent metrics or models for integrating and extending their insights and predictions. In this paper, we begin with a taxonomy of the technological and non-technological drivers of both the Long Tails and Superstars and then define and contrast the key metrics for analyzing these phenomena. While significant research has already been done, the core the paper describes a large and promising set of questions forming a research agenda. Important opportunities exist for understanding future changes in product distribution; its impact on supply chains (including cross-channel competition, competition within the Internet channel, implications for the growth of firms, and the balance of power within the supply chain); implications for pricing, promotion and product design; and ultimately potential effects on society more generally. Our approach provides an introduction to some of the relevant research findings and allows us to identify opportunities for cross-pollination of methods and insights from related research topics.

Internet consumers derive significant surplus from increased product variety, and in particular, the “Long Tail” of niche products that can be found on the Internet at retailers like Amazon.com. In this paper we analyze how the shape of Amazon's sales distribution curve has changed from 2000 to 2008, and how this impacts the resulting consumer surplus gains from increased product variety in the online book market. Specifically, in 2008 we collected sales and sales rank data on a broad sample of books sold through Amazon.com and compare it to similar data we gathered in 2000. We then develop a new methodology for fitting the relationship between sales and sales rank and apply it to our data. We find that the Long Tail has grown longer over time, with niche books accounting for a larger share of total sales. Our analyses suggest that by 2008, niche books account for 36.7% of Amazon's sales and the consumer surplus generated by niche books has increased at least five fold from 2000 to 2008. We argue that this increase is consistent with the presence of “secondary” supply- and demand- side effects driving the growth of the Long Tail online. In addition, our new methodology finds that, while power laws are a good first approximation for the rank-sales relationship, the slope is not constant for all book ranks, becoming progressively steeper for more obscure books.

Many markets have historically been dominated by a small number of best-selling products. The Pareto Principle, also known as the 80/20 rule, describes this common pattern of sales concentration. However, information technology in general and Internet markets in particular have the potential to substantially increase the collective share of niche products, thereby creating a longer tail in the distribution of sales. This paper investigates the Internet's “Long Tail” phenomenon. By analyzing data collected from a multi-channel retailer, it provides empirical evidence that the Internet channel exhibits a significantly less concentrated sales distribution when compared with traditional channels. Previous explanations for this result have focused on differences in product availability between channels. However, we demonstrate that the result survives even when the Internet and traditional channels share exactly the same product availability and prices. Instead, we find consumers' usage of Internet search and discovery tools, such as recommendation engines, are associated with an increase the share of niche products. We conclude that the Internet's Long Tail is not solely due to the increase in product selection but may also partly reflect lower search costs on the Internet. If the relationships we uncover persist, the underlying trends in technology portend an ongoing shift in the distribution of product sales.

We gather detailed data on organizational practices and IT use at 253 firms to examine the hypothesis that external focus - the ability of a firm to detect and therefore respond to changes in its external operating environment - increases returns to information technology, especially when combined with decentralized decision-making. First, using survey-based measures, we find that external focus is highly correlated with both organizational decentralization and IT investment. Second, we find that a cluster of practices including external focus, decentralization and IT is associated with improved product innovation capabilities. Third, we develop and test a 3-way complementarities model that indicates that the combination of external focus, decentralization and IT is associated with significantly higher productivity in our sample. In contrast, firms that have only one or two of these organizational practices in place, instead of all three, are not more productive than firms with none of them. We also introduce a new set of instrumental variables representing barriers to IT-related organizational change and find that our results are robust when we account for the potential endogeneity of organizational investments. Our results may help explain why firms that operate in information-rich environments such as high-technology clusters or areas with high worker mobility have experienced especially high returns to IT investment and suggest a set of practices that some managers may be able to use to increase their returns from IT investments.

We estimate the magnitude of consumer search benefits and costs using data obtained from a major Internet shopbot. For the median consumer, the benefits to searching lower screens are $6.55 while the cost of an exhaustive search of the offers is a maximum of $6.45. We are also able to estimate price elasticities and find that they are relatively high compared to offline markets (-7 to -10 in our base model). Our results suggest that consumers face fairly high costs to search for information online, even in the "nearly perfect" market of the shopbot.

Internet shopbots compare prices and service levels at competing retailers, creating a laboratory for analyzing consumer choice. We analyze 20,268 shopbot consumers who select various books from 33 retailers over 69 days for a total of 1,512,856 observed offers. Although each retailer offers a homogeneous product, we find that brand is an important determinant of consumer choice. Consumers use brand as a proxy for retailer credibility in non-contractible aspects of the product and service bundle, such as shipping reliability. Our results also suggest that consumers are sensitive to how total price is allocated between the item price, shipping price, and tax.

Innovations can often be targeted to be more valuable for some consumers than others. This is especially true for digital information goods. We show that the traditional price system not only results in significant deadweight loss, but also provides incorrect incentives to the creators of these innovations. In contrast, we propose and analyze a profit-maximizing mechanism for bundles of digital goods which is more efficient and more accurately provides innovation incentives for information goods. Our “statistical couponing mechanism” does not rely on the universal excludability of information goods, which creates substantial deadweight loss, but instead estimates social value created from new goods and innovations by offering coupons to a relatively small sample of representative consumers. We find that the statistical couponing mechanism can operate with less than 0.1% of the deadweight loss of the traditional price-based system, while more accurately aligning incentives with social value.

¿Por qué nuestra sociedad es cada vez más desigual? ¿Por qué la proporción de gente con trabajo está cayendo tan rápidamente? ¿Por qué las rentas medias han dejado de crecer? Según una explicación frecuente, la causa fundamental de estos hechos es el menor número de ideas nuevas y de inventos. En La carrera contra la máquina, los investigadores del MIT Erik Brynjolfsson y Andrew McAfee ofrecen una explicación muy diferente. Demuestran que no sólo los avances tecnológicos no están estancados sino que la revolución digital se está acelerando. Esto hace que las nuevas máquinas posean unas habilidades que hasta ahora estaban reservadas solamente a los humanos. Se trata de un fenómeno amplio y profundo con serias consecuencias económicas. Algunas de estas consecuencias son positivas, como el aumento de productividad, la reducción de precios y el crecimiento de la riqueza en general. Pero la innovación digital también cambia la manera como se reparte esta riqueza, y aquí las noticias son malas para el trabajador medio. Con un progreso tecnológico corriendo más que nunca, mucha gente se está quedando atrás. Aquellos trabajadores cuyas habilidades han sido incorporadas a los ordenadores modernos tienen poco que ofrecer en el mercado de trabajo y ven como sus salarios se reducen y su futuro se ensombrece. El argumento del libro es que las perspectivas de empleo son negras para mucha gente, no porque el progreso tecnológico se haya estancado sino porque los hombres, y las instituciones, no corren lo bastante. Para garantizar que el trabajador medio no se quede rezagado detrás de las máquinas más avanzadas son necesarios nuevos modelos de emprendeduría, nuevas estructuras organizativas y unas instituciones diferentes. «Éste es un libro extraordinariamente oportuno, que clarifica la cuestión económica más seria que nuestras sociedades afrontan y proporciona una hoja de ruta que nos ayudará a convertir el desafío de las nuevas tecnologías en una oportunidad.» -John Hagel, co-presidente de Deloitte Center for the Edge «Éste es, simplemente, el mejor libro escrito hasta la fecha sobre la interacción entre la tecnología digital, el empleo y la empresa. […] Si en el próximo año usted sólo leyera un libro sobre las nuevas tecnologías y su impacto en las sociedades modernas, debería ser éste.» -Profesor Gary Hamel, director de Management Lab «En la investigación en ciencias sociales, necesitamos desesperadamente que se hagan, y se respondan, las preguntas más importantes. Eso es precisamente lo que Brynjolfsson y McAfee hacen en este importante libro sobre la intersección entre tecnología y economía. Diría aún más, afrontan la pregunta más importante del presente y del futuro: ¿de dónde van a venir los nuevos trabajos?». -Jared Bernstein, ex economista en jefe del vicepresidente de los EEUU Joe Biden