Erik Brynjolfsson

The most important general-purpose technology of our era is artificial intelligence, particularly machine learning (ML)—that is, the machine’s ability to keep improving its performance without

humans having to explain exactly how to accomplish all the tasks it’s given. Within just the past few years machine learning has become far more effective and widely available. We can now build systems that learn how to perform tasks on their own.

The machine learns from examples, rather than being explicitly programmed for a particular outcome.

In other words, we all know more than we can tell.

Computers are devices for answering questions, not for posing them. That means entrepreneurs, innovators, scientists, creators, and other kinds of people who figure out what problem or opportunity to tackle next, or what new territory to explore, will continue to be essential.

Similarly, there’s a huge difference between passively assessing someone’s mental state or morale and actively working to

change it. ML systems are getting quite good at the former but remain well behind us at the latter.

We think the biggest and most important opportunities for human smarts in this new age of superpowerful ML lie at the intersection of two areas: figuring out what problems to work on next, and persuading a lot of people to tackle them and go along with the solutions. This is a decent definition of leadership, which is becoming much more important in the second machine age

n our view, artificial intelligence, especially machine learning, is the most important general-purpose technology of our e

The most nimble and adaptable companies and executives will thrive.