Erik Brynjolfsson
A 2018 Financial Times article, “The Long Wait for Productivity to Revive,” noted that “no economist has done more to advance the revolutionary impact of information technology than MIT’s Erik Brynjolfsson.” At the time, Brynjolfsson was a professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management, a position he held for 20 years, and also served as director of the MIT Initiative for the Digital Economy (IDE). During his two decades at MIT, Brynjolfsson emerged as one of the world’s leading researchers on productivity and work, and the economics of information, AI, and the digital economy. Trained as an economist, Brynjolfsson has focused on how AI can boost productivity. With regards to the impact of AI on business productivity, no one is better qualified than Brynjolfsson to offer a perspective on the current state of AI and its potential to transform work.
I first met Erik Brynjolfsson when he was at MIT. I attended many IDE events at that time, and Brynjolfsson sat in on one of a series of Fortune 1000 CIO roundtables that I organized and hosted over the past few years. When I published my book, “Fail Fast, Learn Faster: Lessons in Data Driven Leadership in an Age of Disruption, Big Data, and AI” in 2021, I mentioned Brynjolfsson’s pioneering work at the intersection of digital, data, and AI, which was years ahead of its time. In works such as “The Second Machine Age” (2016), co-authored with Andrew McAfee, and his 2017 MIT Sloan Management Review article, “How to Thrive – and Survive – in a World of AI Disruption,” Brynjolfsson predicted the impact of AI on work and business productivity.
In June 2020, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, Brynjolfsson had the opportunity to move across the country to become the Jerry Yang and Akiko Yamazaki Professor and Senior Fellow at Stanford University in Palo Alto and launch the Digital Economy Lab at the Stanford Human-Centered AI Institute (HAI). The mission of the Digital Economy Lab is to advance understanding of the economic impacts of rapid advances in AI and other digital technologies. Led by Brynjolfsson, the lab includes faculty from multiple departments at Stanford. Research focuses on developing new economic models and empirical studies to measure, predict and guide the impact of AI on humans and society, especially how to create broadly shared prosperity.
I had the opportunity to meet with Brynjolfsson recently. Brynjolfsson’s research examines the impact of AI, as well as other information technologies, on business strategy, productivity and performance, and digital commerce. Brynjolfsson believes the impact of a changing economy will be felt by everyone, cutting across boundaries of wealth, status, geography, and culture. At the heart of the lab’s mission is a belief in the power of human work, and that augmenting human capabilities with machine capabilities through AI will bring beneficial benefits to all. “AI will not replace managers,” Brynjolfsson said in 2017, “but managers who use AI will replace managers who don’t.”
I asked Brynjolfsson how it felt to relocate to the West Coast and live closer to Silicon Valley. Brynjolfsson expressed his deep love for MIT, but added that it’s inspiring to be near and be a part of such a strong innovation community, both at Stanford and in Silicon Valley. I recently had the opportunity to hear HAI Director Fei-Fei Li speak at the Wall Street Journal Tech Live event in Laguna Beach, and mentioned that I’d written an article about the experience and was inspired to read her memoir about her life in AI. HAI has assembled a strong leadership team and outstanding fellows, including the recent announcement that prominent MIT researcher Sandy Pentland will join the HAI team as part of Brynjolfsson’s Digital Economy Lab.
Brynjolfsson recently said: Financial Timesheadlined “Erik Brynjolfsson: Will this be the best or worst decade of all time?” I asked Brynjolfsson about his view of AI in history and where he places it among the array of transformative technologies. “I think it’s most similar to the Industrial Revolution,” Brynjolfsson commented, but noted that “while the Industrial Revolution unfolded over more than a century, AI will unfold at a much faster pace, over decades.” Brynjolfsson added that AI is advancing “at a faster pace than anyone expected,” and said AI in medicine is an area with great potential for humanity.
I am his Financial Times In the interview, Brynjolfsson commented that people often use AGI (artificial general intelligence) as a synonym for human-level intelligence, but that “I think it will become clear that humans only have a limited variety of intelligence, and true general intelligence has a much broader range of abilities.” This isn’t something I hear often, so I asked Brynjolfsson to elaborate. Here’s what he said: AugmentHow AI can and should be used Augment Human skills and intelligence are what drive productivity gains, and Brynjolfsson explained that technologists need to consider how AI can be used to “augment and complement the workforce,” not just “mimic or repeat human tasks.”
As part of his productivity efforts, Brynjolfsson is embarking on a new business venture focused on “task-based analytics,” which refers to the concept of looking at tens of thousands of tasks and ranking them based on which ones AI would be most useful for. Brynjolfsson launched Workhelix, a venture that combines research and data to quantitatively evaluate companies’ GenAI opportunities. James Millin, co-founder and CEO of Workhelix, explains, “The approach we pioneered starts with a granular question: Can GenAI make a task twice as productive without compromising quality?” He continues, “We use our algorithms and data to answer this question for every task in an organization, and then work our way up to understand how jobs, and ultimately, each company, can benefit from GenAI.”
Brynjolfsson is a strong advocate of the productivity potential that can be achieved through AI, predicting a double-digit increase in economic productivity and commenting that there will be “massive economic disruption” over the next few years, potentially resulting in new jobs and new companies. Brynjolfsson believes this will lead to greater societal benefits, manifesting in higher wages and increased prosperity. He expands on this argument in his article “Turing’s Trap: The Promises and Perils of Human-Like Artificial Intelligence,” stating that “if AI focuses on augmenting humans, rather than imitating them, humans will retain the power to claim some of the value that humans create.” He adds that “augmentation will lead to new capabilities, new products, and new services.”
As with any technology or period of historic change, the responsibility ultimately lies with us, the humans. Brynjolfsson argues that because we have more powerful tools than ever before, “this could be the best decade in history, or it could be the worst,” noting that “misinformation, viruses and weapons, cyberattacks, phishing attacks” remain threats. He points to the risks posed by information overload, fake news, and other malicious uses. Brynjolfsson concludes that the future of AI will depend heavily on us, the humans, taking steps today to prioritize intelligent governance, safeguards, and guardrails. Brynjolfsson warns, “We should not act blindly.”
