Videos
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ChatGPT: Grading artificial intelligence's writing
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Measuring the value of the digital economy | Erik Brynjolfsson | University of Oxford
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The EU US Tech Gap (Erik Brynjolfsson, Andrew McAfee, Zanny Minton Beddoes) | DLD 23
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The Turing Trap: A conversation with Erik Brynjolfsson on the promise and peril of human-like AI
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The AI Awakening: Implications for the Economy [Erik Brynjolfsson]
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AGI Debate
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Looking Forward: AI in 2022
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AIX Ventures Launch Event Keynote
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COVID+AI: Erik Brynjolfsson
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Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson: Technology as job killer? – part 1
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Machine, Platform, Crowd with Erik Brynjolfsson
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Erik Brynjolfsson - MIT IDE - Why and how to re-think business and society in a digital age?
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2017-04 The Future of Work in a World of AI, ML, and Automation
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Implications of the Second Machine Age | Erik Brynjolfsson
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LinkedIn Speaker Series: Erik Brynjolfsson, Andrew McAfee, and Reid Hoffman
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The Road Ahead for Autonomous Vehicles
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Erik Brynjolfsson - MIT IDE 2015 Keynote - theCUBE
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Creating Our Digital World with Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee
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The Second Machine Age | Erik Brynjolfsson & Andrew McAfee | Talks at Google
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Robert Gordon, Erik Brynjolfsson debate the future of work at TED2013
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AI and the Economy | Erik Brynjolfsson
![The AI Awakening: Implications for the Economy [Erik Brynjolfsson]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/LNX_6gzLIvI/hqdefault.jpg)
Learn More About Erik Brynjolfsson
As technology continues to transform jobs, and replace some of them, what will it take for people to survive and thrive in the post-pandemic era? New York Times bestselling author Erik Brynjolfsson (pronounced Brin-yolf-son), the Jerry Yang and Akiko Yamazaki Professor and Senior Fellow at Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI (HAI), urges companies not to fight technology, but to race with the machines.
Brynjolfsson’s research examines the effects of information technologies on business strategy, productivity, performance, digital commerce, and intangible assets. He says digital technologies, particularly AI and machine learning, are igniting a business revolution that will be more disruptive and world-changing than any other period in history. He urges leaders to view this as an opportunity, not an obstacle. Since companies will still need people with creative, interpersonal and problem-solving skills, he offers decision makers a roadmap to restructuring the right way. As a consultant, educator and author, he helps organizations sort out which tasks are better assigned to machines and which to humans, so they can strategically plan forward before laying off the wrong people.
“COVID has accelerated a shift to remote work – about 50% of Americans are now working remotely – but also a shift to automation and machine learning. It has compressed a decade’s worth of business transformation into ten weeks,” says Brynjolfsson, one of the most cited researchers on IT and economics. “Companies are laying off trillions of dollars’ worth of human capital, and they’re not doing it with a vision of where they’re going to be on the other side. The pandemic is an acid test for good management.”
Through his work as Director of the Stanford Digital Economy Lab, Brynjolfsson helps companies and economies decipher, prepare for and capitalize on the technological changes that will impact everything from employment and health care to education and socio-economic mobility. His two New York Times bestselling books, co-authored with Andrew McAfee, capture his innovative approach to leveraging technology for long-term business benefits: “Machine, Platform, Crowd: Harnessing Our Digital Future” (2018) and “The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies” (2016).
“My research has enabled me to understand how these awe-inspiring technologies are transforming the economy and how they’re going to change work, employment and innovation,” Brynjolfsson said. “As organizations are doing a tremendous amount of restructuring because of COVID, I advise them on how to do it the smart way so they will come out stronger on the other side of the pandemic.”
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Erik Brynjolfsson is the Jerry Yang and Akiko Yamazaki Professor and Senior Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI (HAI), and Director of the Stanford Digital Economy Lab. He also is the Ralph Landau Senior Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR), Professor by Courtesy at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and Stanford Department of Economics, and a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). He and Andrew McAfee are the only people named to both the Thinkers50 list of the world’s top management thinkers and the Politico 50 group of people transforming American politics.
Prior to joining Stanford, Brynjolfsson was Director of the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy. He holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Harvard University in applied mathematics and decision sciences and earned his doctorate in managerial economics from MIT. He holds five patents.
Erik Brynjolfsson is available to advise your organization via virtual and in-person consulting meetings, interactive workshops and customized keynotes through the exclusive representation of Stern Speakers & Advisors, a division of Stern Strategy Group®.
Organizational Restructuring for a Post-COVID Economy
As executives face difficult decisions around restructuring their workforces in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, will they choose more machines over humans? And what will be the long-term effect on employment, business and overall prosperity? Stanford University Professor Erik Brynjolfsson advises leaders on how to restructure the right way by answering an important question: Which tasks are better assigned to machines and which to humans? Companies will still need people with creative, interpersonal and problem-solving skills, in areas where humans perform better than machines. The pandemic is an acid test for good management, says Brynjolfsson. We need to quickly figure out whether it’s humanly possible to do essential tasks without having people commute to the office. In this talk, he offers organizations a road map for making decisions around technology and determining which human skills will be needed to complement new ways of working. Done right, today’s challenges can be an opportunity for business reinvention and rebirth.
How Technology Is Reshaping the Economy, Society and the Future of Work
Machine learning has taken AI to a new level, one in which machines can learn to perform complicated tasks on their own rather than rely on human programmers. The impact on society has only just begun, with humans being displaced in many industries – more rapidly now that the pandemic has unexpectedly compressed 10 years of transformation into 10 weeks. Stanford University Professor Erik Brynjolfsson teaches business leaders how to adapt to this revolution so they can prepare for the oncoming changes AI will bring. In this talk, he explains the importance of discarding outdated mindsets about remote work – these days, 50% of employees work off-site compared to 15% at the start of 2020. Brynjolfsson believes many changes in the structure of work will remain in place when the pandemic ends and managing those changes will be among the most important business, political and social endeavors of the next century.
Machine, Platform, Crowd: Harnessing Our Digital Future
Amid the global effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, we are in the early stages of not one, but three, fundamental revolutions, each driven by profound advances in technology. Machines are transforming the role of human decision making; digital platforms are allowing a wider range of products and services to be sold and brokered to global audiences; and crowdsourcing is having an almost magical effect on the exchange of ideas, opening the door to new levels of inclusion, diversity of thinking and innovation. Stanford University Professor Erik Brynjolfsson explains what has changed since the dawn of the digital age and how organizations can evolve with the times by strategically balancing human work with machine work and moving from products to platforms. In this presentation, based on his best-selling book “Machine, Platform, Crowd,” Brynjolfsson combines his earlier thesis on the advent of the second machine age with further research on the effects of digital platforms to paint a full picture of the “new economy” and how to harness its power rather than be defeated by change. He explains how technologies poised to evolve our abilities are already here and outlines what we can expect in the near future as the pace of digital change accelerates.
Management in the Second Machine Age
If you were managing a business just over a century ago, you would have had to face the fact that a wave of technological change was about to transform the way you did everything. The internal combustion engine would rearrange every aspect of society and long-term plans that ignored this development would become worthless. Today’s business managers find themselves in the same predicament, except the new technology is AI and we are entering the second phase of the second machine age. In this talk, Stanford University Professor Erik Brynjolfsson, the world’s foremost expert on how rapid advances in technology will impact businesses and the economy, explains how machine learning has evolved to a point where intelligent agents, autonomous robots and other devices can learn to do things on their own, with little or no need for human programming. This will have radical consequences as advancements in AI over the next decade will far exceed the developments of the past. This discussion builds on Brynjolfsson’s best-selling book, “The Second Machine Age,” but goes well beyond it, drawing on recent advances in machine learning. He focuses on how decision makers must address and react to this new wave of technology.
How Digital Technologies Are Transforming the Economy
Unlike the previous generation of IT that required humans to create code, machine learning is designed to learn patterns specifically from examples. This has opened up a broad new frontier of applications and economic possibilities that are, as yet, largely undeveloped. In this discussion, Stanford University Professor Erik Brynjolfsson explains how AI is one of the most important technological advances of our era, and how recent progress around AI and machine learning has dramatically increased predictive powers in many areas, including speech recognition, image recognition and credit scoring. For business and government leaders looking to stay ahead of the technological curve, Brynjolfsson recommends strategies for boosting productivity and growth in the midst of a gig economy dominated by remote workers.
7 With Ties to MIT Sloan Honored at Thinkers50 Awards
November 17, 2021
How to Prepare for the AI Productivity Boom
July 12, 2021
Working with Robots in a Post-Pandemic World
September 16, 2020
How Should We Measure the Digital Economy?
November-December 2019
How AI Is Already Changing Business (Audio)
July 20, 2017
What’s Driving The Machine Learning Explosion?
July 18, 2017
The Rise of Data-Driven Decision Making Is Real but Uneven
February 3, 2017
Why The Middle Class Is Shrinking
November 5, 2015
The Digitization of Just About Everything
September 1, 2015
Does Machine Translation Affect International Trade? Evidence from a Large Digital Platform
(Management Science Journal, September 2019)
The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies
(W. W. Norton & Company, January 2014)
The Attention Economy: Measuring the Value of Free Digital Services on the Internet
(Thirty Third International Conference on Informational Systems, Orlando 2012)
Very engaging topic that fit well with our retail model and desire to innovate. Not too cerebral for the mixed audience. Kept everyone entertained. Thought provoking. A lot of good post presentation feedback.
Insightful and empirical information about the impact of digital technology on business. Entertainingly and convincingly presented. Erik is generous with his time and his expertise, and presents with authority and humor.
Your presentation on "Automation's Impact on the Knowledge Worker" was exactly what we needed to launch the discussion. It was powerful, insightful, and was thought provoking for all in the room. We have had nothing but positive feedback.
Thank you so much for coming to MarTech to tell the story of The Second Machine Age. You delivered an electrifying presentation. The feedback I've heard from attendees has been nothing short of 'that was amazing!'
An electrifying keynote [at Gartner Symposium] by MIT Sloan professor and author Erik Brynjolfsson. Brynjolfsson had a huge audience in the palm of his hand as he described what he termed the 'second machine age’.
Praise for “Machine, Platform, Crowd”
“A book for managers whose companies sit well back from the edge and who would like a digestible introduction to technology trends that may not have reached their doorstep―yet.”
“The story is warmly and richly told.… This book is in many senses a primer, a thorough grounding for the digital warrior in the driving forces of the 21st-century economy.”
“Even Silicon Valley is surprised by the speed and scope of change today. The best way to stay on top of it is to understand the principles that will endure even as so much gets disrupted. This book is the best explanation of those principles out there.”
“The digital revolution we’re entering can be unsettling, but McAfee and Brynjolfsson show how these incredibly powerful technologies will make our choices more important than ever. Machine | Platform | Crowd is a road map for leaders to make wise choices as they navigate this new world.”
“On their own, AI, platforms, and crowds are all transformative forces. That they’re evolving in parallel means we’re beginning to experience a new era of networked disruption, where productive but disorienting change becomes the status quo. For citizens, entrepreneurs, companies, and governments who want to successfully navigate this new world, the first step lies in finding reliable and prescient guides. Andrew and Erik are two of the best.”
“The authors aptly illustrate how the extraordinary progress of technology is reshaping our lives, and they share powerful ideas relevant to world leaders.… The book is a must-read for policymakers who seek a road map for how to combine the strengths of humanity and technology to build a better future for their citizens.”
“The authors explain the whys and hows soberly, answering just about every question on AI you could ask: which channels it will colonise next, whether we’ll still need physical products in a virtual world and how Bitcoin will change commerce, among others. Throughout, they are eloquent and informed. They don’t think humans will be obsolete, but they also don’t pretend the solutions are simple.”
“Written… with real human intelligence, concern, feeling, and values. [Machine | Platform | Crowd] is a big, intense, always interesting, and almost intimidating book―and well worth the effort.”
“[McAfee and Brynjolfsson] have done us all a great service in explaining some of the powerful trends that will shape our future.”
“McAfee and Brynjolfsson are thoughtful observers of the emerging technological revolution which they described in their earlier The Second Machine Age.… They write clearly and are at their most devastating in analyzing how the various elements of the new age combine, wiping out large sectors of media, retail and music industries as they have gone.”
