This week I have a second (and last) post on Agrawal, Gans and Golfarb’s Prediction Machines. This interesting books discusses the difference between machine learning and traditional statistics. The idea being machine learning is more functional, more concerned with a useful result than a precisely accurate one. The challenge is that machine learning predicts not…
Category: Artificial Intelligence
How Might AI Change Business?
In the excellent Prediction Machines Agrawal, Gans and Goldfarb take an economics-based view of the changes that will be brought on by Artificial Intelligence (AI). Essentially some basic economic principles can help us see what will change. Given this: How Might AI Change Business? AI Prediction Is Becoming Cheaper The argument is that AI can…
Showing A Problem Does Not Equal Demonstrating A Worsening Problem
Cathy O’Neil has a great book on big data, Weapons of Math Destruction, but one with a fundamental flaw. The flawed claim is made in the book’s subtitle and permeates throughout the book. The subtitle is: “How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy”. I could find no significant evidence of big data increasing inequality in the book. She shows…