The revolutionary author of Prediction Machines Ajay Agrawal sat down with Forbes to discuss how AI functions, where it is best applied, and why we should embrace, rather than fear the technology.
As a researcher. entrepreneur, and bestselling author, Ajay Agrawal focuses on the economics of machine intelligence. He encourages leaders and CEOs looking to leverage the technology to think of it as “drop in the cost of prediction.” Agrawal explains, “When prediction, or anything else, becomes cheaper, we use more of it, and we start to use it in more ingenious ways.”
To begin integrating AI into an organization, Agrawal suggests starting with data scientists who already know the company’s prediction problems. But AI isn’t limited to the tech space, or obvious areas like sales, marketing, and manufacturing. For instance, a department that’s often overlooked when it comes to AI is human resources—the perception being that because HR is especially human-oriented, and requires a lot of emotional intelligence, that there is no room for the technology there. “That's a mistake,” cautions Agrawal. “People can leverage AI by converting HR functions, such as certain aspects of recruitment and skills development, into a series of predictions, where humans can then apply their judgment.”
“All human prediction is susceptible to being replaced by machines. But, there are many other valuable things that humans do that are complements, not substitutes, to prediction. One area […] is judgment—humans have it, AI doesn’t.”
Read the full interview here.
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