Topic
9 facts from 2 episodes, in date order. These are what speakers said on the shows, each linked to the moment it was said. They aren't independently verified.
2012
In 2012, Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee rode in a Google self-driving car from Mountain View to San Francisco, after writing Race Against the Machine.
“Actually, it was 2012, right after we wrote Race Against the Machine, we rode from Mountain View up to San Francisco.”
Undated
Economists have three tests for a general purpose technology: it improves quickly, spawns complementary innovations, and spreads across the economy.
“Economists have come up with three ways to identify what they would call a general purpose technology, which is economists speak for a gigantic big deal for the economy”
Undated
McAfee estimates that writing software is at least a couple of orders of magnitude cheaper than it was ten years earlier.
“it's at least a couple orders of magnitude cheaper to write software today than it was ten years ago.”
Undated
McAfee says evidence from software work shows people with powerful AI do somewhat less communicating, collaborating and coordinating.
“It turns out that as people get access to this incredibly powerful new AI, they tend to do a little bit less of the communicating, collaborating, coordinating work.”
Undated
McAfee says evidence shows the best people get more time for exploratory and innovative work when AI takes over coordination tasks.
“those folk have more time freed up for exploratory work, for innovation, for envelope pushing, which is exactly what we want them to do.”
Undated
McAfee says the companies he studied for his book The Geek Way are outcome-focused rather than process-focused organizations.
“The the geek companies that I studied and that I wrote the geek way about, these are very much outcome focused organizations.”
Undated
McAfee says many companies reduced entry-level hiring because they expected AI to automate routine work junior staff did.
“The reason that a lot of companies pulled back on their entry level hiring is because they anticipated a whole lot of automation via AI”
Undated
McAfee argues that people learn difficult knowledge work through apprenticeship, helping experts with routine tasks.
“That's how you learn to do difficult knowledge work is by helping somebody who's good at that with the routine stuff.”
Undated
McAfee says willingness to try AI falls off with age, so cutting entry-level hiring removes the most enthusiastic future AI power users.
“As people tend to get older, we tend to be more set in our ways and less willing to try crazy new things like AI.”
Episodes