Authors: Ajay Agrawal, Joshua Gans, and Avi Goldfarb

Publisher: Harvard Business Review Press

Comments:The authors, from the Rotman  School of Management of the University of Toronto, recast AI as a significant lowering of the cost of prediction. When seen in this way, the magic of AI as it is used to drive cars, to trade stocks or to teach children, falls away and the hype becomes, in economic terms, cheap prediction. As such it still has extraordinary potential. For example, prediction is at the heart of decision-making under uncertainty; prediction tools increase productivity through handling machines, handling documents and communicating with customers; prediction liberates strategy and opens the door to new business structures and strategies. A good introduction to AI, Prediction Machines develops its huge consequences out of a relatively simple economics framework.