Erik Brynjolfsson | |
|---|---|
.jpg) Brynjolfsson in 2013 | |
| Born | 1962 (age 61–62) |
| Citizenship | United States |
| Alma mater | Harvard University Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| Known for | Productivity paradox The Long Tail Bundling of Information Goods Cyberbalkanization |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Information Systems Economics Technological Change |
| Institutions | Stanford University |
| Notable students | Shuman Ghosemajumder Lorin Hitt Yu (Jeffrey) Hu Michael D. Smith Marshall Van Alstyne Xiaoquan (Michael) Zhang |
Erik Brynjolfsson (born 1962) is an American academic, author and inventor. He is the Jerry Yang and Akiko Yamazaki Professor and a Senior Fellow[1] at Stanford University where he directs the Digital Economy Lab at the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI, with appointments at SIEPR,[2] the Stanford Department of Economics and the Stanford Graduate School of Business. He is also a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research[3] and a best-selling author of several books.[4] He is known for his contributions to the world of IT productivity research and work on the economics of information and the digital economy more generally.[5]
Erik Brynjolfsson was born to Marguerite Reman Brynjolfsson and Ari Brynjolfsson, a nuclear physicist. He earned his A.B., magna cum laude, in 1984 and his S.M. in applied mathematics and decision sciences at Harvard University in 1984. He received a Ph.D. in Managerial Economics in 1991 from the MIT Sloan School of Management.[6]
Brynjolfsson served on the faculty of MIT from 1990 to 2020, where he was a professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management and Director of the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy, and Director of the MIT Center for Digital Business.[7] Previously, he was at Harvard from 1985 to 1995 and Stanford from 1996 to 1998.[8] In 2001 he was appointed the Schussel Family Professor of Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management.[9] In February 2020, Stanford announced that Brynjolfsson would join its faculty in July, 2020.[10] He lectures and consults worldwide, and serves on corporate boards.
Brynjolfsson is of Icelandic descent.[11]
At Stanford, Brynjolfsson teaches a graduate course on "The AI Awakening: Implications for the Economy and Society"[12] which has included guest lectures by Mira Murati, Jeff Dean, Eric Schmidt, Alexandr Wang, Mustafa Suleyman and others.[13] At MIT, he taught the popular course 15.567, The Economics of Information: Strategy, Structure, and Pricing, at MIT.[14] He hosts a related blog, Economics of Information.
Brynjolfsson gave a TED talk on the economic implications of AI in the opening session of TED in 2013 where he argued that the key to economic growth was to use AI to augment human capabilities rather than replace them.[15]
Along with Tom Mitchell, Brynjolfsson co-chaired two committees for the National Academies of Sciences, one on "Automation and the US Workforce"[16] and one on "AI and the US Workforce".[17] He also directed the analysis of AI for the National Network for Critical Technology Assessment.[18]
Brynjolfsson has testified[19] about AI for the United States Congress and participated in AI Summits at the White House.[20]
In 2016, he co-founded the AI Index and serves on its Steering Committee[21] and was a co-author of the original (2016) report[22] for the One Hundred Year Study of Artificial Intelligence.
His research has been recognized with nine "best paper" awards by fellow academics, including the John DC Little Award for the best paper in Marketing Science.[23] Along with Andrew McAfee, he was awarded the top prize in the Digital Thinkers category at the Thinkers 50 Gala on November 9, 2015.[24] In 2015, he received the Herb Simon Award for his work on digital economics,[25] and in 2020 he was recognized with an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Turku for his research on the effects of information technology and AI on innovation, productivity and future work.[26] Brynjolfsson was one of the inaugural fellows of the AI2050 initiative.[27]
Brynjolfsson is widely cited for studying the economics of information systems[28] and the economics of AI.[29] He was among the earliest researchers to measure productivity contributions of IT and the complementary role of organizational capital and other intangibles.[30][31] Brynjolfsson has done research on digital commerce, the Long Tail, bundling and pricing models, intangible assets and the effects of IT on business strategy, productivity and performance.[32] In several of his books and articles, Brynjolfsson has argued that technology is racing ahead, and called for greater efforts to update our skills, organizations and institutions more rapidly.[33]
Brynjolfsson is the author of several books, including Wired for Innovation with Adam Saunders, and Race Against the Machine, The Second Machine Age and Machine, Platform, Crowd with Andrew McAfee.
Brynjolfsson wrote an influential review of the "IT Productivity Paradox"[30] and in separate research, documented a correlation between IT investment and productivity. His work provides evidence that the use of Information Technology is most likely to increase productivity when it is combined with complementary business processes and human capital.[31] A subsequent article coined the term the Productivity J-Curve to describe how these intangible investments might initially lead to stagnant or even lower productivity followed by a take-off.[34]
Working with Avinash Collis, Felix Eggers, and others, Brynjolfsson developed new methods for measuring the digital economy using "massive online choice experiments".[35] The insight from this work is that even when goods like Wikipedia or email have zero price, and therefore may have little or no direct contribution to GDP as it is conventionally measured, they may still contribute significantly to well-being and consumer surplus.[36] Brynjolfsson's method seeks to measure the consumer surplus from these goods and assess how it changes over time.
Brynjolfsson has been the founder of three companies (Foundation Technologies, Inc. Flexplay Technologies, Inc. and Workhelix, Inc) and has been awarded five U.S. patents.[37] He also served on the Boards of Directors of two publicly-traded companies, Computer Science Corporation (2010-2015) and CSK Holdings, Inc. (2005-2008).[37]
Brynjolfsson co-founded Workhelix, Inc, a venture-backed firm that helps companies assess their opportunities for using generative AI and other technologies.[38] It applies the “task-based approach”, a methodology developed by Brynjolfsson, Tom M. Mitchell and Daniel Rock for analyzing various technologies’ ability to augment or automate individual tasks. [39]
Brynjolfsson was the co-founder of the MIT Inclusive Innovation Challenge (IIC), a global tournament for entrepreneurs harnessing technology to ensure a more equitable future. IIC winners have collectively generated over $170 million in revenue, raised over $1 billion in capital, created more than 7,000 jobs, and served 350 million people.[40]
