Category Archives: Media

For LinkedIn today, how AI will really affect employment

For LinkedIn today, Blair Levin and I on the realities of AI’s potential to destroy jobs, a topic about which pretty much everything written so far has been wrong.

Concern about Generative AI’s potential to displace workers and disrupt markets kicked into high gear in 2022, with the public release of Open AI’s ChatGPT.  AI’s seemingly magical ability to instantly create new works of art and literature has generated a range of responses from delight to outrage, inspiring equally varied efforts to stop or at least slow down the pace of change—in everything from President Biden’s recent Executive Order to strikes by Hollywood actors and writers.

But will large-scale deployment of AI across industries really lead to massive job losses for creative and other professional workers?  The history of previous disruptors suggests the answer is initially yes but ultimately no, a staggered sequence that yields crucial and often counter-intuitive lessons for business, labor, and government.

All stakeholders need to embrace these learnings.  Misguided responses will distract the private and public sectors from implementing strategies to accelerate the adoption of AI, delaying significant social benefits and new job creation that will more than offset the losses. And even the most well-intended efforts to reduce AI’s early impact on jobs are almost certain to fail, diverting us from pragmatic solutions targeted to the most affected workers.

For Harvard Business Review Today, Who Will Really Regulate ChatGPT and Other AI Applications?

My co-author Blair Levin and I are pleased to announce the publication of our latest article for Harvard Business Review.

With the explosive arrival of ChatGPT and other generative AI applications built on Large Language Model neural networks, there has been a frenzy among legislature and regulatory agencies worldwide to determine who and how the new technology will be regulated. Unlike other Big Bang Disruptions, generative AI appears to be an uber-disruptor, breaking the rules of every industry. All at once. But can any regulator keep up with the pace of evolution of AI?

Check out the article here:

Who is Going to Regulate AI?

Why All Companies Need a “Political Strategy” – New in MIT Sloan Management Review

My co-author Blair Levin and I are pleased to announce the publication of our latest article for MIT Sloan Management Review, which will also appear in the upcoming Winter issue.

The article reviews growing clashes between companies embracing stakeholder values and roiling political waters at home and abroad.  Many enterprises have been caught off-guard, leading to damaging PR crises and ad hoc responses.

We propose the creation of a comprehensive political strategy, and offer five guiding principles that successful companies have already embraced.

Check out the article here (registration required):

https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/every-company-needs-a-political-strategy-today/

Fallen behind

We’ve fallen way behind in media posts, including December of last year and nearly all of 2013. Larry’s was kept busy with several technology policy events, including the U.N.’s World Conference on Information Technology in Dubai, CES, State of the Net, the release of his privacy paper from the Cato Institute, and the publication, in March, of his co-authored article in Harvard Business Review, “Big Bang Disruption.”Larry is now hard at work on the manuscript for a Big Bang Disruption book, but he’s still keeping up with interviews and articles for Forbes, CNET, and a new series on legal issues in innovation for Harvard Business Review.

We’re slowly making our way through the backlog, but in the meantime, check out our Facebook page, which is always current. And check the new Facebook page for BBD, launched in April, 2013, and our new Forbes column on BBD.