Artificial Intelligence and the Power of Prediction

Featured Events | Apr 24, 2023 | Gabelli School of Business

Whether it’s the droids in Star Wars or the reality-bending technology in The Matrix, we’ve seen what artificial intelligence can achieve in fiction. In real life, machine learning is on the rise in tech, banking, and beyond. It has the power to change industry by working alongside human ingenuity.

In the book, Power and Prediction: The Disruptive Economics of Artificial Intelligence, author Avi Goldfarb, Ph.D., and his colleagues examined how AI is automating a key element of business analysis: the decision. The Rotman Chair in Artificial Intelligence and Healthcare and professor of marketing at the University of Toronto, Goldfarb explained that the rise of AI is pushing the science of prediction from human responsibility to machines and increasing the speed and accuracy of decisions. He outlined how businesses could leverage opportunities using new AI systems in this webinar sponsored by the Gabelli Center for Global Security Analysis, CFA Society of New York, and the Museum of American Finance.

Goldfarb concludes that humans don’t have to worry about machine learning replacing their jobs. However, the rights to this technology and its accessibility could lead to bigger issues down the line.

“We remain in a world where machines don’t make decisions, and there is always a human responsible for a team of humans,” he said. “Instead it tells us about where the real danger lies, that machines are potentially going to concentrate power in a small number of engineers and developers of these machines.”