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Navigating the Jagged Technological Frontier

  * Industry 4.0

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D^3 Faculty

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In collaboration with Boston Consulting Group (BCG), new research
from Digital Data Design Institute at Harvard chair and co-founder
Karim Lakhani and others explores field experimental evidence of the
effects of AI on knowledge worker productivity and quality. It
involved evaluating the performance of 758 consultants, which make up
7% of the individual contributor workforce of the company. The tasks
spanned a consultant's daily work, including creativity, analytical
thinking, writing proficiency, and persuasiveness.

Key Findings

  * For tasks within the AI frontier, ChatGPT-4 significantly
    increased performance, boosting speed by over 25%, human-rated
    performance by over 40%, and task completion by over 12%.
  * The study introduces the concept of a "jagged technological
    frontier," where AI excels in some tasks but falls short in
    others.
  * Two distinct patterns of AI use emerged: "Centaurs," who divided
    and delegated tasks between themselves and the AI, and "Cyborgs,"
    who integrated their workflow with the AI.

Shifting the Debate

The paper argues that the focus should move beyond the binary
decision of adopting or not adopting AI. Instead, we should evaluate
the value of different configurations and combinations of humans and
AI for various tasks within the knowledge workflow.

Read the Full Working Paper

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