IWB Blog
A collection of observations, news and resources on the changing nature of innovation, technology, leadership, and other subjects.
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Category: Economic Issues
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On May 5, 2012, I gave the commencement address at Penn State’s College of Information Sciences and Technology. Then Dean David Hall offered me excellent advice on what makes for a good commencement speech: make it personal, tell us about yourself and your background, share a few lessons you’ve learned over the years, and keep…
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AI’s potential threat to programming has been widely debated over the past few years, as evidenced by the growing number of provocative headlines. For example, “The End of Programming” argued that “the end of classical computer science is coming, and most of us are dinosaurs waiting for the meteor to hit.” Other articles have predicted…
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The “2026 State of Tech Talent Report” was recently published by Linux Foundation Research. “Over the past several years, the Linux Foundation has surveyed hiring and training stakeholders to capture the state of the technical talent market amid technological shifts and economic changes,” wrote authors Adrienn Lawson, Marco Gerosa, and Anna Hermansen in the report’s…
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“Artificial intelligence is shaping how many college students think about their academic paths,” said a recently published Gallup article, “College Students Weigh AI’s Impact on Majors and Careers.” Forty-two percent of bachelor’s degree students say AI has caused them to give serious thought to changing their major, including 13% who say they have thought about…
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“When Deep Blue, IBM’s chess-playing supercomputer, beat Garry Kasparov in 1997, computers were still just computers,” noted a recent NY Times Magazine article, “We Don’t Really Know How A.I. Works. That’s a Problem,” by freelance writer Oliver Whang. Deep Blue determined the best next move by simulating and assigning values to board positions up to…
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“AI agents — autonomous systems that perceive, reason, and act on behalf of human principals — are poised to transform digital markets by dramatically reducing transaction costs,” wrote Peyman Shahidi, Gili Rusak, Benjamin Manning, Andrey Fradkin, and John Horton in their recent NBER working paper, “The Coasean Singularity? Demand, Supply, and Market Design with AI…
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“Transformative AI has revolutionary potential,” wrote Stanford University postdoctoral fellow Gabriel Unger in “Economic Possibilities for Artificial Intelligence,” one of the 21 essays in Volume 2 of The Digitalist Papers — a roadmap of the relentlessly advancing capabilities of the AI revolution. Unger adds that the AI revolution has arrived at a particularly significant moment. “America…
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Over the past few years, I’ve written a number of posts on the potential economic impact of artificial intelligence. One theme that has consistently stood out is the wide divergence of views on how transformative that impact will be. While there is broad agreement that AI capabilities are advancing rapidly, there is far less agreement…
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“New technologies don’t emerge in a vacuum,” wrote Sarah Friar, Chief Financial Officer of OpenAI in “The Democratizing of Intelligence,” one of 21 essays in The Digitalist Papers Volume 2, — a roadmap of the relentlessly advancing capabilities of the AI revolution. “In the beginning, they often reflect and amplify the inequalities of their time —…
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A few weeks ago, the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI) released the 2026 AI Index Report, its ninth annual analysis of the impact, progress, and trends of AI. Led by an interdisciplinary group of experts from across academia and industry, the AI Index offers one of the most comprehensive, data-driven views of the…