Unit 2 - Digital Disruption

Question 1

What are ‘General Purpose Technologies (GPTs)’?

Answer 1

Deep new ideas or techniques that have the potential for important impacts on many sectors of the economy. They:

1) Are pervasive
2) Improve over time
3) Are able to spawn new innovations

Question 2

What are ‘Specific Technologies’?

Answer 2

Ones that serve a particular purpose

Question 3

Why is productivity almost everything?

Answer 3

A country’s ability to improve it’s standard of living over time depends almost entirely on its ability to raise it’s output per worker.

Innovation is how this productivity growth happens.

Question 4

According to Gordon, what were the 3 great inventions of the 2nd industrial revolution?

Answer 4

1) Electricity
2) Internal combustion engine
3) Indoor plumbing

Question 5

What four things did the steam engine bring?

Answer 5

• Massive increase in power available to factories
• Enabled factories to be located away from rivers / streams
• Revolutionised land travel - railroads
• New sea travel - steamship

Question 6

How did electricity boost manufacturing?

Answer 6

• Enable individual powered machines
• Lighting for factories, offices and warehouses
• Led to further innovation, such as air conditioning units

Question 7

What does ‘Innovation as fruit’ mean?

Answer 7

When multiple GPTs appear at the same or similar time, we sustain steady rates of growth over a long time-period.

When there’s a big gap though, economic growth will eventually peter out.

Question 8

What are meta-ideas?

Answer 8

Ideas about how to support the production and transmission of other ideas. Two safe predictions:

1) Leading country will be the one that implements an innovation that more effectively supports new ideas in the private sector
2) New meta-ideas of this kind will be found

Question 9

What is ‘Recombinant Innovation’?

Answer 9

Each development becomes a building block for future innovations.

Progress doesn’t run out, it accumulates.

This is the ‘Innovation as a building block’ view.

Question 10

What is ‘Innocentive’?

Answer 10

Online clearinghouse for scientific problems.

It is non-credentialist and can be used by people from any discipline.

Question 11

What is ‘Kaggle’?

Answer 11

Online site for people world-wide to solve data analysis / modelling problems submitted by organisations

Question 12

What is ‘Quirky’?

Answer 12

People firstly generate ideas, then filters them as they vote on submissions, conduct reasearch, suggest improvements, figure out names and brands and drive sales.

Question 13

What is ‘Choice Modelling’?

An example site is Affinova

Answer 13

Mathematically finds the optimum set of choices by presenting a small number of options and asking people to select which they like best.

Question 14

What is a ‘Seed Idea’?

Answer 14

Piece of knowledge that adds value to things that are essential to the economy.

Using open-source sites can enable anyone to contribute. E.g through Innocentive or Kaggle

Question 15

What is ‘Artificial Intelligence’?

Answer 15

The machine-assisted achievement of human goals which depend on the discovery of mathematical relationships between different sets of data.

Question 16

What is ‘Fuzzy Logic’?

Answer 16

Logic which acknowledges semantic vagueness and which does not assume every statement is either true or false

Question 17

What is the ‘Classify and Regression’ method of machine learning?

Answer 17

• Humans select examples of abnormal samples from a large batch
• Samples with similarity relations are then in effect machine-diagnosed
• Similarity relations are refined and subtle characteristics come to light
• More data and more classification results in fewer false positives and negatives

Question 18

What are benefits of using AI?

Answer 18

• Predictive models in AI are often more accurate than experts. They are also…
• Unbiased
• Fast
• Cheap

Question 19

What is the ‘Internet of Things (IoT)’?

Answer 19

Network of manufactured goods that can send and receive data over the internet.

Includes public infrastructure, such as street lights, bins, traffic lights. Also vehicles, home appliances, navigation systems, comms devices.

Question 20

What can machine learning in smart devices bring?

Answer 20

Personalised services, made more cost-efficient.

Companies can read the huge amount of data generated and predict and sometimes manipulate demand for products and services.

Question 21

What are two of the most important one-time events in our history?

Answer 21

1) The emergence of real, useful AI

2) The connection of most of the people on the planet via a common digital network

Question 22

What is an example of a life-changing AI development?

Answer 22

OrCam combined a computer, digital sensors and excellent algorithm to give key aspects of sight (such as reading text when pointed to) to the visually impaired.

Question 23

Why does Julian Simon think things have gotten better BECAUSE there are more people?

Answer 23

It is the mind that matters economically, as much or more than mouth or hands.

In the long run, the most important economic effect of population size and growth is the contribution of additional people to our stock of useful knowledge.

Question 24

What are examples of ‘Trivial’ and ‘More Subtantive’ AI?

Answer 24

Trivial may be recognising faces of friends on Facebook, whereas more substantive would include self-driving cars and guiding robots in warehouses.

Question 25

How does increased my internet connectivity increase human mental power?

Answer 25

E.g. Crowd-sourcing answers to technical problems. Also sharing in the moment information, such as traffic conditions or opinions on goods or services

Question 26

How has connectivity affected the uneven distribution historically of good libraries and telephone landlines?

Answer 26

Digitising the same book means it can be read by multiple people at the same time, wherever they are.

Mobile phone technology in developing countries has enabled them to bypass the huge expense of landline infrastructure.

Question 27

How does smartphone and tablet technology help to democtratise global access to knowledge?

Answer 27

Using smartphones or tablets people from anywhere in the world can register for online courses, listen to online lectures and receive official credits.

Question 28

What did Bob Solow call the ‘Productivity Paradox’ in 1993?

Answer 28

Computers were still a small share of the economy, and complementary innovations are typically needed before GPTs like IT have their real impact

Question 29

What is required in order to capture the full benefit of second machine age technologies?

Answer 29

Significant organisational innovation

Question 30

What do companies need to invest for every £1 in computer hardware?

Answer 30

£9 in software, training and business process redesign

Question 31

What are the similarities between the introduction of electricity into factories and the web?

Answer 31

In both cases it was ‘complementary’ technologies that allowed more of the possible purposes of the GPT to be realised.

1) When individual machines given their own electric motor and could be laid out on factory floor according to material flow
2) Development of word processors and image processors that allowed consumer-usable websites

Question 32

Why has US productivity declined since 2005?

Answer 32

The 2008 financial crisis is a huge factor in the lull in productivity.