Brynjolfsson is known for studying the economics of information systems and the economics of AI. His early work measured the productivity contributions of IT and the complementary role of organizational capital and other intangibles. in the
NBER Handbook of Organizational Economics. Along with Daniel Rock and Chad Syverson, he wrote the lead article ("AI and the Modern Productivity Paradox") in the NBER volume on the
Economics of Artificial Intelligence. Brynjolfsson has done research on digital commerce, the
Long Tail,
bundling and pricing models, intangible assets and the effects of IT on business strategy,
productivity and performance. In several of his books and articles, Brynjolfsson has argued that technology is racing ahead, and called for greater efforts to update our skills, organizations and institutions more rapidly. with Adam Saunders, and
Race Against the Machine,
The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies and
Machine, Platform, Crowd with
Andrew McAfee. The
Second Machine Age was described as "pioneering a fundamentally new economics, one based not on the old reality of scarcity but on a new reality of abundance that we are only just beginning to comprehend."
Information technology and productivity At the urging of
Robert Solow, who first called attention to the gap between the computerization and productivity, Brynjolfsson wrote a review of the "IT
Productivity Paradox". In separate research, he documented a
correlation between IT investment and productivity. His work provides evidence that the use of Information Technology is most likely to increase productivity when it is combined with complementary business processes and human capital. A subsequent article, the
Productivity J-Curve, described how these intangible investments might initially lead to stagnant or even lower productivity followed by a take-off.
Measuring the Digital Economy Working with
Avinash Collis,
Felix Eggers, and others, Brynjolfsson developed new methods for measuring the digital economy using "massive online choice experiments". This work shows that even when goods like Wikipedia or email have zero price, and therefore may have little or no direct contribution to
GDP as it is conventionally measured, they may still contribute significantly to well-being and consumer surplus. They introduced a new measure,
GDP-B, which seeks to address these challenges by measuring the
consumer surplus from these goods and assess how it changes over time.
Using AI to augment and extend human capabilities Brynjolfsson has argued for using AI to augment and complement humans, rather than replace and substitute for them. The key conclusion of his 2011 book
Race Against the Machine was the humans should aim to work
with machines as partners, rather than try to race
against them. This built on his work stressing the importance of complementarities for achieving the full benefits of information technology. In 2013, he gave a TED talk on the economic implications of AI in the opening session of
TED where he argued that the key to economic growth was to use AI to augment human capabilities rather than replace them. Brynjolfsson was called a “techno optimist” after this debate, though he prefers the moniker “mindful optimist” noting that he concluded his TED talk with the words “Technology is not Destiny. We shape our Destiny.” In 2022, he wrote an article called "
The Turing Trap", arguing that too often technologists, business executives and policymakers focus on using AI to automate and replace humans, which can limit the benefits of the technology and increase inequality, and that they should look for opportunities to augment human capabilities. == Entrepreneur and Inventor ==