How to Win with Machine Learning

by Ajay Agrawal, Joshua Gans, and Avi Goldfarb

THE PAST DECADE HAS BROUGHT tremendous advances in an exciting dimension of artificial intelligence—machine learning. This technique for taking data inputs and turning them into predictions has enabled tech giants such as Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google to dramatically improve their products. It has also spurred start-ups to launch new products and platforms, sometimes even in competition with Big Tech.

Consider BenchSci, a Toronto-based company that seeks to speed the drug development process. It aims to make it easier for scientists to find needles in haystacks—to zero in on the most crucial information embedded in pharma companies’ internal databases and ...

Get HBR's 10 Must Reads on AI (with bonus article "How to Win with Machine Learning" by Ajay Agrawal, Joshua Gans, and Avi Goldfarb) now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.