Cleanup in Aisle 2

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What happens when a machine gets much better than a human at doing something? When it’s an intellectual task?

This paper measures the performance of stock pickers before and after the introduction of AI car parking lot counting.

Car counting is important as it directly correlates to foot traffic, which is a key financial input into retailers such as shopping malls. Knowing this number allows more accurate predictions of quarterly sales, and hence stock prices.

The net result of the introduction of AI car counting was:

• Poor stock pickers performed the same before and after

• Good stock pickers lost their edge and performed worse

In effect, AI leveled the playing field between the good and the bad, by eliminating the advantage enjoyed by the good (intuition, etc). This is likely a precursor to what will happen in many zero-sum contests.

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