POWER AND PREDICTION d’Ajay Agrawal, Joshua Gans & Avi Goldfarb

Disruption resulting from the proliferation of AI is coming. The authors of the bestselling Prediction Machines can help you prepare.

POWER AND PREDICTION:
The Disruptive Economics of Artificial Intelligence
by Ajay Agrawal, Joshua Gans & Avi Goldfarb
Harvard Business Review Press, November 2022
(via Levine Greenberg Rostan Literary)

Artificial intelligence (AI) has impacted many industries around the world—banking and finance, pharmaceuticals, automotive, medical technology, manufacturing, and retail. But it has only just begun its odyssey toward cheaper, better, and faster predictions that drive strategic business decisions. When prediction is taken to the max, industries transform, and with such transformation comes disruption.
What is at the root of this? In their bestselling first book, Prediction Machines, eminent economists Ajay Agrawal, Joshua Gans, and Avi Goldfarb explained the simple yet game-changing economics of AI. Now, in POWER AND PREDICTION , they go deeper, examining the most basic unit of analysis: the decision. The authors explain that the two key decision-making ingredients are prediction and judgment, and we perform both together in our minds, often without realizing it. The rise of AI is shifting prediction from humans to machines, relieving people from this cognitive load while increasing the speed and accuracy of decisions.
This sets the stage for a flourishing of new decisions and has profound implications for system-level innovation. Redesigning systems of interdependent decisions takes time—many industries are in the quiet before the storm—but when these new systems emerge, they can be disruptive on a global scale. Decision-making confers power. In industry, power confers profits; in society, power confers control. This process will have winners and losers, and the authors show how businesses can leverage opportunities, as well as protect their positions.
Filled with illuminating insights, rich examples, and practical advice, POWER AND PREDICTION is the must-read guide for any business leader or policymaker on how to make the coming AI disruptions work for you rather than against you.

Ajay Agrawal is Professor of Strategic Management and the Geoffrey Taber Chair in Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management. He is founder of the Creative Destruction Lab and the Metaverse Mind Lab and cofounder of NEXT Canada and Sanctuary.
Joshua Gans is the Jeffrey S. Skoll Chair of Technical Innovation and Entrepreneurship and Professor of Strategic Management at Toronto’s Rotman School of Management. He is Chief Economist of the Creative Destruction Lab, department editor (Strategy) at Management Science, and cofounder and managing director of Core Economic Research.
Avi Goldfarb is the Rotman Chair in Artificial Intelligence and Healthcare and Professor of Marketing at Toronto’s Rotman School of Management. He is also Chief Data Scientist at the Creative Destruction Lab, a fellow at Behavioral Economics in Action at Rotman, and a faculty affiliate at the Vector Institute for Artificial Intelligence.

KILLING ME de Michelle Gagnon

Utterly original and wildly entertaining, with a protagonist whose life is a total mess, KILLING ME is the laugh-out-loud funny thriller that we never knew we needed.

KILLING ME
by Michelle Gagnon
Putnam, May 2023
(via Levine Greenberg Rostan Literary)

She escaped a serial killer. Then things got weird. Amber Jamison cannot believe she’s about to become the latest victim of a serial killer—she’s savvy and street smart, so when she gets pushed into, of all things, a white windowless van, she’s more angry than afraid. Things get even weirder when she’s miraculously saved by a mysterious woman…who promptly disappears. Who was she? And why is she hunting serial killers?
You’d think escaping one psychopath would be enough, but Amber’s problems are just beginning. Her close call has law enforcement circling a past she’s tried to outrun. So she flees across the country, ending up at a seedy motel in Las Vegas with a noir-obsessed manager and a sex worker as her unlikely companions…and danger right behind. She’s landed in the crosshairs of the world’s most prolific killer, caught up in a deadly game that’s been going on for years. To survive, she’s forced to dust off her old playbook and partner with someone she can’t trust. The odds are against her, but sometimes you just have to roll the dice.

Michelle Gagnon writes thrillers for teens and adults. A former modern dancer, dog walker, bartender, freelance journalist, personal trainer, and model, she’s currently pursuing a master’s degree in clinical psychology. She lives in Los Angeles with her family and way too many dogs.

THE DIVIDE de Morgan Richter

A debut mystery with slight speculative elements, which follows an actress turned psychic who finds herself embroiled in a murder investigation when the doppelgänger she never knew existed turns up missing.

THE DIVIDE
by Morgan Richter
Anchor/Knopf, publication date TBD
(via Levine Greenberg Rostan Literary)

When Jenny St. John was eighteen, she moved to Los Angeles from her rural Iowa hometown and scored the lead role in an independent film called The Divide. She was working with the young auteur director Serge Grumet and on her way to becoming the next indie darling. But when the movie tanked and Jenny never caught a second break it seemed her charmed story had a different ending in mind. Now, two decades later, after floundering on the fringes of the entertainment industry, she’s barely keeping afloat running a low-level grift as a psychic life coach.
But when news surfaces that Serge has been murdered, Jenny’s life is turned upside down. Unbeknownst to Jenny, Serge’s ex-wife, painter Genevieve Santos, looks alarmingly similar to Jenny. So much so, that when Gena goes missing, the cops think Jenny is Gena.
Jenny finds herself pulled into Gena’s world and manages to somehow leverage both her resemblance to Gena and her ersatz psychic abilities to infiltrate the affluent yet unstable inner circle of friends, which include a Korean pop idol-turned-social media star and an Oscar-winning actress-turned-wellness guru. It becomes clear that Gena is either the culprit of Serge’s murder or another victim. Soon Jenny’s search to find Gena unearths dark secrets about her own past while putting her squarely in the sights of a killer.
THE DIVIDE is a propulsive, unputdownable novel full of sharp insights on identity, age, success, and the inescapable pitfalls of fractured memory.

Morgan Richter is a graduate of the Filmic Writing program at the University of Southern California’s film school and has worked in production on several television shows including ABC’s America’s Funniest Home Videos and E! Entertainment Television’s Emmy-winning comedy series Talk Soup. An avid popular culture critic, she is the author of Duranalysis: Essays on the Duran Duran Experience and has amassed a cult following on her analyses of classic Duran Duran videos. She has self-published five novels but THE DIVIDE is her first foray into traditional publishing. Morgan currently lives in Seattle.

THE GHOST OF SAM WEBSTER de Craig Higginson

Written in Craig Higginson’s masterful prose, THE GHOST OF SAM WEBSTER is at once a war novel, a murder mystery, a multi-layered love story and a robust reassertion of what it is to remain human during the most challenging times.

THE GHOST OF SAM WEBSTER
by Craig Higginson
Pan Macmillan (South Africa), September 2023
(via The Lennon-Ritchie Agency)

• Winner of the HSS Award for Best Fiction Novel (2024)
• Longlisted for the Sunday Times Fiction Prize (2024)
• Longlisted for the SALA Award for Best Novel (2024)

Writer Daniel Hawthorne is packing up his mother’s house in Johannesburg when he hears about the disappearance of Sam Webster, the beautiful daughter of his friend, the famous historian Bruce Webster. When the body of Sam appears briefly on the banks of the flooded Buffalo River, Daniel decides to visit the Websters’ luxury lodge in the heart of Zululand. Under the guise of researching a new novel about his disgraced ancestor, the lepidopterist Lieutenant Charles Hawthorne who fought in the Battle of iSandlwana, Daniel starts to investigate the reasons for Sam’s disappearance. The lines between loyalty and betrayal, love and hate, cowardice and courage, redemption and shame, soon become blurred as Daniel gets closer to the truth.

Craig Higginson is an acclaimed playwright and award-winning novelist whose plays have been performed and produced in theatres and festivals around the world. His novels include Last Summer (Picador Africa, 2010; Mercure de France, 2017), The Landscape Painter (Picador Africa, 2011), The Dream House (Picador Africa, 2015; Mercure de France, 2016) and The White Room (Picador Africa and St Martin’s Press, 2018). The Dream House was a matric setwork for South African schools from 2019 to 2021.

THE QUALITY OF MERCY de Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu

“In her most magnificent novel yet, award-winning author Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu showcases the history of a country transitioning from a colonial to a postcolonial state with a deft touch and a compassionate eye for poignant detail … Dickensian in its scope, with the proverbial bustling cast of colleagues both good and bad, villagers, guerrillas, neighbours, ex-soldiers, suburban madams, shopkeepers, would-be politicians and more, THE QUALITY OF MERCY proposes that ties of kinship and affiliation can never be completely broken – and that love can heal even the most grievous of wounds.” –Litnet

THE QUALITY OF MERCY
by Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu
Penguin Random House South Africa, September 2022
(via The Lennon-Ritchie Agency)

On the eve of his country’s independence, Spokes Moloi investigates his first ‘white case’ and finds a very confusing crime scene. Having recently been promoted to Chief Inspector, it is up to Spokes – a man of impeccable rectitude and moral spotlessness who is supported in all things by his paragon spouse, Loveness – to solve long-standing mysteries. His task now is to unravel the alleged murder of a man, Emil Coetzee, but also the tangled web that his life created.
Following on her award-winning novels The Theory of Flight and The History of Man, Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu’s The Quality of Mercy is a novel of comfort and, indeed, mercy. Ndlovu weaves together elements of social comedy and cosy crime while examining the history of a country transitioning from a colonial to a postcolonial state. From the City of Kings and surrounding villages steps a cast of engaging characters who will criss-cross each other’s lives in delightful and poignant ways. Here, where everyone knows everyone else, the ties of kinship and affiliation can never be completely broken.
The final book in the City of Kings trilogy of three overlapping but standalone novels, preceded by The Theory of Flight and The History of Man. Ndlovu is the winner of the Windham Campbell Prize and the 2019 Sunday Times Fiction Prize.

Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu is the author of the bestselling novel The Theory of Flight, winner of the 2019 Sunday Times Fiction Prize and currently a school set work, and its follow-up, The History of Man. A Winner of Yale University’s 2022 Windham Campbell Prize, she is a writer, filmmaker and academic who holds a PhD from Stanford University as well as master’s degrees in African Studies and Film from Ohio University. She has published research on Saartjie Baartman and she wrote, directed and edited the award-winning short film Graffiti. She was born in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe.