The jagged technological frontier describes the uneven edge of what AI does well: tasks of similar difficulty can fall on either side of it, and the line is hard to spot in advance.

Where it comes from

The term comes from a 2023 field experiment by researchers from Harvard, Wharton, MIT and other institutions with 758 consultants at Boston Consulting Group.¹ On tasks inside the frontier, consultants using GPT-4 completed 12 percent more tasks, 25 percent faster, at quality more than 40 percent higher. On a task just outside it, those using AI reached the right answer less often than colleagues working without it. The authors also described two ways of working with AI: "centaurs," who split tasks between themselves and the machine, and "cyborgs," who weave AI into every step.

Where it goes wrong

The frontier is often treated as a fixed map. It moves with each new model and differs by task and by organization, so every team has to keep rediscovering where it runs.

Talent Takeaway

  • Keep a shared team list of where AI has proven reliable and where it has let you down, and review it whenever your tools change.
  • The list itself becomes a learning tool for new colleagues.
  • For those of us who develop others, helping people find their own place on this frontier builds judgment and confidence with AI, and sharing what we learn lifts the whole team.

More on the study: AI Made Consultants 40% Better, With One Catch

¹ Dell'Acqua, F., McFowland III, E., Mollick, E. R., Lifshitz-Assaf, H., Kellogg, K., Rajendran, S., Krayer, L., Candelon, F., & Lakhani, K. R. (2023). Navigating the jagged technological frontier: Field experimental evidence of the effects of artificial intelligence on knowledge worker productivity and quality (Harvard Business School Working Paper No. 24-013). https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4573321

Further reading: Mollick, E. (2024). Co-intelligence: Living and working with AI. Portfolio.