The authors, Ajay Agrawal, Joshua Gans and Avi Goldfarb, argue that A.I.-powered decision-making is poised to alter virtually every industry. To explain, they start with an A.I. leader, Amazon. The online retail giant is constantly learning more and more about its customers’ buying habits and tastes, and the data is steadily improving the predictive power of its A.I. algorithms.

Imagine, the authors suggest, that Amazon’s A.I. gets good enough that the company takes the next step — shipping goods before they are ordered. It knows what you want so accurately that returns would be minimal and make Amazon even more efficient.

It would also change the nature of shopping “from an opt-in experience to an opt-out experience,” Mr. Agrawal said in an interview.

A fanciful thought experiment? Perhaps. But Amazon was granted a patent for “anticipatory shipping” in 2013.

Just where artificial intelligence is taking us, at what pace and along what trajectory, is uncertain. The technology, of course, is raising serious questions about its potential impact on jobs, privacy and politics.