AI glossary

Jagged frontier

Also called jagged technological frontier.

Jagged frontier is the name for the uneven edge of what AI can do: brilliant at some tasks, unreliable at others that look just as easy. It comes from a 2023 study of Boston Consulting Group consultants, led by Harvard Business School researchers, who did better with AI inside the frontier and worse just outside it.

Think of it as

A coastline, not a straight line.

Why it matters at work

Success on one task tells you little about the next, and the edge moves as models change, so test AI on your own work before relying on it.

Sources

Navigating the Jagged Technological Frontier: Field Experimental Evidence of the Effects of Artificial Intelligence on Knowledge Worker Productivity and Quality (opens in a new tab) Organization Science (Dell’Acqua, McFowland, Mollick, Lakhani and others; first a Harvard Business School working paper, September 2023), published online 11 March 2026.