The Robots Are Coming

Subscribe to The Robots Are Coming: https://bit.ly/3dVlFEd Read his latest work today: https://hbr.org/2023/02/why-retailers-fail-to-adopt-advanced-data-analytics _____ In this episode of our podcast, we have the pleasure of speaking with Robert Rooderkerk, an Associate Professor of Operations Management at the Rotterdam School of Management. With his extensive research experience in the field of retail operations, Robert sheds light on the complex challenges that arise at the intersection of marketing and operations. Through his work, he delves into questions surrounding product assortments, product lines, and fulfillment, offering unique insights that will be of interest to anyone in the retail industry. Tune in to hear from this esteemed professor and gain a deeper understanding of the intricacies of retail operations.

In this podcast episode, I interview Professor Lan Cao, author of Monkey Bridge and a Yale Law School and Mount Holyoke College graduate! We talked about her semi-autobiographical story of a mother and daughter who left Vietnam to come to the U.S.

Brandan Ward is the co-founder of Worldie (worldiebrand.com), Captain with the Unietd States Air Force, Summer Associate from Hillspire, Major in the Georgia Air National Guard, and Summer Associate with Cooley LLP. He is also leading his own startup on sustainable shoes for kids. In this episode, we talk about the JD/MBA program at UChicago, daily life, and entrepreneurship.

Eric A. Posner is the Kirkland & Ellis Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Arthur and Esther Kane Research Chair at the University of Chicago Law School. His research interests include antitrust law, financial regulation, international law, and constitutional law. Professor Posner is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of the American Law Institute. In today’s episode, we are discussing his latest book How Antitrust Failed Workers and his seminal paper The Political Economy of the Decline of Antitrust Enforcement in the U.S. Enforcement (August 2022).

Linwei Xin is the associate professor of Operations Management at the UChicago Booth School of Business. His primary research is on inventory and supply chain management anddesigning models and algorithms for organizations to effectively "match supply to demand" in various contexts with uncertainty. He has been actively collaborating with companies, including Walmart, Alibaba Group, and JD.com. He holds with Daniel H. Wagner Prize and has been recognized as a finalist for the INFORMS 2021 Franz Edelman Award.

Dr. Mark Moyar joined Hillsdale College in July 2021 as the William P. Harris Chair of Military History. From 2018 to 2019, he served as the Director of the Office of Civilian-Military Cooperation at USAID, and previously served as the Director of the Project on Military and Diplomatic History at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, DC. He holds a B.A. summa cum laude from Harvard and a Ph.D. from Cambridge. In this episode, we talk about his latest book Triumph Regained: The Vietnam War 1965-1968.

Michelle Rode-Smith is the mother of Seth Smith (a UC Berkeley student slain by Tony Walker), a teacher, and an activist. In this episode, we discuss Seth's posthumous degree, an Economics and History Fellowship, Seth's Law, a more proactive police presence in Berkeley, and more publicity for Seth.

Adriana Z. Robertson is the Donald N. Pritzker Professor of Business Law at the University of Chicago Law School. In this episode, we discuss four of Professor Robertson's papers: Passive in Name Only: Delegated Management and 'Index' Investing, Noisy Factors, Advisers by Another Name, and The (Mis)Uses of the S&P 500.

Jonathan Masur is the John P. Wilson Professor of Law at the University of Chicago Law School, as well as the Director of the Watchell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz Behavioral Law Program and the Finance and Economics organization. In this episode, we discuss his book Happiness and the Law (University of Chicago Press, 2015), which investigates the central question in law and economics: how people behave in the presence of legal rules. We discuss how legal rules influence behavior and how happiness and the law are intertwined.

Joshua C. Macey is an assistant professor at the University of Chicago Law School, specializing in environmental law, energy law, bankruptcy, and the regulation of financial institutions. In this episode, we talk about Grid Reliability Through Clean Energy

Josh Avratin is a Clinical Professor in the Kirkland and Ellis Corporate Lab. Before joining the clinical faculty, Professor Avratin practiced in the debt finance groups of Sidley Austin LLP in Chicago and Goodwin Procter LLP in Boston and served as corporate counsel to Groupon, Inc. In this episode, we discuss the Kirkland & Ellis Corporate Lab offerings, the opportunities available at UChicago Law School, and the transferrable skills through the Corporate Lab.

Adam Chilton is a Professor of Law and the Walter Mandar Research Scholar at the University of Chicago Law School. Currently, Professor Chilton is working on a documentary called Basti on the story of the slums in India. In this episode, we talk about international law, public policy in India's slums, and the future of public policy.

William H. J. Hubbard is the Professor of Law at the University of Chicago Law School and editor of the Journal of Legal Studies. He teaches courses in civil procedure and has been an organizer for the Law and Economics Workshop. In this episode, we talk about Professor Hubbard's 2015 paper The Discovery Sombrero and Other Metaphors for Litigation (https://scholarship.law.edu/lawreview/vol64/iss4/6/), which talks about the discovery costs in civil litigation. We discuss present empirical evidence on the nature and costs of preservation and discovery, interact with current challenges for governing preservation and discovery, and discuss the three new metaphors for civil litigation (the discovery sombrero, the preservation iceberg, and the long tail of litigation costs).

Shuo Chen is a General Partner at IOVC, where she invests in early stage startups in Silicon Valley with a focus on future of work and enterprise/SaaS. She is also Faculty at UC Berkeley, where she teaches entrepreneurship. In this episode, we talk about early stage startups, California's Mental Health Commission, and the future of work.

Geoffrey R. Stone is the Edward H. Levi Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago. Mr. Stone joined the faculty of UChicago Law in 1973, after serving as a law clerk to Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan, Jr. He later served as Dean of the Law School (1987-1994) and Provost of the University of Chicago (1994-2002). He is an expert on constitional law, more specifically first amendment laws. Recently, he authored of Social Media, Freedom of Speech, and the Future of our Democracy. In this episode, we discuss first amendment rights, technology, and the future of our democracy.

Kathy Timpte is a former professor and New Testament scholar specializing in Markan studies. Today, she serves as the Director University and Young Adult ministries at a local  Presbyterian church. We discuss the New Testament, Markan studies, and its relation to the future of technology.

Dan Sachs serves as the executive director of the Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the University of Chicago. The author of The Million Dollar Greeting, his experience as a seasoned business executive and entrepreneur in the hospitality industry provides more insight into entrepreneurship and management. He is also responsible for developing and nurturing relationships with key stakeholders across UChicago and in the business community.

Professor Emily Underwood is the Associate Clinical Professor of Law, Bluhm-Helfand Director of the Innovation Clinic at the University of Chicago Law School. She is also one of the supervisors of the Innovation Fund Associates program, an interdisciplinary group of students and post-docs from across all University divisions. Underwood also teaches a summer intensive seminar on contract drafting principles. In this episode, we discuss the state of entrepreneurship, emergence of innovative industries, and the exciting outlook for technologists and lawyers in the midwest and beyond.

Both Brian and Ravi are team members as a part of our new ambitious project -- Demodraft -- a platform that allows users to discover, fund, and support other users before they decide to run for office. They can let their ideas flourish content, such as forums and polls.

Ravi is a rising Sophomore at UC Berkeley studying economics and public policy. Over the summer, he interned with progressive congressional campaigns in both Michigan and California, to elect candidates who do not take corporate PAC money. He competes on Berkeley’s Mock Trial team and is a Digital Outreach Organizer for his local Democratic Assembly candidate.

Brian is a rising high school senior from Portland, Oregon whose interests lie in the intersection of math and politics. He is invested in public advocacy and service as he runs the student-led educational nonprofit Students Tutor Students and organizes for the Oregon Youth Climate Strike. His dream is to one day bring his skills in STEM to use in the political world. 

Dr. Roland Vogl is a scholar, lawyer and entrepreneur who, after more than fifteen years of academic and professional experience, has developed a strong expertise in legal informatics, intellectual property law and innovation. Currently, he is Executive Director of the Stanford Program in Law, Science and Technology and a Lecturer in Law at Stanford Law School. He focuses his efforts on legal informatics work carried out in the Center for Legal Informatics (CodeX), which he co-founded and leads as Executive Director.

Mark Lemley is the William H. Neukom Professor of Law at Stanford Law School and the Director of the Stanford Program in Law, Science and Technology. He is also a Senior Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research and as affiliated faculty in the Symbolic Systems program.  He teaches intellectual property, patent law, trademark law, antitrust, the law of robotics and AI, video game law, and remedies. We delve into antirust laws, the misunderstandings between big tech and the general public, and public policy proposals in the works.

Dr. Jermaine Johnson is a community activist, avid volunteer and public servant who will bring a new era to South Carolina House District 80. As a husband and proud father, Jermaine knows the value and importance of giving back to the community that has helped him raise his .Jermaine is the owner of Dream Team Consulting and an adjunct professor at Webster University in Columbia, SC. He is a member of the Democratic Black Caucus of South Carolina and a James E. Clyburn Fellow. In an upset victory in D80 in South Carolina, he hopes to increase the number of households that have access to internet services. 

Today our guest is Ahmed Ahmed, an undergraduate at Stanford of the same major as Michael (MCS). Ahmed is an ethnic Arabic born in Sudan, lived in Qatar before emigrating to the US. His diverse life experiences shaped some unique perspectives on Black Lives Matter, Blacks In Tech, affirmative action amongst various other issues which we discussed. He is a role model within the black in tech community and aspires to get a PhD in AI.

Facial recognition has been deployed to improve the convenience of our day-to-day lives, from identifying your friends on pictures shared on social media, unlocking your phone or door, validating identity at ATM machines, and enforcing building security. However, every coin has two sides, and it can be argued the other side is much darker than meets the eye.

What is the price we pay for a little extra convenience in our lives? Facial recognition enables a third eye from authorities or companies into our lives, allowing one) the targeting of specific individuals to their interest and two) the ability surveil our lives in disturbing detail, and we see how these two applications correspond to the two most powerful countries in the world.

On this episode, we will being have a conversation about Big Tech, and censorship, especially in relation to data mining, and encryption, with the relevance of acts like S.3398, the "Earn It" Act possibly threatening individuals rights to speak out on various social media platforms, especially as it pertains to Black organizing and narratives. Internet censorship is a huge deal, especially as it pertains to the way people get their information and the way media presents occurrences.

Reverend Wendy Hamilton was formerly a Spiritual and Cultural Surrogate of presidential candidate Andrew Yang and is currently a counselor based in Washington DC. Rev. Hamilton became a Yang supporter after she read an article the candidate penned for The New York Times called “The Robots Are Coming.”, Yang spoke about the consequences of automation and its impact on job opportunities. We brought Rev. Wendy on so our tech can hear Wendy's voice on the social aspect of current advancements of technology, but in light of everything we realized one headline above all else really demands our attention, especially while Wendy are on here with us, that begins with George Floyd’s death. We were thinking how we would approach this from the perspective of technology and we thought of two ways - one: how technology is driving the economic problems that led to George Floyd’s death and two: how tech/tech companies can play a role in leading solutions to address police brutality and so we can come out of this stronger. 

We had a special guest: Ben Barlett who’s a council member in Berkeley City Council, District 3. What’s really special about Ben is that he is both a tech and political leader focused not only on activism but also using innovation to drive 21st century economic development with job opportunities for all Californians. We contextualized George Floyd’s death in a long continuum of economic injustice. We discussed his role on the blockchain commission for calcoin, a digital currency to serve as a payment system for the unemployed in California. Furthermore, we looked at ways to integrate workers to work alongside Kiwibot as operators so they don’t lose their jobs. We also discussed his work on a trade agreement with China to deliver green tech supplies and infrastructure, funding for body cameras, and that led to a discussion of privacy, surveillance and data as a property right.

Michael and Ken are sophomores from Stanford and UC Berkeley, respectively. While there has been a lot of academic discussion around the impact and challenges of automation, especially in the Silicon Valley, it was only recently that these issues have entered the mainstream. Automation is no longer the Terminator’s and Transformers of science-fiction. It’s already here and radically changing society.

That’s why we’re excited to bridge the gap between our bubble and the rest of the country by sharing our insights into how the invisible hand of technology plays a role underneath the surface of modern society.