Podcast
The Droid Duo Podcast
Hosted by Gil Appel and David Schweidel · EN
The Droid Duo brings together Gil Appel (GW School of Business) and David Schweidel (Emory's Goizueta Business School) for lively, 30-minute conversations on AI’s impact across business and society. From small business and higher education to copyright, ethics, creativity, and the environment, they mix critical thinking with humor to separate hype from reality. Two scholars, two “droids,” one big conversation about the future of AI.
10episodes
Episodes
Newest firstAll episodes
Ep. 14 — 5 Things Professors Should Do With AI This Summer
6d ago00:52:13Tap to summarizeSummer is when next year’s course gets built. Gil Appel and David Schweidel walk through five concrete moves for professors adapting to AI before fall: red-teaming assessments (12:52), writing a per-assignment AI policy (16:58), building a custom course assistant with a live demo (27:08), rebuilding a signature assignment, and keeping your own fluency sharp (43:36). Practical, opinionated, and built from their own classrooms.
Transcribe →Ep. 13 — When AI Starts Running Society
3w ago00:54:21Tap to summarizeWhat happens when AI starts running society? Gil Appel and David Schweidel dig into AI agents governing simulated worlds (and watching them collapse), Robinhood handing trading to AI agents, Florida's lawsuit against OpenAI and the Section 230 fight, Bernie Sanders' AI sovereign wealth fund, and Pope Leo XIV's encyclical on AI and human dignity.In this episode:(1:12) AI runs simulated societies — and they collapse(15:09) Robinhood opens trading to AI agents(23:31) Florida sues OpenAI & Section 230(35:29) Bernie's AI sovereign wealth fund(47:44) The Pope's letter on AITwo marketing professors, zero hype. New episodes monthly.
Transcribe →Droid Duo Ep. 12 — Not About the Model: The $5.5B Consulting Pivot
May 1400:34:52Tap to summarizeAnthropic and OpenAI spent $5.5 billion in eight days to become consulting firms. SpaceX handed Anthropic the biggest GPU cluster on Earth, and Grok still couldn't win. Gil and David unpack the twin JVs, the Forward Deployed Engineer model, Claude Legal, the SpaceX Colossus 1 deal, Claude's token pricing problem, McKinsey's misleading 88% adoption stat, and what all of this means for MBA graduates, law firms, and higher education. The thread running through all of it: the model is not the moat. Deployment is.
Transcribe →Title: Ep 11 — AI's Pricing Problem, Allbirds Becomes an AI Company, and Higher Ed's Self-Sabotage
Apr 2700:40:27Tap to summarizeNew image models, opaque AI pricing, a shoe company pivoting to AI, and why banning AI in classrooms is the worst possible move. Gil and David on what's hype, what's snake oil, and how business schools need to change — now.
Transcribe →Droid Duo Ep. 10 — The Meta/Google Verdict & the AI Brand Playbook
Apr 100:39:40Tap to summarizeA jury just found Meta and Google liable for designing addictive platforms — the first "defective by design" verdict in social media history. A day earlier, Meta got hit with $375M in New Mexico. It's Big Tech's Big Tobacco moment.But here's the twist: just as platforms face a legal reckoning, AI agents are building an entirely new layer between brands and consumers. Most companies aren't ready for either shift.In this episode, we break down the landmark Meta/Google verdict, what it means for every brand advertising on these platforms, and then dive into David's new HBR article "Preparing Your Brand for Agentic AI" (Acar & Schweidel, March–April 2026) — covering share of model, the three types of AI agent interactions, and why brands that aren't legible to algorithms will become invisible.#AI #Marketing #AgenticAI #MetaLawsuit #BigTech #Brands #LLM #ChatGPT #DigitalMarketing #TheDroidDuo
Transcribe →Droid Duo Ep. 9 — The Great Migration: QuitGPT, Checkout Retreats & AI Brand Blind Spots
Mar 2000:35:09Tap to summarizeMillions are ditching ChatGPT overnight, OpenAI is abandoning in-chat shopping, and most brands have no idea what AI is telling consumers about them. Gil and David break down the QuitGPT fallout, how easy switching AI platforms really is, why Instant Checkout fizzled, and what David's new HBR article says about getting your brand ready for agentic commerce.
Transcribe →Episode 8: There Can Be Only One: The Great AI Ad Race
Jan 2800:33:07Tap to summarizeAds have officially entered the chat. After a winter hiatus, Gil and David return to discuss the inevitable commercialization of AI. OpenAI has announced ads for its free tier, but at what cost to the user experience?In this episode, we break down:The Highlander Strategy: Why Google and OpenAI are in a fight to be the "last bot standing."The Apple-Google Alliance: What the Gemini-powered Siri means for data privacy and market dominance.The Personalization Trap: How Google’s "Personal Intelligence" builds a 3-bullet profile of your life—and why it’s so effective.The Ethics of AI Literacy: Based on Gil’s latest research, why lower AI literacy leads to higher trust in ads, and why we need an "adult in the room" for regulation.
Transcribe →Droid Duo Episode 7 - The Agency Paradox
Dec 2100:35:58Tap to summarizeThis episode explores how AI is shifting agency away from individuals and toward platforms, transforming traditional brand loyalty into a "digital feudalism" where exit is nearly impossible. We analyze the regulatory earthquake of the December 2025 Executive Order, contrasting the Biden-era focus on "Trustworthy AI" with the new federal push to preempt state-level safety standards in favor of "National Dominance." Finally, we trace the golden thread of how bot-saturated social media and the loss of privacy are forcing a high-stakes choice: total lock-in with tech giants or a complete retreat into walled-garden sanctuaries.
Transcribe →Droid Duo Episode 6 — “Google Strikes Back”
Dec 400:34:11Tap to summarizeAfter "sleeping" for two years while OpenAI grabbed the headlines, Google has finally flooded the zone. In this episode, Gil (The Pink Droid) and David (The Blue Droid) break down Google’s massive counter-offensive. From NotebookLM evolving into a full media studio to the "cursor-killing" AI coding agents, we ask the big question: With Google's hardware advantage and distribution monopoly, is the door finally closing on the competition?
Transcribe →S1E5 AI Still Has an IP Problem
Nov 2100:37:38Tap to summarizeBig news. The Droid Duo just became the Droid Trio for the first time.In this episode, Gil (pink droid) and David (blue droid) welcome Juliana Neill Bower, the purple droid. Juliana is a partner at Fox Rothschild and a leading IP and AI lawyer. Together, they unpack what is actually happening in the courts around generative AI, copyright, and fair use, and what it means for creators, brands, and AI builders.Juliana helped Gil and David write the Harvard Business Review piece “Generative AI Has an Intellectual Property Problem.” Now she returns to explain what has changed since 2023, where the big test cases stand, and how companies should think about training data, guardrails, and risk.In this episode, we cover.Why copyright law was never written with non human “authors” in mind.How courts are starting to treat training data versus AI outputs.The tensions around fair use, from photographers and visual IP owners to news publishers and platforms.What the Anthropic, New York Times v. OpenAI/Microsoft, and Google Books style cases might signal about the future.Why guardrails on outputs are becoming legally critical for image and video generators.What startups and small businesses should know before using AI models commercially.If you are a marketer, founder, creator, or AI builder wondering “What can I safely do with AI right now, and what should I avoid?” this conversation will make you smarter about the real IP risks and the likely direction of the law.👉 Subscribe to the channel so you do not miss future Droid Duo. Trio. episodes.👉 Drop your questions about AI and IP in the comments. They might shape our follow up episode or part two of the HBR piece.#AI #GenerativeAI #IntellectualProperty #Copyright #FairUse #DroidDuoPodcast
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