The Droid Duo Podcast

Summer 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 bui...

What 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 simulate...

Anthropic 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 M...

New 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.

A 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 co...

Millions 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.

Ads 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-powe...

This 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 standa...

After "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...

Big 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,...

In this episode, we discuss the future of the workplace, how to make yourself AI proof at work, announce the winner of our first competition, and demonstrate how you can use Google's new tool: Pomelli, to have an AI side hustle

Droid Duo Episode 3 - The Agent Revolution: AI Gets Autonomous The Agent Revolution: AI Gets Autonomous Oct 23 • 12:00 ET • 30 min — Live with David Schweidel (Emory Goizueta) & Gil Appel (GW School of Business). Agents are moving from chat to action—planning tasks, calling tools, and shipping results. We’ll discuss ChatGPT Atlas (built-in agent mode in your browser), OpenAI’s Agent Builder/Ag...

The Droid Duo Podcast second episode - this time we tackle AI content creation

Two professors, one fast show. David Schweidel (Emory Goizueta) and Gil Appel (GW School of Business) break down how AI is reshaping education: what works now, what to avoid, and what to measure. In this first episode, we tackle the future of education in the age of AI - listen on!