Stanford Radio

Full title: Stanford Professor & alum Mehran Sahami talks about his co-written book, System Error - Where Big Tech Went Wrong and How We Can Reboot.

A forward-thinking manifesto from three Stanford professors—experts who have worked at ground zero of the tech revolution for decades—which reveals how big tech’s obsession with optimization and efficiency has sacrificed fundamental human values and outlines steps we can take to change course, renew our democracy, and save ourselves.

Originally aired on SiriusXM on October 2, 2021.

The Future of Everything with Russ Altman:

E 161 | Lianne Kurina: How controlling confounders makes better epidemiology

Public health studies are among the most challenging to get right, says this expert in epidemiology. But better design can yield greater confidence.

As the world has learned through the recent pandemic, epidemiological studies can be complicated by many unanticipated factors. Lianne Kurina is an expert in the design of epidemiological studies who says that the key to greater confidence is better design.

The gold standard, she says, is the randomized controlled trial—a study that compares groups that are ​essentially identical by every apparent factor but one— the vaccinated vs. the unvaccinated, for instance. In the case of COVID-19 vaccinations, Kurina stresses that investigators did an exemplary job of this.

​In situations where we can't use a randomized controlled trial, achieving ​a similar balance and specificity is far harder. Kurina says ​that researcher​s working with observational data, rather than trial data, must always be attuned to the overlooked factors—“confounders” she calls them—that can muddy the data and render a study moot. ​

However, Kurina notes, the better one controls the confounders ​in these observational studies via better design ​and data collection, the greater confidence we can have in the end results, as she tells listeners to this episode of Stanford Engineering’s The Future of Everything podcast with host Russ Altman. Listen and subscribe here.

Assistant Professor Chris Piech discusses how a Stanford project to teach computer coding to people stuck at home during COVID-19 went viral.

Originally aired on SiriusXM on September 25, 2021.

In 2007, Erik Jensen, helped launch the Afghanistan Legal Education Project, a collaboration with with Stanford Law School and the American University in Afghanistan to build a high quality legal program for Afghan law students. Today, dozens of Afghan men and women count themselves as graduates—lawyers critical to building the legal infrastructure so badly needed in Afghanistan. But what will happen to the country—and those dedicated to law and civil society—under the new Taliban regime? In this episode, Jensen discusses the abrupt withdrawal of American forces from Afghanistan and the prospects of the still struggling country.

Originally aired on SiriusXM on September 25, 2021.

How user generated content is changing the world of marketing.

Originally aired on SiriusXM on September 18, 2021.

The Future of Everything with Russ Altman:

E160 | Priyanka Raina: How computer chips get speedier through specialization

Increasingly, the path to faster, more efficient computers is in chips that excel at specific tasks, says this expert in chip design.

For decades, the general-purpose central processing unit—the CPU—has been the workhorse of the computer industry. It could handle any task—literally—even if most of those capabilities were unnecessary.

This model was all well and good as chips grew smaller, faster and more efficient by the day, but less so as the pace of progress has slowed, says electrical engineer Priyanka Raina, an expert in chip design. Raina says that, to keep chips on their ever-improving trajectory, chip makers have shifted focus to chips that do specific tasks very well. The graphics processing unit (GPU), which handles the intense mathematics necessary for video and gaming graphics, is a perfect example.

Soon, there’ll be a faster, more efficient chip for every task, but it’ll take industry-wide cooperation to get there, as Raina tells listeners to this episode of Stanford Engineering’s The Future of Everything podcast with host Russ Altman. Listen and subscribe here.

Full title: Rich Kushel, Stanford alum and Senior Managing Director at BlackRock on how the world's biggest investor is modeling the economic effects of climate change.

Description: BlackRocks's Asset manager BlackRock, makes climate change and environmental sustainability central to its multi-billion dollar investment approach.

Originally aired on SiriusXM on September 4, 2021.

Western states are once again in severe drought with water in short supply. And California’s fire season is starting earlier and causing more devastation, with the Dixie fire, the second largest in the state’s history, still growing after destroying almost 750,000 acres. In this episode, a leading national water law expert Buzz Thompson joins us to discuss fires, water, and climate change.

Originally aired on SiriusXM on August 28, 2021

The Future of Everything with Russ Altman:

E159 | Biondo Biondi: : How to measure an earthquake through the internet

New technologies that detect motion in the Earth’s crust are emerging in surprising places and reshaping our understanding of earthquakes … and much more.

Most people know the seismograph, those ultrasensitive instruments that record every small shift in the Earth’s crust.

But did you know that the very latest method for measuring earthquakes involves fiber optic cables that carry internet data around the world?

Stanford geophysicist Biondo Biondi says that the waves of energy sent forth by an earthquake cause fiber optic cables to stretch and contract ever so slightly. Using precise mathematical algorithms, experts like Biondi can measure earthquake intensity, making every meter of fiber optic cable a potential seismograph and dramatically increasing the data experts can gather in a day. Biondi’s sensor arrays are so sensitive they can detect sinkholes, landslides and even the rumblings of failing urban infrastructure.

These new technologies – and the secrets they might reveal – are only starting to emerge, as Biondi tells listeners in this episode of Stanford Engineering’s The Future of Everything podcast with host Russ Altman. Listen and subscribe here.

Full Title: Brooke Weddle, Stanford alum and partner at McKinsey & Co on surviving to thriving; adapting your business to create a winning post-pandemic business model.

Beyond coronavirus: How McKinsey and Company helps businesses and organizations navigate to what's next.

Originally aired on SiriusXM on August 21, 2021.