The Droid Duo Podcast

Ep. 13 — When AI Starts Running Society

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 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 AI Two marketing professors, zero hype. New episodes monthly.

Droid Duo Ep. 12 — Not About the Model: The $5.5B Consulting Pivot

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 MBA graduates, law firms, and higher education. The thread running through all of it: the model is not the moat. Deployment is.

Title: Ep 11 — AI's Pricing Problem, Allbirds Becomes an AI Company, and Higher Ed's Self-Sabotage

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.

Droid Duo Ep. 10 — The Meta/Google Verdict & the AI Brand Playbook

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 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

Droid Duo Ep. 9 — The Great Migration: QuitGPT, Checkout Retreats & AI Brand Blind Spots

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.