Professor & Author
Professor
Associate Professor and Co-Director
Professor Emeritus, University of Southern California
Professor of Engineering, Psychology and Linguistics
Professor
Shri Narayanan, professor of engineering, psychology and linguistics at the University of Southern California, teaches his students to privilege humans when using artificial intelligence for their research across areas of study. In this episode, he walks us through how he, for example, uses AI to map behavioral analyses that can inform areas of study including autism and depression.
In this crossover episode from the China Talk podcast, Nathan Labenz shares a thought-provoking conversation between Jordan Schneider, Ilari Michaela, and Professor David C. Kang that challenges conventional Western perspectives on East Asian international relations. Professor Kang argues that studying East Asian history on its own terms reveals a remarkably stable geopolitical system spanning nearly a millennium, where China maintained regional dominance without conquest through compatible cultures and mutual understanding. This alternative framework offers valuable insights that question the seemingly inevitable US-China competition narrative dominating AI discourse, suggesting that internal challenges may be more significant than external threats for both China and the United States. SPONSORS: Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI): Oracle Cloud Infrastructure offers next-generation cloud solutions that cut costs and boost performance. With OCI, you can run AI projects and applications faster and more securely for less. New U.S. customers can save 50% on compute, 70% on storage, and 80% on networking by switching to OCI before May 31, 2024. See if you qualify at https://oracle.com/cognitive Shopify: Shopify powers millions of businesses worldwide, handling 10% of U.S. e-commerce. With hundreds of templates, AI tools for product descriptions, and seamless marketing campaign creation, it's like having a design studio and marketing team in one. Start your $1/month trial today at https://shopify.com/cognitive NetSuite: Over 41,000 businesses trust NetSuite by Oracle, the #1 cloud ERP, to future-proof their operations. With a unified platform for accounting, financial management, inventory, and HR, NetSuite provides real-time insights and forecasting to help you make quick, informed decisions. Whether you're earning millions or hundreds of millions, NetSuite empowers you to tackle challenges and seize opportunities. Download the free CFO's guide to AI and machine learning at https://netsuite.com/cognitive PRODUCED BY: https://aipodcast.ing CHAPTERS: (00:00) About the Episode (03:30) Introduction to East Asian Relations (04:41) Internal vs External Challenges (07:05) Song Dynasty's Fall (13:35) Western vs Eastern Frontiers (19:06) Shared Cultural Understanding (Part 1) (20:30) Sponsors: Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) | Shopify (23:45) Shared Cultural Understanding (Part 2) (25:57) Vietnam-China Relations (30:08) Korea's Diplomatic Strategy (Part 1) (32:19) Sponsors: NetSuite (33:52) Korea's Diplomatic Strategy (Part 2) (35:17) The Imjin War (43:36) Thucydides Trap Question (49:19) Power Transition Theory Debate (53:49) Expansion and Frontiers (01:02:00) Modern Implications (01:06:00) PRC and Imperial Legacy (01:13:16) Taiwan and Modern Challenges (01:25:42) US Role in East Asia (01:29:35) Concluding Thoughts (01:37:17) Outro
Paul Orlando is back to talk about his book titled “Why Now?” You may remember Paul from his last appearance (a fan favorite) talking with Jerod about complex systems & second-order effects. Paul’s book, “Why Now?” explores the concept of timing and the importance of understanding the ‘why now’ in business and product development. We discuss timing examples from the book that were either too early or too late (such as the first video phone and car phones), the need to consider both technological advancements and user demand when assessing timing, the significance of timing in the success of companies like Apple and the launch of the iPhone, Uber and Heroku, and more. Also, join our Slack community for a chance to get a signed copy of Paul’s book. Join the discussion Changelog++ members get a bonus 8 minutes at the end of this episode and zero ads. Join today! Sponsors: Sentry – Code breaks, fix it faster. Don’t just observe. Take action. Sentry is the only app monitoring platform built for developers that gets to the root cause for every issue. 90,000+ growing teams use sentry to find problems fast. Use the code CHANGELOG when you sign up to get $100 OFF the team plan. Cloudflare – Read the Developer Week 2024 wrap-up or tune into Developer Week on Cloudflare TV. Factor – 50% off Factor ready-made meals! Pick your ready-made meals, choose from 35+ fresh, never-frozen meals and 55+ add-ons, every week. Gourmet chefs prepare your meals, so you can enjoy more of your time to focus! Heat, eat & enjoy — No prep. No mess. Factor meals arrive ready to heat and eat in 2 minutes. Learn more at factormeals.com/changelog50 Featuring: Paul Orlando – Website, LinkedIn, X Adam Stacoviak – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X Jerod Santo – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X Show Notes: Why Now: How Good Timing Makes Great Products (by Paul Orlando) StartupsUnplugged.com Unintended Consequences (Systems, complexity, second-order effects) Changelog #474: Complex systems & second-order effects Catching up with Yahoo’s Fire Eagle geolocation service The Web 2.0 Show #46 - Fire Eagle The Conjoined Triangles of Success The confidential YouTube Investment Memo by Sequoia you were never meant to see Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!
Most SaaS founders get their SaaS metrics wrong. Paul Orlando says if you have one number for CAC and one for LTV, you haven't started measuring net revenue retention properly. Learn how to calculate customer acquisition cost by channel, model LTV as a river, track net revenue retention by cohort, and why negative SaaS churn is the gold standard. Paul is a USC professor and author of Growth Units. His breakdown of SaaS metrics including net revenue retention, customer acquisition cost, and churn models helps founders measure what matters. 🔑 Key Lessons 📉 Break SaaS metrics down by acquisition channel: A blended customer acquisition cost hides which channels scale for net revenue retention. 💰 Model LTV as a river, not a single SaaS metric: Map monthly cash flows with retention rates to reveal actual payback periods. 🔄 Track cohort-based net revenue retention: Comparing monthly cohorts shows whether product changes actually reduce SaaS churn. 🚀 Target negative net revenue retention as the ultimate goal: When remaining customers expand faster than churned ones leave, you achieve negative churn. 🧠 The CAC-to-LTV ratio is a starting point for SaaS metrics: Bootstrapped founders may need 1:5 while growth companies accept 1:1. Chapters Introduction How Growth Units came about Overview: CAC, LTV, and net revenue retention What is customer acquisition cost Breaking CAC down by channel Growing versus scaling Fixed vs. variable CAC How much should CAC be What is LTV as a SaaS metric LTV as a river Cohort analysis for net revenue retention CAC-to-LTV ratio benchmarks Three SaaS churn models Negative net revenue retention explained Lightning round Resources Full show notes: https://saasclub.io/313 Join 5,000+ SaaS founders: https://saasclub.io/email
Paul Orlando joins Jerod to talk through some unintended consequences that occur when systems operate at scale. We discuss Goodhart’s Law, The Cobra Effect, how to design incentive systems, dependency management decisions, the risks of autonomous vehicles, and much more along the way. Join the discussion Changelog++ members save 6 minutes on this episode because they made the ads disappear. Join today! Sponsors: InfluxData – InfluxDB empowers developers to build IoT, analytics, and monitoring software. It’s purpose-built to handle massive volumes and countless sources of time-stamped data produced by sensors, applications, and infrastructure. Learn about the wide range of use cases of InfluxDB at influxdata.com/changelog Square – Develop on the platform that sellers trust. There is a massive opportunity for developers to support Square sellers by building apps for today’s business needs. Learn more at developer.squareup.com to dive into the docs, APIs, SDKs and to create your Square Developer account — tell them Changelog sent you. FireHydrant – The reliability platform for every developer. Incidents impact everyone, not just SREs. FireHydrant gives teams the tools to maintain service catalogs, respond to incidents, communicate through status pages, and learn with retrospectives. Try FireHydrant free for 14 days at firehydrant.io Retool – Retool is a low-code platform built specifically for developers that makes it fast and easy to build internal tools. Instead of building internal tools from scratch, the world’s best teams, from startups to Fortune 500s, are using Retool to power their internal apps. Learn more and try it for free at retool.com/changelog Featuring: Paul Orlando – Website, LinkedIn, X Jerod Santo – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X Show Notes: The Unintended Consequences blog A New Morality of Attainment (Goodhart’s Law) The Cobra Effect Redesigned (Examples & Antidotes) The Cobra Effect (Part 2) Uncertainty Saves Lives – the Peltzman Effect Garmin Hack and Dependence Autonomous Vehicles and Scaling Risk A Pattern Language Growth Units: Learn to Calculate Customer Acquisition Cost Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!
Today we’re joined by Eric Rice, associate professor at USC, and the co-director of the USC Center for Artificial Intelligence in Society. Eric is a sociologist by trade, and in our conversation, we explore how he has made extensive inroads within the machine learning community through collaborations with ML academics and researchers. We discuss some of the most important lessons Eric has learned while doing interdisciplinary projects, how the social scientist’s approach to assessment and measurement would be different from a computer scientist's approach to assessing the algorithmic performance of a model. We specifically explore a few projects he’s worked on including HIV prevention amongst the homeless youth population in LA, a project he spearheaded with former guest Milind Tambe, as well as a project focused on using ML techniques to assist in the identification of people in need of housing resources, and ensuring that they get the best interventions possible. If you enjoyed this conversation, I encourage you to check out our conversation with Milind Tambe from last year’s TWIMLfest on Why AI Innovation and Social Impact Go Hand in Hand. The complete show notes for this episode can be found at https://twimlai.com/go/511.
James O'Toole, a professor emeritus at the University of Southern California, talks with Recode's Kara Swisher about his book, The Enlightened Capitalists: Cautionary Tales of Business Pioneers Who Tried to Do Well by Doing Good. O'Toole discusses the first such "enlightened capitalist," British industrialist Robert Owen; why, like Owen, do-gooder CEOs can't or won't make change today; and the history of the belief that corporations only exist to serve the shareholder. He also talks about how Whole Foods co-founder John Mackey's battle with values-adverse shareholders forced him to sell the company Amazon, and why a growing number of small companies are writing their ethical values into legally binding paperwork. Featuring: James O'Toole, professor emeritus at USC Host: Kara Swisher (@karaswisher), Recode co-founder and editor-at-large More to explore: Subscribe for free to Pivot, Kara’s podcast with NYU Professor Scott Galloway that offer sharp, unfiltered insights into the biggest stories in tech, business, and politics. About Recode by Vox: Recode by Vox helps you understand how tech is changing the world — and changing us. Follow Us: Newsletter: Recode Daily Twitter: @Recode and @voxdotcom Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Inspired by the trendiness of intermittent fasting in the tech community, Kara Swisher's executive producer, Erica Anderson, talks with three eating habit experts — a biohacker, an academic, and an eating disorder specialist. In this episode: HVMN CEO Geoff Woo on the culture of body optimization, the mainstreaming of biohacking, and how humans are "approaching God"; aging and nutrition expert Dr. Valter Longo on the origins of biohacking, the science behind intermittent fasting, and the problem with Silicon Valley's interpretations of the practice; and the executive director of the National Easting Disorder Association, Claire Mysko, on the line between eccentric diets and disorders, the wellness industry, and what to do if someone you know needs help. Follow us Kara Swisher (@karaswisher), host Geoff Woo (@geoffreywoo), guest Claire Mysko (@clairemysko), guest Erica Anderson (@EricaAmerica), executive producer Eric Johnson (@HeyHeyESJ), producer More to explore If you haven't already, subscribe to Recode Decode Subscribe to Recode's other podcasts: Recode Media, Pivot, and Land of the Giants Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices