Stanford University

Information Technology

Jerry Kaplan

0
Adjunct Lecturer, Ford Dorsey Master's in International Policy
Adjunct Lecturer, Department of Computer Science
Former Research Affiliate
jerry_kaplan_headshot_7.jpeg

Jerry Kaplan is widely known as an Artificial Intelligence expert, serial entrepreneur, technical innovator, educator, bestselling author, and futurist. He invented several ground-breaking technologies including handheld tablet computers, online auctions, and electronic keyboard musical instruments.

A renowned Silicon Valley veteran, Jerry Kaplan founded several storied technology companies over his 35-year career, two of which became public companies. Kaplan may be best known for his key role in defining the tablet computer industry as the founding CEO of GO Corporation in 1987. Prior to GO, Kaplan co-founded Teknowledge, Inc., one of the first Artificial Intelligence companies to commercialize Expert Systems, which went public in 1986. In 1994, Kaplan co-founded Onsale, Inc., the world's first Internet auction website, which went public in 1997. In 2004, he pioneered the emerging market for social games by starting Winster.com, where he served as CEO for eight years.

Jerry Kaplan is an Adjunct Lecturer in Computer Science and the Ford Dorsey Master's in International Policy program at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. His research and teaching focusses on the social and economic Impact of Artificial Intelligence. He is an inventor on more than a dozen patents, and has published over twenty refereed papers in academic journals and conference proceedings. Kaplan holds a PhD in Computer and Information Science from the University of Pennsylvania, and a BA in History and Philosophy of Science from the University of Chicago.

Kaplan is the author of four books, including the best-selling classic "Startup: A Silicon Valley Adventure" (Houghton-Mifflin).  Selected by Business Week as one of the top ten business books of 1995, Startup was optioned to Sony Pictures.  "Humans Need Not Apply: A Guide to Wealth and Work in the Age of Artificial Intelligence” (Yale University Press) was honored by The Economist as one of the top ten science and technology books of 2015. His books "Artificial Intelligence: What Everyone Needs to Know" (Oxford University Press, 2016) and “Generative Artificial Intelligence: What Everyone Needs to Know” (Oxford University Press, 2024) were both Amazon new release #1 best sellers in Artificial Intelligence.

He is a frequent public speaker and commentary contributor to major newspapers and magazines. His opinion pieces have been published in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post, among other publications. He has been profiled in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Business Week, Red Herring, and Upside. He received the 1998 Ernst & Young Emerging Entrepreneur of the Year Award, Northern California; served on the Governor's Electronic Commerce Advisory Council Member under Pete Wilson, Governor of California (1999); and received an Honorary Doctorate of Business Administration from California International Business University, San Diego, California (2004). 

Hide publication sections
Off
Date Label

Artificial intelligence expert joins CDDRL’s ranks

News Type
News
Date
Paragraphs
 
CDDRL is pleased to announce that Jerry Kaplan, who teaches social and economic impact of artificial intelligence in the Stanford computer science department, has been appointed to the position of adjunct professor at CDDRL. He will be working with Francis Fukuyama and Larry Diamond on issues related to the Internet, social media and democracy.
 

jerry kaplan headshot 7

Kaplan is widely known as an artificial intelligence expert, serial entrepreneur, technical innovator and bestselling author. He is currently a fellow at the Center for Legal Informatics at Stanford University and a visiting lecturer in the computer science department, where he teaches social and economic impact of artificial intelligence.
 
Kaplan founded several technology companies over his 35-year career, two of which became public companies. He is the author of the best-selling classic “Startup: A Silicon Valley Adventure” (Houghton-Mifflin, 1995); “Humans Need Not Apply: A Guide to Wealth and Work in the Age of Artificial Intelligence” (Yale University Press, 2015); and “Artificial Intelligence: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford Press, 2016). Kaplan has been profiled in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and Business Week. He holds a BA in the history and philosophy of science from the University of Chicago and a PhD in computer science from the University of Pennsylvania.
 
Read his full bio here.
Hero Image
jerry kaplan headshot 7
All News button
1

Innovation and Entrepreneurship: Perspectives from Chile

-

Chile, being positioned on the Pacific-facing rim of South America, has a natural tendency toward Asia, not only geographically, but also politically, culturally and economically. Mr. Maruicio Rodriguez from the Chile Pacific Foundation, a public-private partnership established by the Chilean government that seeks to deepen Chile’s ties with Asia, will discuss the country’s innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem, including an analysis of promotion strategies, financing conditions and policy challenges.

 

Mauricio Rodriguez has been the head of projects and content at Chile Pacific Foundation since August 2016. He is responsible for managing contents produced by the Foundation, including research, digital strategy and conferences and events, overseeing both planning and production. He also serves as an ABAC-Chile staffer and often represents the Foundation as conference speaker/moderator. As a journalist and a communications professional, he has accumulated vast experience in the media industry and in the public relations/affairs industry, where he represented private interests before moving to public administration, the legislature and the judiciary. He has significant experience in the financial industry after working in the investment banking sector and being a financial journalist for almost two decades.

 

Mauricio Rodriguez <i>Chile Pacific Foundation</i>
Seminars

Eileen Donahoe

Encina Hall
616 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

(650) 721-5345 (650) 724-2996
0
eileen_head_shot_2024.jpeg

Eileen Donahoe is the co-founder and an affiliated scholar at the Global Digital Policy Incubator (GDPI) at Stanford University's Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law. (Previously, she served as GDPI’s executive director.) GDPI is a global multi-stakeholder collaboration hub for the development of policies that reinforce human rights and democratic values in a digitized society. Current research priorities include: international trends in AI governance, technical methods for aligning AI with democratic norms and standards, evolution of digital authoritarian policies and practices, and emerging blockchain and AI-enabled tools to support democracy.

Eileen served in the Biden administration as US Special Envoy for Digital Freedom at the Department of State. She also served in the Obama administration as the first US Ambassador to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva during a period of significant institutional reform and innovation. After the Obama administration, she joined Human Rights Watch as Director of Global Affairs, where she represented the organization worldwide on human rights foreign policy, with special emphasis on digital rights, cybersecurity, and internet governance. Earlier in her career, she was a technology litigator at Fenwick & West in Silicon Valley.

Eileen serves as Vice Chair of the National Endowment for Democracy Board of Directors; on the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Board of Directors; and on the Dartmouth College Board of Trustees. She is a member of the Global Network Initiative (GNI), the World Economic Forum AI Governance Alliance, and the Resilient Governance and Regulation working group. Previously, she served on the Transatlantic Commission on Election Integrity, the University of Essex Advisory Board on Human Rights, Big Data and Technology, the NDI Designing for Democracy Advisory Board, and the Freedom Online Coalition Advisory Network. Degrees: BA, Dartmouth; J.D., Stanford Law School; MA East Asian Studies, Stanford; M.T.S., Harvard; and Ph.D., Ethics & Social Theory, GTU Cooperative Program with UC Berkeley. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

CDDRL Affiliated Scholar
Hide publication sections
Off
Date Label

Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Japan: Why Japan (Still) Matters for Global Competition

Paragraphs

Through the 1980s, Japan was significant in global competition largely by shaping global technological trajectories, transforming major global industries, and contributing to fundamental innovations in industrial production processes, creating enough wealth along the way to propel Japan to the world’s second largest economy. After the economic bubble burst in the early 1990s, however, other places such as Silicon Valley in the United States, moved to the forefront of transforming technology, industries, and production, creating vast wealth along the way. While Japan’s role in global competition seemingly became largely irrelevant from the 1990s onward, careful analyses reveal that Japan was in fact transforming quietly and gradually, but significantly. In a pattern of “syncretism,” Japan’s economic transformation was characterized by the coexistence of new, traditional, and hybrid forms of strategy and organization. This paper examines core areas of the “new” and emerging “hybrid” areas — the startup ecosystem and the efforts of select large firms to harness new forms of innovation from outside their corporate borders. Japan’s startup ecosystem, though still small compared to Silicon Valley, as is everywhere else, has dramatically transformed over the past twenty years through a combination of regulatory shifts, corporate transformations, and technological breakthroughs that have opened up vast new opportunities. Some large corporations such as Komatsu, Honda, Toyota, and Yamaha are undertaking innovative efforts of sorts unseen in Japan’s recent history to harness Silicon Valley and other startup ecosystems into their core business areas.

All Publications button
1
Publication Type
Working Papers
Publication Date
Authors
Kenji E. Kushida

Research Presentations (session 3 of 5) - Onishi, Muthukrishnan and Saito

-

The format of this presentation is each of the three speakers will have approximately 15 minutes to present their research.  This will be followed by a short period of 5-10 minutes for any questions or comments from the audience.

 

In this session of the Corporate Affiliates Research Presentations, the following will be presented:

Kanjiro Onishi, Ministry of Finance, Japan, "Challenges on Policy Finance in a Developing Country and Effective Technical Assistance: Case Study of Myanmar"

Myanmar has enjoyed a steady economic growth since the government implemented the economic reforms and opened its market up to the international communities. Many domestic and international companies consider that there are huge business opportunities in this frontier market. On the other hand, there are also various business risks. Onishi joined the team of Policy Research Institute, Ministry of Finance Japan, and the team has provided the technical assistance on effective credit analysis for Myanma Economic Bank (MEB). The project contributes to improve the financial sector and it will reduce some business risks that the companies inevitably face. In his research, he analyzes the results of the questionnaire surveys conducted with the project-participants and evaluates how effectively the project has enhanced the knowledge and expertise on credit analysis among MEB bankers.

 

A. Muthukrishnan, Reliance Life Sciences,"New Age Marketing in Healthcare"

The healthcare industry is in the midst of a massive shift.  Pharmaceutical companies are running hard to keep pace with changes brought about by digital technology.  Mobile communications, the cloud, advanced analytics, and the Internet of Things are among the innovations that are starting to transform the healthcare industry in ways already seen in the media, retail and banking industries.  Pharmaceutical executives are well aware of the disruptive potential and are experimenting with a wide range of digital initiatives.  However, many are finding it hard to determine what initiatives to scale up and how, as they are still unclear what digital success will look like five years from now.  Pharmaceutical companies can play a central role in the digital revolution of healthcare, but capturing this opportunity requires identifying the right initiatives.  In his research, Muthukrishnan is trying to find out where digital technology will drive the most value in the pharmaceutical industry to build a strategy for digital success.

 

Yohei Saito, Future Architect, "Transforming Business with Artificial Intelligence"

In recent years, Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology has rapidly evolved.  Deep Learning, based on neural networks, has created great results in the fields of speech recognition, image recognition, and natural language processing, and some experimental results show performance equal to or superior to human ability.  Additionally, the Internet of Things (IoT) technology makes it possible to gather and analyze data in real time. Harnessing these types of technology effectively optimizes and maximizes business productivity.

In his research, Saito devised methodology and implementation guidelines for utilizing these state-of-the-art technologies in the business field.  These methodology and guidelines will help Japanese companies to transform their business more productively and competitively. 

Ministry of Finance, Japan
Reliance Life Sciences

Yohei Saito

0
Corporate Affiliate Visiting Fellow, 2016-17
yohei_saito.jpg MS

Yohei Saito is a corporate affiliate visiting fellow at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC) for 2016-17.  Saito is the chief technology officer of Future Architect Inc., an IT consulting firm in Japan and leads the company's Technology Innovation group.  He has 15 years experience in software engineering and technological strategy.  Saito graduated from the Tokyo Institute of Technology with an M.S. in Computer Science.

Hide publication sections
Off
Date Label
Future Architect, Inc.
Seminars

Bits and pieces: Liberal democracy in the digital era

-
 
The event is a joint sponsorship between CISAC, the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, the European Security Initiative (in The Europe Center) and the Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies (CREEES).

About the Event: Toomas Hendrik Ilves, Bernard and Susan Liautaud Distinguished Visiting Fellow, FSI, Visiting Scholar at CISAC, and former President of Republic of Estonia (2006 - 2016), will be interviewed by Michael McFaul, Director of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), FSI Senior Fellow, Peter and Helen Bing Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, and Professor of Political Science. Audience members will have an opportunity to ask questions after the interview. 

About the Guest Speaker: Toomas Hendrik Ilves was born to an Estonian family living in Stockholm, Sweden. He was educated in the United States, receiving a degree from Columbia University in 1976 and a master's degree in psychology from the University of Pennsylvania in 1978.

In 1984 he moved to Munich, Germany, to work at the office of Radio Free Europe, first as a researcher and foreign policy analyst and later as the head of the Estonian Desk.

From 1993 to 1996 Ilves served in Washington as the ambassador of the Republic of Estonia to the United States and Canada. During this time, he launched the Tiger Leap Initiative to computerize and connect all Estonian schools online with Education Minister Jaak Aaviksoo. He then served as minister of foreign affairs from 1996 to 1998. After a brief period as chairman of the North Atlantic Institute in 1998, he was again appointed minister of foreign affairs, serving until 2002.

From 2002 to 2004, Ilves was a member of the Estonian Parliament and in 2004 he was elected a member of the European Parliament, where he was vice-president of the Foreign Affairs Committee. As a MEP, he initiated the Baltic Sea Strategy that was later implemented as official regional policy of the European Union.

Ilves was elected president of the Republic of Estonia in 2006. He was re-elected for a second term in office in 2011.

During his presidency, Ilves has been appointed to serve in several high positions in the field of ICT in the European Union. He served as chairman of the EU Task Force on eHealth from 2011 to 2012 and was chairman of the European Cloud Partnership Steering Board at the invitation of the European Commission from 2012 to 2014. In 2013 he chaired the High-Level Panel on Global Internet Cooperation and Governance Mechanisms convened by ICANN. From 2014 to 2015 Ilves was the co-chair of the advisory panel of the World Bank's World Development Report 2016 "Digital Dividends" and was also the chair of World Economic Forum's Global Agenda Council on Cyber Security beginning in June 2014.

Starting from 2016, Ilves co-chaired The World Economic Forum working group The Global Futures Council on Blockchain Technology. In 2017 he joined Stanford University as a Bernard and Susan Liautaud Visiting Fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.

President Ilves has published many essays and articles in Estonian and English on numerous topics ranging from Estonian language, history, and literature to global foreign and security policy and cyber security. His books include essay collections in Estonian, Finnish, Latvian, Hungarian, and Russian.

His international awards and honorary degrees include Knight of Freedom Award by the Casimir Pulaski Foundation (2016), the Aspen Prague Award by the Aspen Institute (2015), the Freedom Award by the Atlantic Council (2014) and the NDI Democracy Award by the National Democratic Institute (2013). His Honorary Degrees include an Honorary Degree from St. Olaf College, US (2014), an Honorary Degree from the John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin, Poland (2010), and an Honorary Degree from Tbilisi University, Georgia (2007).

 

Download pdf

Encina Hall, 2nd floor

Republic of Estonia, Stanford University
Panel Discussions
European Security Initiative
European Security Initiative Lecture Series

#Republic: Divided Democracy in an Age of Social Media

-

#Republic
As the Internet grows more sophisticated, it is creating new threats to democracy. In #Republic: Divided Democracy in the Age of Social Media, Cass Sunstein examines the ways that the internet fuels political fragmentation and even extremism. He shows how the internet and social media create "cybercascades," assist "polarization entrepreneurs," and exploit confirmation bias. #Republic proposes ways to make the internet friendly to democratic deliberation, and to increase interactions with new ideas and people.

Larry Kramer of the Hewlett Foundation, Nathaniel Persily of Stanford Law School, and Shanto Iyengar of Stanford University will join a conversation with Cass Sunstein about the perils and promise of digital technology on democracy. 

 

 

SPEAKER BIO

 

Cass Sunstein is the Robert Walmsley University Professor at Harvard Law School. From 2009 to 2012, he was Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. He is the founder and director of the Program on Behavioral Economics and Public Policy at Harvard Law School. Mr. Sunstein has testified before congressional committees on many subjects, and he has been involved in constitution-making and law reform activities in a number of nations. His many books include the New York Times bestsellers Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness (with Richard H. Thaler) and The World According to Star Wars. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

 

Larry Kramer became President of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation in Menlo Park, California, in September 2012. Before joining the foundation, Larry served from 2004 to 2012 as Richard E. Lang Professor of Law and Dean of Stanford Law School. His teaching and scholarly interests include American legal history, constitutional law, federalism, separation of powers, the federal courts, conflict of laws, and civil procedure. Larry is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of the American Philosophical Society and the American Law Institute.

 

Nathaniel Persily is the James B. McClatchy Professor of Law at Stanford Law School. He focuses on the law of democracy, addressing issues such as voting rights, political parties, campaign finance and redistricting. A sought-after nonpartisan voice in voting rights, he has served as a court-appointed expert to draw legislative districting plans for Georgia, Maryland and New York and as special master for the redistricting of Connecticut’s congressional districts. Most recently, he also served as the Senior Research Director for the Presidential Commission on Election Administration, a bipartisan commission created by the President to deal with the long lines at the polling place and other administrative problems witnessed in the 2012 election.    

 

Shanto Iyengar is the Chandler Chair in Communication at Stanford University where he is also Director of the Political Communication Laboratory. Iyengar’s areas of expertise include the role of mass media in democratic societies, public opinion, and political psychology. He is the recipient of the Philip Converse Award of the American Political Science Association for the best book in the field of public opinion, the Murray Edelman Lifetime Achievement Award, and the Goldsmith Book Prize from Harvard University.  Iyengar is author or co-author of several books, including News That Matters (University of Chicago Press, 1987), Going Negative (Free Press, 1995), and Media Politics: A Citizen’s Guide (Norton, 2011).

Cass Sunstein Robert Walmsley University Professor, Harvard University
Larry Kramer President, Hewlett Foundation
Nathaniel Persily James B. McClatchy Professor of Law, Stanford Law School
Shanto Iyengar Chandler Chair in Communication, Stanford University
Seminars
American Democracy Events
CDDRL Special Events

The Challenges of Providing Data Security

-

Drell Lecture Recording: https://youtu.be/K8qLqJwi4Qc

 

Drell Lecture Transcript: NA

 

Speaker's Biography: Admiral Inman graduated from the University of Texas at Austin in 1950, and from the National War College in 1972.  He became an adjunct professor at the University of Texas at Austin in 1987.  He was appointed as a tenured professor holding the Lyndon B. Johnson Centennial Chair in National Policy in August 2001.  He served as Interim Dean of the LBJ School of Public Affairs from 1 January to 31 December 2005 and again from January 2009 to March 2010.

Admiral Inman served in the U.S. Navy from November 1951 to July 1982, when he retired with the permanent rank of Admiral.  While on active duty he served as Director of the National Security Agency and Deputy Director of Central Intelligence.  After retirement from the Navy, he was Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corporation (MCC) in Austin, Texas for four years and Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer of Westmark Systems, Inc., a privately owned electronics industry holding company for three years.  Admiral Inman also served as Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas from 1987 through 1990.

Admiral Inman’s primary business activity since 1990 has been investing in start-up technology companies, where he is a Managing Director of Gefinor Ventures and of Limestone Capital Advisors.  He serves as a Trustee of the American Assembly and the California Institute of Technology.  He is an elected Fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration.

Admiral Bob R. Inman National Security Agency
Lectures
Drell Lecture

Sources of variation in under-5 mortality across sub-Saharan Africa: a spatial analysis

Paragraphs

The ongoing decline in under-5 mortality ranks among the most significant public and population health successes of the past 30 years. Deaths of children under the age of 5 years have fallen from nearly 13 million per year in 1990 to less than 6 million per year in 2015, even as the world's under-5 population grew by nearly 100 million children. However, the amount of variability underlying this broad global progress is substantial. On a regional level, east Asia and the Pacific have surpassed the Millennium Development Goal target of a two-thirds reduction in under-5 mortality rate between 1990 and 2015, whereas sub-Saharan Africa has had only a 24% decline over the same period. Large differences in progress are also evident within sub-Saharan Africa, where mortality rates have declined by more than 70% from 1990 to 2015 in some countries and increased in others; in 2015, the mortality rate in some countries was more than three times that in others.

What explains this remarkable variation in progress against under-5 mortality? Answering this question requires understanding of where the main sources of variation in mortality lie. One view that is implicit in the way that mortality rates are tracked and targeted is that national policies and conditions drive first-order changes in under-5 mortality. This country-level focus is justified by research that emphasises the role of institutional factors in explaining variation in mortality—factors such as universal health coverage, women's education, and the effectiveness of national health systems. It is argued that these factors, which vary measurably at the country level, fundamentally shape the ability of individuals and communities to affect more proximate causes of child death such as malaria and diarrhoeal disease.

An alternate view has focused on exploring the importance of subnational variation in the distribution of disease. In the USA, studies on the geographical distribution of health care and mortality have been influential for targeting of resources and policy design. Similar studies in developing regions have shown the substantial variability in the distribution and changes of important health outcomes such HIV, malaria, and schistosomiasis—information that can then be used to improve the targeting of interventions. Nevertheless, the relative contribution of within-country and between-country differences in explaining under-5 mortality remains unknown. Improved understanding of the relative contribution of national and sub-national factors could provide insight into the drivers of mortality levels and declines in mortality, as well as improve the targeting of interventions to the areas where they are most needed.

All Publications button
1
Publication Type
Journal Articles
Publication Date
Journal Publisher
The Lancet Global Health
Authors
Sam Heft-Neal
Eran Bendavid
External URL
Subscribe to Information Technology