I had a busy end to the week, but later I was able to get out for a bit and listen to talks for my #AcademicRunPlaylist!

First was an excellent talk by Shira Gur-Arieh on how LLMs and algorithmic approaches to law more generally corrode the structural ambiguity at the center of law itself at PLAMADISO. Highly recommend https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JBH-QV16j-Q

Next was a great talk by Mingmin Zhao on augmenting human and machine perception with invisible signals at the GRASP Lab https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amN1R5Llst4

Next was an important panel on the promise and perils of pharmacy telehealth at the CU Center for Bioethics and Humanities with Andras Fittler, Claudia Haupt, and Ben Hill https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGTh-axlyjc

Next was an amazing talk by Georg Rilinger on the political power of experimentation in data driven organizations at Plamadiso. Rilinger meticulously deconstructs the messy reality behind "data-driven" organizations, revealing its extremely limited, shallow nature and the organizational issues that arise from appealing to data as a neutral arbiter. Highly recommend https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rg4KdwiFHpA

Next was a compelling talk by Tapomayukh Bhattacharjee on stakeholder-informed caregiving robots in the real world at UW. Bhattacharjee demonstrates the monumental challenges of moving from the lab to real environments in this challenging space and the need for deep customization that may never scale. Highly recommend https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFok3wVYfb4

Last was "The Business of Sports Agents" by Kenneth Shropshire, Timothy Davis, and N. Jeremi Duru. This book covers all the bases, reviewing the history of sports agents, the structure of the industry, agents' operating models and their roles and responsibilities, and the problems that have plagued the industry since its inception. This is a very unique kind of work, and as such understanding the peculiar nature of this fluid and continually changing field is instructive as to how radically different and complex work can become. For those interested in breaking into the field itself this will be a good jumping off point, although there's only cursory coverage of the legal landscape and most of the discussions around building a client base are about scandals. Overall, this is a great read if you're interested in the business of sports or work more broadly. Highly recommend https://www.pennpress.org/9780812248159/the-business-of-sports-agents/