>> Announcer: Live from Orlando, Florida, it's theCUBE, covering Microsoft Ignite. Brought to you by Cohesity. >> Welcome back to theCUBE everyone. It is Microsoft Ignite, it is happy hour. There are people walking around with beer and wine and snacks and it is a great time. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight, along with my co-host, Stu Miniman. We are joined by Jeramiah Dooley, He is an Azure Advocate at Microsoft. >> Yes, ma'am. Thank you so much. >> Of course. CUBE vetaran, esteemed CUBE veteran coming on theCUBE. >> Yeah, I've been doing this for a while and Stu and I've gotten to talk a few times. >> Yes. >> But it's good to be back. >> Well, welcome. So you joined the Microsoft Advocacy Team a little over a year ago and I read a blog post that you wrote, "This is the most interesting period of my career." >> Agreed. >> I'd love to hear you riff on why it is such a gratifying time, what exactly you're doing as an advocate and why it's so interesting. >> Sure. So, I guess we'll start with the last part. My job as a cloud advocate is literally, simply to engage with and help communities who focus on a specific technology and help them build bridges into whatever part of Azure makes sense for them. My job specifically, is that I run a team who's focused on enterprise platforms and tools communities. And for us, that's VMware, that's OpenStack, that's CloudStack, that's any of the communities where the members of it identify themselves by the platform that they operate, not necessarily by the language that they use to write coding in or the applications that they're running. They're worried about the infrastructure portion of it, but usually, from a software standpoint. Part of the reason that it's interesting, is one, it's fun to have an advocacy role where I work as part of the engineering team. My job is simply to be that conduit between customers who say, "It would be really cool to have this," and an engineering team who is desperate for feedback from customers around what do we build and how do we build it. And especially for me, coming from the infrastructure side of things. Before Microsoft, I worked at NetApp. I was part of the SolidFire acquisition. I've worked at infrastructure companies kind of all the way down back into my service provider days. The larger transition of customers, especially enterprise customers, who are moving from one side of that divide to the other really matches up well with what I did from a career standpoint. I came to a company who looked at everything that I knew how to do technically and said we don't really need any of that but we love the context that it gives you for being able to go out and talk to these communities and show them what Azure could do. So it's very interesting to work somewhere where my involvement with the community, my involvement with the technology helps make me a bridge into something that was all new to me. Right, I'm not a developer. I didn't work inside the Azure cloud before I took the role. What I knew was the technology in the communities and Microsoft gave me the opportunity to build the other side of that which is how do we take all of those things and how do we move them into an Azure context. So it's been fantastic. >> Yeah and Jeramiah, we're at an interesting point in this journey we're going on. I think back to you know the virtualization journey and we've reached a certain point where you could virtualize anything and virtualization was growing. But getting from the 20% to the majority was challenging. I feel we're at a similar point and you know for myself, I look at where 20% of the workloads are in the cloud. This movement of data is not going to be a one-time or a one-way journey. There's my data center, there's the public cloud, there's the Edge, there's SAS. My data, my applications are everywhere and I think that's a lot of that hybrid environment. But how do we simplify this environment and make it more consumable for everyone and, tell us a little bit about what are some of the real challenges that you hear in the field and how is Microsoft in the ecosystem helping to solve that? >> It's an interesting parallel. On the 80% virtualization challenge, we had a couple things. One was workloads that we just couldn't and so we were waiting on the business side of things to give us something that we could virtualize. And then there was the law of diminishing returns on the amount of money that it would cost to virtualize them. When we look at the, I'm trying to move workloads from on-premises into the cloud, the transition challenge is similar. The big difference is it's the operational investment that is holding it back. It's not not the law of diminishing returns, it's the law of the sunken cost, right? So we've got customers who have invested decades, literal a decade into the automation and the orchestration and the run books and the what do you do at three o'clock in the morning when things go wrong all in a VMware context or all in an OpenStack context. And those are the things that are more valuable to them, frankly than the vendor who sits underneath it, right? We can change vendors as long as it doesn't impact operations. And so from an Azure standpoint, that's exactly the angle that we want to take if what you need are workloads that live inside a hyper scalar cloud and what you have to have in order to take that first step is don't touch my operations, don't touch my scripting, don't touch my infrastructure's code, don't touch any of the stuff that I've built up as your operational intellectual property over the last however many years. Don't touch any of that and that transition becomes easy. And then once I have a footprint, now I can be real selective about cherry-picking which of these cloud native services make sense and how can I as a customer choose with when my operations team starts to have to take on some of these additional burdens rather than what I feel like the perception is, which is as soon as I get anything from Azure, my entire operations team now has two jobs and everybody has twice the amount of work to do. And then I have to go hire new experts because these work these skills don't translate. And so if we can make it easy to do that initial move without having to change anything and then give customers a very transparent way to decide what cloud services are they going to adopt and how is it that they're going to manage that impact on their operations teams, I think we've got a path that really starts to overcome some of those initial fears. >> But customers are on a continuum, I mean, wouldn't you say just in terms of where they are, in terms of where they are in the technology and then also their mindset and how much they're willing to adopt and change? >> Yep. I think that the group that I'm in, the larger group that I'm in mirrors that. We have four different teams, three teams in addition to mine that sit on that continuum from are we an infrastructure community, that are we a platform community to are we a workload community particularly on the Microsoft side to identify by the workloads that I run, to am I a modern operations community, the SRE principles, the things that we're doing from a culture standpoint to be able to build operations teams that can manage this type of environment. And then finally, are we developers and do we want to really look at the DevOps side of things and how do we tie the developers and their needs back organically in? And I think that customers are on a continuum all the way across but even before they get into that, we went through the virtualization journey and now we're trying to figure out how can I be efficient, how can I take advantage of things that I really don't want to have to build on premises. I would love to have someone else take care of that for me but how can I do that without swamping the humans that have to take care of all the things in the background? >> Yeah, so Jeramiah, we actually had a guest on earlier that said there's companies that would consider themselves a Microsoft shop just like there were people that would say, you know I'm Cisco certified and that is my job. How's Microsoft helping customers move kind of beyond that vendor view to with the language that we hear from Satya Nadella is about business outcomes and the agility and what we all talk about is how the future should be. But you know, it's very difficult inside the enterprise organization to change those roles and rescale and learn up or hire people into that. You've got those four teams maybe. How does Microsoft help people move along this journey? >> I think rule number one is meet customers where they are. It's not our job to dictate how fast customers move or what direction they move in. It's our job to build bridges, maybe lots of bridges and let customers decide which of them make make the most sense. If we can meet customers where they are today and in the case of VMware, that means building a bare-metal environment that we can deploy VMware on to so that customers can take advantage of it without having to change any of their operational stuff. Then, I get to compete on the merits of the services as your offers and I'm happy to do that. Once we have those workloads in a place where you can take advantage of managed database instances or no sequel geographic distribution models that you didn't have the ability to build on your own or even intelligent Edge connected firewalls or application load bouncers. There's so much stuff in there that when we talk to the operations teams, they're like, "I want that and I would like that now", and we just don't have the ability always to push that down into the on premises side of things. So meeting them where they're at and then doing a good job of translating the value, the business value of the services that we offer into the language of that audience. And I really think that's where the advocacy team comes in. It is almost a business value translator where we look at all these things in the Azure marketplace and say here's why this matters to you. Here are the things that you're doing today that we could make go away. Let's work on figuring out what the return on that investment would be to find out if it's a good business deal. >> And the thing about Microsoft is that it has been around for so long that so many of these companies have had decades-long relationships with Microsoft which is not something you could say about all the other cloud providers because they are relatively newer to the scene. >> And good and bad right? I mean on the good side, there's literally not an enterprise that I walk into that there isn't some Microsoft relationship. In many cases, that allows us to be really aggressive and going to customers and saying the licensing on premises that you're trying to move away from has a Microsoft logo on it and the cloud that you're looking to move into has a Microsoft logo on it. Let's figure it out. Sometimes, I mean every, especially large customers, they've got multiple vendors in there, there have always been things that have happened along the way in that relationship but absolutely it's great to be able to look at a customer and know. Even if you're not an Azure customer, I promise your Microsoft customer that gives us some sort of common ground to be able to start that process. >> Yes, so we know that the customer experience is so very important but one of the other experiences is the employee experience. I've got great respect for Microsoft. I've worked with them most of my career but Jeramiah, there's a number of people I know that 10 years ago would never have joined Microsoft but now find themselves working for Microsoft. Give us a little viewpoint as to how kind of the Microsoft of the Satya Nadella era is different from what we might have seen in previous days. >> It's a great point and I know that when I interviewed with Microsoft and went through my loop with some of the people that you're going to have on the show this week. That was my question was would you have seen yourself working for the Microsoft two/five years ago and especially when we're talking about the SRE and the DevOps folks. It's just a categorical no across the board and I think it's from a personal standpoint, the idea that it is new technology that we're looking at, that everything I've done in the last 18 months has been something that I got to learn from the ground up, new content, new technologies, new ways to translate that into customers. I thought that working for a giant company like this would be challenging from a logistical standpoint. What really has been challenging is from a focus standpoint. There is so much to focus on, to learn. I mean even just looking around this place you can get lost wandering through just the hub and the social spaces. My challenge has been less of is this a good place to work or is the culture something that fits and more, what are the... I'm never going to know everything. What are the small number of things that I can focus on and really provide value for? But overall, culture wise, I love the "empower of everyone on the planet" messaging and when you walk onto the floor and you see the tag line, "You can't empower everyone unless you include everyone". It's just really fun to be at a place where you can feel excited about those things and having worked in IT, particularly on the infrastructure side for a long time, that's not always the case. So if you're excited about the type of company that you're going to work for and I have all of these toys to play with and I have so much stuff that I can learn and get involved in and then translate back in to that core enterprise community. No, this has been, not just the most interesting 18 months but we're talking about this is a hard job not to love with the opportunity that we get and then the technology we get to work with. >> That's a great note to end on. Jeramiah Dooley, thank you so much for coming on theCUBE. >> Of course, thank you. >> I'm Rebecca Knight with Stu Miniman. Stay tuned for more of theCUBE. (upbeat music)

>>live from Atlanta, Georgia. It's the Q covering Answerable fest 2019. Brought to you by red hat. >>Hey, welcome back. It was a cube. Live coverage here in Atlanta for answerable fast part of red hats. Event around automation anywhere. I'm John for it. With my coast to Minutemen. Next guest's Abram Snell, senior I t analyst at the Southern Company Customer Invincible. Great to have you on. Thanks for coming on. >>I'm glad to be here. >>So tell us what? Your company What do you do there? About what is Southern Company? So So what do you do there? >>Yeah. Yeah, Southern Company is Ah ah. Very large. Probably one of top three energy providers. And we're based in the Southeast. So we're energy utility. So we do electric and gas. We also generate electric and gas. Oh, >>and your role there. >>And and there I am. So, in infrastructure, we build systems platforms s o. I'm a kind of OS specialist, and so we build red hat platforms for applications. >>And what's your what's your goal here? The answerable fest this year? >>Well, a couple of things. So I submitted a talk, and so I'll be doing a talk here. But the other thing is just to learn other ways. How to increase the automation footprint at our company. Abraham, why don't you >>walk us through that? Some we heard in the keynote red hat talked about their journey. Microsoft talk about their journey J. P. Morgan did. So I'm assuming that, you know you're undergoing some kind of journey. Also bring bring us a little bit, you know, bring us back to kind of his far back as you can. And you know where things have been going. >>Yes, So I heard about answerable during the time when we were trying to automate patch process. So our patch process was taken about 1900 man hours per year. So it was It was highly manual. And so we were looking at some other things, like a puppet was out cf engine, which is incredibly complex. And then, in a sales meeting, you heard about answerable because that was the direction that red hat was going. So I looked it up, um, and learned about it. And that's the other thing. The various to entry were so low. It's modular. You could jump in and start learning you can write a play book without knowing everything else about answerable. And so So that's how we got started with the journey. >>Okay, so the patches you said over, like, 1900 hours in a year. Do you know how long addiction now? >>Yeah, we reduced that to about 70 hours. So it was a massive reduction in the amount of time that we spent patching. >>Okay. And, you know, have you been been expanding? Answerable and you know what? What? Where's it going from? Your footprint? >>Yes. So as a West platform group, we are doing, you know, we do deployments now with answerable. Let's do everything with answer. Well, obviously someone just asked me to deploy some files. I was like, You have no right answer playbook for that or use one that we already have. So now we have other groups the database of folks are now using answerable to patch their databases. And the network folks have been asking us questions, so maybe maybe they'll be getting on board. But yet, from my standpoint, I think I think we should expand, answerable. I don't know if it's if that's my call, that's a little above my pay grade, but I'm definitely going to do everything I can to make sure that >>you like the play book concept. >>Oh, yeah. Oh, absolutely. >>I mean, you had a lot of playbooks developing feelings, like growing everywhere. People tend to use them or >>Yeah, so, you know, I learned something today that there's gonna be, like, kind of like a depository, and that that will actually work right now there. We probably have about 150 playbooks, but people aren't able to just use them because they're just kind of stored >>something built. So what you're talking to be eventually going to a talk. >>Oh, yeah. How, um how automation can can reduce business conflict. So we're gonna talk about creating automation. Is that kind of reduced the siloed conflict. And so I'll be talking about creating an easy button for groups who, you know, when you say, Hey, I want a patch that now you can't patch this week. And so, rather than having an argument about when we're gonna patch, just give them an easy button and say, Hey, when you're ready, press this button and it'll patch and just let us know if anything turns red and we'll fix >>it. People want to get rid of the comfort. They like the conflict there. Let me talk about the culture because this is, you know, this conflict. Been there? Yeah. Oh, yeah. What's that? What's the culture like with the new capability? >>S O. I mean, the culture is getting better. I wouldn't say we're there. We're on that journey that hit that he mentioned. But when you say people want conflict, >>that they're used to it. >>Yeah. I mean, there's no way I'm ready. The problem with that is it slows business. So at the end of the day, what were all you know, therefore happens a whole lot slower because we're back and forth and were in conflict. So what automation does is it literally speeds up what we need to be doing. But it also helps us to be friends alone away. So >>don't get your thoughts on. So we did a little survey to our cube community of Amon Automation. You know, a couple of key bullet points a week. We're reporting on earlier much everyone's agreed. But don't get your reaction. You're doing it. One benefit of automation is for the teams are focus efforts on better results. You agree with that? Yes. Security is a big part of it. So automating Help security? >>Yeah, I think it does. I think any time you could do something the same way every time you minimize the ability for human error. So I think that helps security. Um and so I'm not a security gap, but >>well, here's the next one will get your thoughts on you mentioned culture, automation, drives, job satisfaction. >>Oh, yeah, Yeah. What? That So A few ways that just come to mind immediately. One is I have a greater opportunity for success because it's gonna work the same way every time, right? The second thing is it kinda gives people options. So I talk about this in my talk. You know, we we tend to want options around the window where sometimes even the how on dso automation can actually do that. The and the third thing is, it really does free us up to do important stuff, you know? And so when I'm spending my time doing tedious things like paperwork, automation helps me now to do the stuff I really want to do. The stuff. I come to work >>and there's new jobs Being created on this means new opportunities. This creates growth for people that are actually new, higher level skills. >>Well, one of the cultural aspects of it is people are afraid that automation kill my job. Right. But honestly, when you start building this stuff, we're finding out that man. It takes ah village to do all this stuff. So it really does take, allow us to learn new things and probably send our careers in another direction. I hadn't seen a job that was killed. Yeah. >>Yeah, well, that's all these cripples love to get better jobs and doing the mundane stuff. The final point on the quick poll survey of our community was that infrastructure and Dev ops or dead professionals, developers or Dev Ops they get congee re skilling with this opportunity because it's kind of new things. Is Reese killing a big part of the culture in the trenches? When you start looking at these new opportunities or are people embracing that? What's the vibe there? What's your take on >>s? Oh, my take on it is It's probably some kind of bill curve. Right? So you got probably 10% of the folks that are gung ho. You gotta probably that middle 80% That's like, either way. And then you got 10% there. Like, dude, I'm about to retire. I don't wanna do this anymore. Whatever I'm afraid or I don't think I could do it. So But, you know, that opportunity is that I mean, I was actually trained in college as a developer. I never wanted to do development, so I didn't have been an infrastructure. But now I'm getting to do development again, and I kinda like it, right? It's kind of like, OK, >>hey, books. You got recipe, >>right? And I still get to be an infrastructure guy. So, um, I think there's definitely opportunity for growth for that 90% that says, Hey, we want to do >>all the scale and all. All the plumbing is gonna be still running. You got a utility network. You still needed storage and compute. Get the abstraction layers kind of building on top of that scale. Yes. So the question for you is you're gonna take this across the company and >>am I gonna be Oh, yeah. Let's >>change your Southern. >>Let me get that promotion. So you know, I am definitely champion being a champion for because I want to share this. I mean, it just kind of makes life better. So, yes, the plan is Hey, let me share this Automation is great, but we actually have an automation team. There's a management team and a structure around automation, and they allow me to kind of be on their, you know, come to their meetings and do some of the things with them. So, yeah, I'm looking forward to it, too. It propagating through Southern. >>Well, you certainly nailed the use case. >>Abraham does. Does cloud in a public cloud fit into this discussion at all yet from your group? >>So public Cloud is in the discussion, and automation is a part of that discussion. But I think we're kind of early on in that process. There's not a whole lot around it, but but the one thing where it really does fit is the way of thinking, right. So now, to be cloud, native automation is just really a part of that. And so you have to start thinking in a cloud native fashion. And that's beginning, right? Mostly now it's in the strategy time for but implementation of something's coming. And the more we do automation, the more it kind of gets you ready for this idea of cloud. >>Yeah, E. I think that's a great point. You talk about that mind set the other thing when you talk about, you know, infrastructures. Infrastructure used to be kind of the boat anchor that prevented you from responding to the business. It was okay. Can you do this? Yeah. Get to it in the next 6 to 12 months, maybe if we have the budget and everything, How does how does automation help you respond to the business and beam or a group of Yes. >>Well, I'm glad you said that because of infrastructure has often been seen as the party of no right. No. And don't come back. But with the automation, what we're seeing is there a lot of things that we can do because one of the things that you don't want to happen an infrastructure is create a task that I could never get rid of. Okay, I'm gonna be doing this forever and a day. But now, if it becomes a push button item and I could do it consistently every time. It's like, Oh, yeah, why don't we do that? Why haven't we been doing that in the past? So yeah, that's exactly you know, a great point is that now infrastructure can feel like a part of the party rather than being the people sitting in the corner. They don't want to do this, right? >>Yeah, it's great. It's a critical component of scale. Am I want a final after my final question for you is you've had a great experience with answerable automation. This is the whole conference automation for all. What's the learning? Your big takeaway. Over the past couple of years, as you've been on this wave and it's gonna be bigger behind you, the clouds come in a lot more. A lot more scale, more software applications. What's your big learning? What's your big takeaway? >>You know, my big takeaway, believe it or not, is really not technical. So I've been doing this 23 years or so years, and I never thought that there would be a tool that could really change in effect culture the way it has. And so for me, my big takeaway is mean this automation thing. Help for my job in ways that that's not technical, You know? It helps me, you know, work better with other teams. Now their networks of folks that I work with who I never would have worked with before who were doing automation. We get along. It's not them over their social network. It's a social network. And who knew that a tool could could make that happen? >>You have more collaborative relationship, get someone's face, and no one's gonna get offended. Conversations share playbooks. >>Yeah, because because with automation now we we can all focus on the big picture. What is the corporate goal? Not what is my You know, I just want to keep this running. I just want to keep this up. Why are we keeping it up? Why are we keeping it running? What is the corporate go >>Better Teamwork does every vision. Thank you for coming on. Sharing your insights. Appreciate >>it. Yeah. Finally, red hat accelerators. Maybe just explain the shirt in the hat. >>Oh, yeah, Kind of flood. The accelerated. So the accelerator's are like a customer at Advocacy group. And so what has happened is and I was actually a charter member of the accelerator, so I gotta plug that too. Started a couple of years ago. They just call us and talk about new stuff that's coming out at Red Hat and go. What do you think? And we are brutally frank with them, sometimes to brutally. What? That and they keep coming back for more. I'm thinking, really, Guys, we just abused you. But no, it is a great group of guys and girls. And in a Ford And for us, the customers, it affords us opportunities to see new technology and gets away >>again. Collaboration scales as well there. >>Oh, absolutely. And you get to see what other companies are doing. Like, you know, my peers. I go, Hey, what are you doing in Cloud? What are you doing in automation on? So you get the get the shit >>that's doing. I interviewed a lot of the red headed folks. They love the feedback, Their technical group. They want brutal honesty. Okay, you're feeding the product requirements. What they want. Thanks for coming on. So now here on the queue Jumpers Do Minutemen for more coverage here, Answerable fest day One of two days of coverage will be right back

>> Welcome to the latest edition of the MIT Sloan Expert Series. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight. Our topic today is racial bias in the sharing economy, how Uber and Lyft are failing black passengers, and what to do about it. Here to talk about that is Chris Knittel. He is a professor of Applied Economics here at MIT Sloan, and he's also the co-author of a study that shows how Uber and Lyft drivers discriminate based on a passenger's skin color. Thanks so much for joining us. >> Oh, it's great to be here. >> Before we begin, I want to remind our viewers that we will be taking your questions live on social media. Please use the hashtag MITSloanExpert to pose your questions on Twitter. Chris, let's get started. >> Chris: Sure. So there is a lot of research that shows how difficult it is to hail a cab, particularly for black people. Uber and Lyft were supposed to represent a more egalitarian travel option, but you didn't find that. >> That's right, so what we found in two experiments that we ran, and one in Seattle, and one in Boston, is that Uber and Lyft drivers were discriminating based on race. >> Rebecca: We've already seen, actually some evidence of racial discrimination in the sharing economy, not just with ride sharing apps. >> Sure, so there's evidence for Airbnb. And what's interesting about Airbnb actually, is that discrimination is two-sided. So not only do white renters of properties not want to rent to black rentees, but white renters do not stay at a home of a black home owner. >> Did your findings and the findings of that other research you just talked about, does it make you discouraged? >> Partly, I was an optimist. We went into this, at least I went into this hoping that we wouldn't find discrimination, but one thing that has helped, or at least shined a more positive light, is that there are ways that we can do better in this sector. >> You've talked about this study, which you undertook with colleagues from the University of Washington and Stanford, shows the power of the experiment. Can you talk a little bit about what you mean by that? >> Sure, what we did was actually run two randomized control trials. Just like you would test whether a blood pressure medication works, so you would have a control group that wouldn't get the medication, and a treatment group that would. We did the same thing where we sent out in Seattle both black and white RAs that hailed Uber and Lyft rides, and we randomized whether or not it was a black RA calling the ride or a white RA that particular time, and they all drove the same exact route at the same exact times of the day. >> So what did you find? Let's talk about first, what you found in Seattle. >> Sure, so in Seattle, we measured how long it took for a ride to be accepted, and also, how long it took, once it was accepted, for the driver to show up and pick up the passenger. And what we found is, if you're a black research assistant, that in hailing an Uber ride, it took 30 percent longer for a ride to be accepted, and also 30 percent longer for the driver to show up and pick you up. >> 30 percent seems substantial. >> Well, for the time it takes to accept the ride, we're talking seconds, but for the time it takes for a passenger to actually be picked up, it's over a minute longer. And I'll mention also for Lyft, we found a 30 percent increase in the amount of time it took to be accepted, but there was no statistically significant impact on how long it took for the driver to actually show up. >> So, the thing about the minute difference, that can be material, particularly if you're trying to catch a cab, an Uber or a Lyft for a job interview or to get to the airport. >> Yeah, this is introspection, but I always seem to be late, so even a minute can be very costly. >> I hear you, I hear you. So why do you think there was the difference between Lyft and Uber? >> What's interesting, and we learned this while we were doing the experiment, a Lyft driver sees the name of the passenger before they accept the ride, whereas an Uber driver only sees the name after they've accepted. So in order for an Uber driver to discriminate, they have to first accept the ride, and then see the name and then cancel, whereas a Lyft driver can just pass it up right away. So it turns out because of that, the Lyft platform is more easily capable of handling discrimination because it pushed it to another driver faster than the Uber platform. >> I want to come back to that, but I want to say also, that difference caused you to change the way you did the experiment in Boston. >> In Boston, a couple differences. One is that we sent out RAs with two cell phones actually. So each RA had an Uber and Lyft account under a stereotypically white sounding name, and then also an Uber and Lyft account under a stereotypically black sounding name. That was one difference, and then also, what we measured in Boston that we didn't measure in Seattle, is cancellations. So an Uber driver accepts the ride, and then cancels on the RA. >> Let's go back to the stereotypically black sounding name verses white sounding name. You're an economist, how did you determine what those names are? >> We relied on another published paper that actually looked at birth records from the 1970s in Boston, and the birth records tell you not only the name, but also the race of the baby. So they found names that actually 100 percent of the time were African American or 100 percent of the time were not African American. So we relied on those names. >> And the names were... >> So you could imagine Jamal for example, compared to Jerry. >> Alright, Ayisha and Alison. >> Chris: Sure. >> So what was your headline finding in Boston? >> In Boston, what we found is, if you were a black male calling an Uber ride, that you were canceled upon more than twice as often as if you were a white male. >> And what about Lyft? >> For Lyft, there is no cancellation effect, and that's not because there's no discrimination, it's just that they don't have to accept and then cancel the ride, they can just pass up the ride completely. It's actually a nice little experiment within the experiment, we shouldn't find an effect of names on cancellations for Lyft and in fact, we don't. >> And also, the driver network is much thicker in Boston than in Seattle. >> So in Boston, although we found this cancellation effect, we didn't find that it has a measurable impact on how long you wait. And this is somewhat speculation, but we speculate that that's because the driver network is so much more dense in Boston that, although you were canceled upon, there's so many only drivers nearby, that it doesn't lead to a longer wait time. >> How do you think what you found compares to hailing traditional cabs? We started our conversation talking about the vast body of research that shows how difficult it is for black people to hail cabs. >> Yeah, we are quick to point out that we are not at all saying that Uber and Lyft are worse than traditional, status quo system, and we want to definitely make that clear. In fact, in Seattle, we had our same research assistants stand at the busiest corners and hail cabs. What we found there is, if you were a black research assistant, the first cab passed you 80 percent of the time. But if you were a white research assistant, it only passed you 20 percent of the time. So just like the previous literature has found, we found discrimination with the status quo system as well. >> You've talked to the companies about you findings, what has the response been? >> That's been actually heartening. Both companies reached out to us very quickly, and we've had continued conversations with them, and we're actually trying to design followup studies to minimize the amount of discrimination that's occurring for both Uber and Lyft. >> But those are off the record and... >> Right, we're not talking specifics, but what I can say is that the companies understand this research and they definitely want to do better. >> In fact, the companies both have issued statements about this, the first one is from Lyft, "we are extremely proud of the positive impact..." Uber has also responded. So let's talk about solutions to this. What do you and your colleagues who undertook this research suggest? >> We've been brainstorming, we don't know for sure if we have the silver bullet, but a few things could change, for example, you could imagine Uber and Lyft getting rid of names completely. We realize that has a trade off in the sense that it's nice to know the name of the driver... >> Rebecca: Sure, you can strike up a conversation... >> It makes it more social, it makes it more personal, more peer to peer if you will. But it would eliminate the type of discrimination that we uncovered. Another potential change is to delay when you give the name to the driver, so that the driver has to commit more to the ride than he or she previously had to. And that may increase the costs of discrimination. >> So that would be changing the software? >> Right, so you could imagine now, like I said, with Lyft that you see the name right away. Maybe you wait until they're 30 seconds away from the passenger before you give them the name. >> What about the dawn of the age of autonomous vehicles? Might that have an impact? We already know that Uber is experimenting with driverless cars in Pittsburgh and Arizona. >> That would obviously solve it, so that would take the human element out of things, and it's important to point out that these are the drivers that are deciding to discriminate. So provided you didn't write the autonomous vehicle software to discriminate, you would know for sure that that car is not going to discriminate. >> What about a driver education campaign? Do you think that would make a difference? I'm reminded of an essay written by Doug Glanville, who is an ESPN commentator and former pro ball player. He writes, on talking about his experience being denied service by an Uber driver, "the driver had concluded I was a threat, "either because I was dangerous myself, "or because I would direct him to a bad neighborhood, "or give him a lower tip, either way, "given the circumstances, it was hard "to attribute his refusal to anything other than my race. "Shortly after we walked away, I saw the driver assisting "another passenger who was white." >> We all hope that information helps, and eliminates discrimination. It's certainly possible that Uber and Lyft could have a full information campaign, where they show the tip rates for different ethnicities, they show the bad ride probabilities for different ethnicities, and my hope is that once the drivers learn that there aren't differences across ethnicities, that the drivers would internalize that, and stop discriminating. >> Policy, Senator Al Franken has weighed in on this, urging Uber and Lyft to address your research. Do you think that there could be policies too? Does government have a role to play? >> Potentially, but what I'll say again is, that Uber and Lyft, I think have all the incentive in the world to fix this, and that they seem to be taking active steps to fixing this. So what could policy makers do? They can, obviously it's already outlawed. They could come down and potentially fine the companies if there's more evidence of discrimination. But I would at least allow the companies some time to internalize this research, and respond to it, and see how effective they can be. >> Many, many think tanks and government advocacy groups have weighed in too. The MIT Sloan Expert Series recently sat down with Eva Millona of the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Coalition. She will talk about this research in the context of immigration, let's roll that clip. >> We're an advocacy organization, and we represent the interest of foreign born, and our mission is to promote and enhance immigrant and refugee integration. Anecdotally, yes, I would say that the research, and given the impressive sample of the research really leads to a sad belief that discrimination is still out there, and there is a lot that needs to be done across sectors to really address these issues. We are really privileged to live in such a fantastic commonwealth with the right leadership and all sectors together, really making our commonwealth a welcoming place. And I do want to highlight the fantastic role of our Attorney General for standing up for our values, but Massachusetts is one state, and it could be an example, but the concern is nation wide. Given a very divisive campaign, and also not just a campaign, but also, what is currently happening at the national level that the current administration is really rejecting this welcoming effort, and the values of our country as a country, who welcomes immigrants. All sectors need to be involved in an effort to really make our society a better one for everyone. And it's going to take political leadership to really set the right tone, send the right message, and really look into the integration, and the welcoming of the newcomers as an investment in our future of our nation. Uber and Lyft have an opportunity here to provide leadership and come up with promotion of policies that integrate the newcomers, or that are welcoming to the newcomers, provide education and training, and train their people. And as troubling as the result of this research are, we like to believe that this is the attitude of the drivers, but not really what the corporate represents, so we see an opportunity for the corporate to really step in and work and promote policies of integration, policies of improvement and betterment for the whole of society and provide an example. Let me say thank you to Professor Knittle for his leadership and MIT for always being a leader, and looking into these issues. But if we can go deeper into A, the size, B, the geography, but also looking into a wider range of all communities that are represented. Looking into the Latino community, looking into the Arab communities in other parts of the nation in a more rigorous, more deep and larger size of research will be very helpful in terms of promoting better policies and integration for everybody who chooses America to be their home. >> That was Eva Millona of the Massechusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition. Chris, are you confident this problem can in fact be remedied? >> I think we can do better, for sure. And I would say we need more studies like what we just preformed to see how widespread it is. We only studied two cities, we also haven't looked at all at how the driver's race impacts the discrimination. >> Now we're going to turn to you, questions from our viewers. Questions have already been coming in this morning and overnight, lots of great ones. Please use the hashtag MITSloanExpert to pose your question. The first one comes from Justin Wang, who is an MIT Sloan MBA student. He asks, "what policies can sharing economy startups "implement to reduce racial bias?" >> Well, I would say the first thing is to be aware of this. I think Uber and Lyft and Airbnb potentially were caught off guard with the amount of discrimination that was taking place. So the research that we preformed, and the research on Airbnb gives new startups a head start on designing their platforms. >> Just knowing that this is an issue. >> Knowing it's an issue, and potentially designing their platforms to think of ways to limit the amount of discrimination. >> Another question, did you look at gender bias? Do you have any indication that drivers discriminate based on gender? >> We did look at gender bias. The experiments weren't set up to necessarily nail that, but one thing that we found, for example in Boston, is that there is some evidence that women drivers were taken on longer trips. Again, both the male and the female RAs are going from the same point A to the same point B. >> Rebecca: That was a controlled part of the setting. >> That was the controlled part of the experiment. And we found evidence that women passengers were taken on longer trips and in fact, one of our RAs commented that she remembers going through the same intersection three times before she finally said something to the driver. >> And you think... So you didn't necessarily study this as part of it, but do you have any speculation, conjecture about why this was happening? >> Well, there's two potential motives. One is a financial motive that, by taking the passenger on a longer drive. They potentially get a higher fare. But I've heard anecdotal evidence that a more social motive might also be at play. For example, I have a colleague here at Sloan, who's told me that she's been asked out on dates three times while taking Uber and Lyft rides. >> So drivers taking the opportunity to flirt a little bit. >> Chris: Sure. >> Another question, can you comment on the hashtag DeleteUber campaign? This of course, is about the backlash against Uber responding that it was intending to profit from President Trump's executive order, the banning immigrants and refugees from certain countries from entering the United States. Uber maintains that its intentions were misunderstood, but it didn't stop the hashtag DeleteUber campaign. >> Yeah, I haven't followed that super closely, but to me it seems like Uber's getting a bit of a bad rap. One potential reason why they allowed Uber drivers to continue working is that, maybe they wanted to bring protesters to the airports to protest. So from that perspective, actually having Uber and Lyft still in business would be beneficial. >> Another question, did your study take into account the race of the drivers themselves? >> We actually we not allowed to. So any time you do a randomized control trial in the field like this, you have to go through a campus committee that approves or disapproves the research, and they were worried that if we collected information on the driver, that potentially, Uber and Lyft could go back into their records and find the drivers that discriminate, and then have penalties assigned to those drivers. >> So it just wouldn't be allowed to... >> At least in this first phase, yeah. They didn't want us to collect those data. >> Last question, we have time for one more. Why aren't there more experiments in the field of applies economics like this one? That's a good question. >> That's a great question, and in fact, I think many of us are trying to push experiments as much as possible. My other line of research is actually in energy and climate change research, and we've been- >> Rebecca: You like the hot topic. (lauhging) >> We've been designing a bunch of experiments to look at how information impacts consumers' choices in terms of what cars to buy, how it impacts their use of electricity at home. And experiments, randomized control trials actually started in developmental economics, where MIT has actually pioneered their use. And again, it's the best way to actually test, the most rigorous way to test whether intervention actually has an effect because you have both the controlled group and the treatment group. >> So why aren't they done more often? >> Well, it's tough, often you need to find a third party, for example, we didn't need a third party in the sense that we could just send RAs out with Uber and Lyft. But if we wanted to do anything with the drivers, for example, an information campaign, or if we wanted to change the platform at all, we would've needed Uber and Lyft to partner with us, and that can sometimes be difficult to do. And also experiments, let's be honest, are pretty expensive. >> Expensive because, you obviously weren't partnered with Uber and Lyft for this one, but... >> Right, but we had research assistants take 1500 Uber and Lyft rides, so we had to pay for each of those rides, and we also had to give them an hourly rate for their time. >> Well, Chris Knittle, thank you so much. This has been great talking to you, and you've given us a lot to think about. >> It's been fun, thanks for having me. >> And thank you for joining us on this edition of the MIT Sloan Expert Series. We hope to see you again soon.