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Is AI the New Girlboss? · Stuff Mom Never Told You

• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Hey, this is Anny and SMITHA welcome to stuff.
• 0:08
  Speaker 2: Never told you a production, I heard you.
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: Today. We are once again so happy to be joined
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: by the brilliant, the bold, brigite Todd.
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: Welcome Bridget.
• 0:23
  Speaker 3: I like the be alliteration, always coming with the alliterative superlative.
• 0:29
  Speaker 4: Love to hear it.
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: It's one of my skills, one of my many pretty
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: useless skills. But thank you well, Bridget.
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: How have you been this sin is the last time
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: we spoke.
• 0:41
  Speaker 4: Things are okay.
• 0:42
  Speaker 3: I am trying to stay positive, you know. It's I
• 0:47
  Speaker 3: really really enjoyed when we hung out and watched and
• 0:50
  Speaker 3: talked about the social network. That was definitely the high
• 0:53
  Speaker 3: point of things for me, and I've been trying to
• 0:56
  Speaker 3: find ways to connect with what's going on in the
• 0:59
  Speaker 3: world through the lens of pop culture. Just was such
• 1:02
  Speaker 3: a nice, refreshing change of conversation. Thank you for giving
• 1:06
  Speaker 3: me the space.
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: Oh thank you. That was so fun. It was I
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: was delighted.
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: To have an excuse to rewatch it and to have
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: Samantha to watch it. And now I'm already thinking of
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: what our next installment will be.
• 1:19
  Speaker 3: I'm thinking her, Oh my god, yes, please, that's one
• 1:22
  Speaker 3: of my favorite movies.
• 1:23
  Speaker 5: I assumed with all the AI stuff, this would be
• 1:27
  Speaker 5: quickly coming. So I've only seen a few clips and
• 1:31
  Speaker 5: it seems very early two thousand's Emo Unresolved type of film.
• 1:38
  Speaker 4: Yes, I would watch it.
• 1:39
  Speaker 3: It pairs very nicely with Lost in Translation is what
• 1:43
  Speaker 3: I thought to films about the same thing from different perspectives.
• 1:47
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it definitely.
• 1:47
  Speaker 3: You've definitely nailed the vibe, which was kind of of
• 1:51
  Speaker 3: an era, you know, was the aughts.
• 1:54
  Speaker 4: We're all listening to a lot of sad indie rock.
• 1:57
  Speaker 5: And I mean it was like Eternal Sunshine, I Love
• 2:00
  Speaker 5: a Spotless Mind. Another classic Zach braf One, Oh Garden State. Yeah,
• 2:05
  Speaker 5: can I tell me nothing When I had the the
• 2:08
  Speaker 5: Garden State soundtrack. I'm dating myself here, but there was
• 2:11
  Speaker 5: a time where that was like the coolest record you
• 2:13
  Speaker 5: could put on, was the Garden State soundtrack.
• 2:15
  Speaker 4: Yeah. Fun fact. Jd Vance our vice president.
• 2:19
  Speaker 3: Before he became jd Vance, he was sort of a
• 2:23
  Speaker 3: kind of alty, artsy kid and the movie Garden State
• 2:28
  Speaker 3: was very meaningful to him and that he wanted to
• 2:30
  Speaker 3: be a filmmaker or a screenwriter because of the movie
• 2:32
  Speaker 3: Garden State.
• 2:33
  Speaker 4: Fun fact about JD Vance.
• 2:34
  Speaker 5: Man, Why why couldn't he know? I'm really sad he
• 2:37
  Speaker 5: didn't much.
• 2:38
  Speaker 4: Better off we would all be.
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: I think so many people that we are unfortunately subject
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: to the whims of in our government now. They just
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: want to be famous. They just want people to pay
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: attention to them. I don't know, but all right, jd Vance.
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: You didn't make it that way, but you made it
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: this way. Vice President. Well, I'm very interested in what
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: the topic you brought today, Bridget, because I haven't quite
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: heard of it. But when you when I was looking
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: over the outline, I was like, ah, yeah, that makes
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: complete sense to me. Can you tell us what we're
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: discussing today?
• 3:15
  Speaker 4: Today we are talking about the resurgence of girl boss
• 3:18
  Speaker 4: culture being repackaged through AI and I want to start
• 3:23
  Speaker 4: with a question for both of you. What do you
• 3:25
  Speaker 4: remember about the girl Boss era?
• 3:28
  Speaker 3: Was this something that you participated in that we were
• 3:31
  Speaker 3: at all adjacent to.
• 3:33
  Speaker 5: I feel like I missed that window because a I
• 3:37
  Speaker 5: was aging out. I feel like because I was just
• 3:39
  Speaker 5: trying to maintain It was one of those moments I'm like,
• 3:43
  Speaker 5: I don't understand this. Okay, cool, cool, cool too. Oh
• 3:46
  Speaker 5: it died real quick, Like that's how that went down,
• 3:50
  Speaker 5: and I missed that whole moment.
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: I am I remember it. I think I was at
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: the time, and I could be wrong, because I know
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: you're gonna go over kind of a brief history and reminder,
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: but I feel like at the time, I was freshly
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: out of college, and I just remember thinking it felt
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: like somebody was trying to sell me something like you
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: paid as much amount of money and give you ten
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: steps and then you won't be struggling every day. And
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: I would say I was adjacent to it in terms
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: of I was panicking about not having enough money because
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: it was my first job out of college, you know,
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: all that stuff, and I was pretty well off in
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: terms of that situation, but I was still.
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: Thinking about, like what about retirement, what about all of this.
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: I think it barked because my mom when I was
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: nine years old, I asked my mom if the American
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: dream was a real thing, and she said to me, no,
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: she said, you can work as hard as you can,
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: and you will not get past certain barriers in your life.
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: And then she said money doesn't buy happiness, but it
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: certainly makes it easier. And so I think I was
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: already in this mindset of like, I'm just trying to.
• 5:08
  Speaker 4: Survive Annie's mom. That's real, probing knowledge. That's really old,
• 5:15
  Speaker 4: mind you.
• 5:17
  Speaker 5: That's real. I love that because my mom was like,
• 5:19
  Speaker 5: have a family, that'll make you happy, and I'm like, okay, sure,
• 5:23
  Speaker 5: but I love that your mom was that honest. I
• 5:26
  Speaker 5: will say I really did think it was for upper
• 5:29
  Speaker 5: class white people, the American dream No, the Girl Boss.
• 5:33
  Speaker 4: Oh yeah, yeah, I mean.
• 5:34
  Speaker 3: You're not You're not wrong. That's absolutely an astute observation.
• 5:38
  Speaker 4: It's tressed.
• 5:38
  Speaker 5: I remember seeing the people who are really getting into it,
• 5:41
  Speaker 5: and it felt like that was kind of that sentiment.
• 5:45
  Speaker 5: I think it came initially. I don't think it was that.
• 5:48
  Speaker 5: I think initially it was a lot of like people
• 5:50
  Speaker 5: of color who are entrepreneurs really taking on things and
• 5:54
  Speaker 5: becoming a boss because they started their own companies. Yeah,
• 5:57
  Speaker 5: and that was cool. But then it felt like just
• 6:00
  Speaker 5: a bunch of rich white women, or at least like
• 6:05
  Speaker 5: upper middle class white women, yeah, who had some like
• 6:09
  Speaker 5: good support or slash network that were saying these things,
• 6:12
  Speaker 5: and it just didn't feel realistic.
• 6:14
  Speaker 4: Yeah, Samantha, it's so interesting that you say this.
• 6:18
  Speaker 3: That is exactly my sort of trajectory around Girl boss
• 6:21
  Speaker 3: girl boss culture really took root in the twenty tens,
• 6:25
  Speaker 3: and at that time in my life, I was, you know, had.
• 6:29
  Speaker 4: Been out of college for a good.
• 6:31
  Speaker 3: While, I was sort of figuring out what I wanted
• 6:33
  Speaker 3: to do, and that was the first time that I
• 6:36
  Speaker 3: was sort of getting the sense that maybe a traditional
• 6:39
  Speaker 3: nine to five job was not going to be best
• 6:41
  Speaker 3: for me, and that what was going to work out
• 6:43
  Speaker 3: for me was being my own boss entrepreneurship. And I
• 6:47
  Speaker 3: completely agree that for women of color, like myself, black women,
• 6:52
  Speaker 3: we are definitely folks who start businesses, who were interested
• 6:55
  Speaker 3: in entrepreneurship.
• 6:56
  Speaker 4: And so I think that.
• 6:58
  Speaker 3: In the twenty tens, we were having conversations about what
• 7:01
  Speaker 3: it meant, what it looked like, what it took to
• 7:04
  Speaker 3: be your own boss, be an entrepreneur. All of that
• 7:07
  Speaker 3: that happened, and so like that was very legitimate and real.
• 7:11
  Speaker 3: In my opinion, what ended up happening, or I guess,
• 7:13
  Speaker 3: at least in my personal experience, it coincided with all
• 7:17
  Speaker 3: of these white, very upper class women who were very
• 7:22
  Speaker 3: like who lived the kind of lives I could never,
• 7:25
  Speaker 3: you know, to Annie's mouth point, could never aspire to, right,
• 7:28
  Speaker 3: and they were selling a very specific version of what
• 7:32
  Speaker 3: a successful woman looked like. And in my own personal experience,
• 7:37
  Speaker 3: like this was incredibly confusing because I was just starting
• 7:41
  Speaker 3: the journey of starting my own business and being an entrepreneur.
• 7:43
  Speaker 3: I had no idea what I was doing, and that
• 7:45
  Speaker 3: sort of dominant message was that you are doing it wrong,
• 7:50
  Speaker 3: Like whenever you're doing you're doing that thing wrong. Rich
• 7:53
  Speaker 3: white ladies like your Cheryl Sandberg, former CEO of Facebook,
• 7:57
  Speaker 3: your Sophia Amoroso, a former CEO of Nasty Gal. These
• 8:01
  Speaker 3: were the women, these like white rich women who were
• 8:04
  Speaker 3: being like, oh, we know how to do it right,
• 8:06
  Speaker 3: and so if you buy my course, buy my book,
• 8:09
  Speaker 3: take my training, I can tell you the right way
• 8:12
  Speaker 3: to do this.
• 8:13
  Speaker 4: And so the girl boss was born.
• 8:17
  Speaker 3: The term girl boss was sort of popularized by Sophia
• 8:20
  Speaker 3: amorroso she founded this vintage clothing brand called Nasty Gal.
• 8:24
  Speaker 3: In twenty fourteen, she published her best selling memoir called
• 8:27
  Speaker 3: Hashtag girl Boss, which I have read.
• 8:29
  Speaker 4: The cover is pink. It is a picture of her
• 8:33
  Speaker 4: with her.
• 8:33
  Speaker 3: Arms folded, sort of doing a power pose on the cover.
• 8:37
  Speaker 3: Even if you've not read it, just from knowing the
• 8:40
  Speaker 3: title and then hearing my description of the cover, you
• 8:43
  Speaker 3: basically have read it like what you're thinking is basically it.
• 8:48
  Speaker 3: It's all about how she started her million dollar clothing
• 8:51
  Speaker 3: empire from her humble beginnings dumpster diving.
• 8:55
  Speaker 4: And one of the critiques.
• 8:57
  Speaker 3: That sort of emerged from this culture was that girl
• 9:00
  Speaker 3: boss culture really put the burden of systemic inequality on
• 9:05
  Speaker 3: individual women.
• 9:06
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 9:07
  Speaker 3: This era really told women the problem wasn't I don't
• 9:11
  Speaker 3: know the gender pay gap.
• 9:12
  Speaker 4: Lack of childcare, the structure of workplaces. No, no, no, no.
• 9:15
  Speaker 3: The problem is that we women weren't leaning in hard enough,
• 9:19
  Speaker 3: weren't working hard enough, weren't speaking the right way when
• 9:22
  Speaker 3: we went to meetings, we weren't sitting in the right
• 9:24
  Speaker 3: place when we articulated our ideas. We weren't using the
• 9:27
  Speaker 3: right cadence or the right words. It was aspirational for
• 9:31
  Speaker 3: a very specific kind of woman. Sam astutely figured out
• 9:36
  Speaker 3: very early on that woman was usually white and already
• 9:39
  Speaker 3: very wealthy or privileged, and it really asked everyone else
• 9:43
  Speaker 3: to fit themselves into this system that wasn't designed for
• 9:46
  Speaker 3: us and not really spend that much time asking questions
• 9:50
  Speaker 3: about like, well, why is a system like that? And
• 9:52
  Speaker 3: do I really even want to fit into the system
• 9:54
  Speaker 3: that is so broken and so so sort of rigged
• 9:56
  Speaker 3: against me.
• 9:57
  Speaker 4: Again, Annie's mom really up in knowledge. We're a nine
• 10:02
  Speaker 4: year old.
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: Hey, I think about it all the time. It stuck
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: out in my brain.
• 10:06
  Speaker 5: So she did her job, Yes she did.
• 10:10
  Speaker 3: This was also kind of the same era of Cheryl
• 10:13
  Speaker 3: Sandberg we talked. She came up in the Social Network episode.
• 10:16
  Speaker 3: She comes up a lot consider considering. I would say
• 10:19
  Speaker 3: that a lot, in my opinion, a lot of her
• 10:21
  Speaker 3: sort of cultural cachet has really faded. If you sneak
• 10:25
  Speaker 3: back to that era. When Cheryl Sandberg joined Facebook, it
• 10:28
  Speaker 3: was a big deal. She wrote lean In, and she
• 10:31
  Speaker 3: sort of became this like figurehead for a certain kind
• 10:35
  Speaker 3: of woman and a certain kind of feminism.
• 10:38
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 10:39
  Speaker 3: I would say that lasted for a little while, but
• 10:43
  Speaker 3: that we kind of thought we.
• 10:45
  Speaker 4: Were done with this era, you know, we.
• 10:49
  Speaker 3: We I think that most people today would acknowledge that
• 10:54
  Speaker 3: leanin and girl boss culture did not actually create meaningful
• 10:58
  Speaker 3: liberation for women. It might have helped some individual women
• 11:03
  Speaker 3: succeed at work or make economic gains, and I'm not
• 11:05
  Speaker 3: discounting that, but in terms of collective liberation for women,
• 11:09
  Speaker 3: I think most of us can probably agree it didn't
• 11:11
  Speaker 3: do that. However, you might have thought me left Girl
• 11:14
  Speaker 3: Boss lean In culture in the dust. I would argue
• 11:18
  Speaker 3: that AI is attempting to revitalize it right now, in
• 11:22
  Speaker 3: twenty twenty six, almost ten years later.
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: Yes, And I find this really interesting for a lot
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: of reasons, but just this whole idea of Sometimes it
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: reminds me of people who wear like lucky shirts all
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: the time for their sports, whatever team they want to win,
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: they wear the lucky shirt because it makes you feel
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: like you have power. I've always felt like this is
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: sort of the same. If I do these sane, these
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: steps that these people are telling me to do, then
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: I can beat this system, that I can beat all
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: these rules that are around me that are really the problem.
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: It's not that you're not working.
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: Hard off at all, but you know, to have these
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: people who are so well off and who aren't facing
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: a lot of the same obstacles being the ones to say, hey,
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: lean in, you know, and it kind of seems like
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: it's the same girl Bosses that are coming back for
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: this AI.
• 12:20
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that is pretty much what I would say is
• 12:23
  Speaker 3: going on, that these exact same figures who sort of
• 12:27
  Speaker 3: sold us girl bossing and leaning in as the key
• 12:30
  Speaker 3: to liberation for women.
• 12:31
  Speaker 4: They are back.
• 12:32
  Speaker 3: The message is pretty much the same, only this time
• 12:35
  Speaker 3: the product is not by my book take my course,
• 12:39
  Speaker 3: it's youth AI.
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: Yes, So who are who is the cast of characters
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: are looking atverage it?
• 12:46
  Speaker 4: Oh, let's break them down.
• 12:48
  Speaker 3: We can start with Cheryl Sandberg, former CEO of Facebook.
• 12:51
  Speaker 3: That she's almost too perfect of an example of this.
• 12:54
  Speaker 3: So she was the original architect of lean In. She
• 12:57
  Speaker 3: wrote the book lean In started a women's organ like
• 13:00
  Speaker 3: a women's empowermentn organization. I've actually met her in person,
• 13:04
  Speaker 3: a fun fact. It's again hard to remember now because
• 13:09
  Speaker 3: it so seems like a relic of a time gone by.
• 13:12
  Speaker 4: But lean In was huge.
• 13:15
  Speaker 3: When it came out, and now the organization has sort
• 13:17
  Speaker 3: of pivoted their focus to closing what they call the
• 13:21
  Speaker 3: AI gender gap. And so I think I talked about
• 13:24
  Speaker 3: this on an episode that I did with you all
• 13:26
  Speaker 3: a while back. It is true that women are adopting
• 13:28
  Speaker 3: AI at work less than men are in the workplace,
• 13:32
  Speaker 3: and there's lots of very interesting reasons for that, which
• 13:35
  Speaker 3: we can get into. But her organization is like, you
• 13:37
  Speaker 3: know what, that is a problem we need to close
• 13:40
  Speaker 3: that gap.
• 13:40
  Speaker 4: That is what we're gonna do. So in service of
• 13:43
  Speaker 4: doing that, if you.
• 13:43
  Speaker 3: Were to go to the lean in social media channels,
• 13:47
  Speaker 3: they're posting memes where it's Carrie Bradshaw from Sex and
• 13:51
  Speaker 3: the City typing on her laptop and wondering, I couldn't help,
• 13:55
  Speaker 3: but wonder is AI the New Boys Club.
• 14:00
  Speaker 5: I love that they take a dated show to make
• 14:02
  Speaker 5: a dated reference about the news. Yeah, Like it just
• 14:05
  Speaker 5: feels like they're clawing their way back with like, we
• 14:09
  Speaker 5: got to rebrand. This is how we're going to make
• 14:11
  Speaker 5: it back.
• 14:12
  Speaker 4: It absolutely feels that way.
• 14:14
  Speaker 3: And another part of their leaning sort of like current
• 14:18
  Speaker 3: thing they're doing right now is they're trying to combat
• 14:21
  Speaker 3: the trad wife trend by telling women to use AI
• 14:25
  Speaker 3: and so like that is their mission right now, is
• 14:28
  Speaker 3: like women need to be leaning away from the poll of.
• 14:31
  Speaker 4: Tradwife nonsense and instead AI.
• 14:35
  Speaker 3: And again, I feel like there's gotta be something in
• 14:38
  Speaker 3: the middle between trad.
• 14:40
  Speaker 4: Wife and like AI.
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: I was gonna bring up chadwives because I actually think
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: that's kind of the same thing that they're doing is
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: because tradwives often are like, oh, it was just me
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: that did this and it didn't take it. It's not
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: my job and all of this, but it turns out
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: it is their job. It took a lot of time,
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: and they're hiding how much money they have or how
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: well off they are. This feels like the same thing
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: of like, oh, if you just use AI, then you can.
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: You can succeed in this way similar.
• 15:17
  Speaker 3: That is such a perfect segue into what Reese Witherspoon
• 15:20
  Speaker 3: is doing. So I'm not even like mad at the
• 15:24
  Speaker 3: tradwives for real like that. The thing that bugs me
• 15:28
  Speaker 3: about tradwife nonsense is exactly what you just described, where
• 15:32
  Speaker 3: they are pretending something that is not true is true.
• 15:37
  Speaker 3: So they're pretending I don't work and you shouldn't work either.
• 15:40
  Speaker 3: Oh me, I just make a million dollars a year
• 15:44
  Speaker 3: running this multimedia content agency and branding agency.
• 15:47
  Speaker 4: Honey, that's a job. You have a job, just like
• 15:50
  Speaker 4: I have a job. We all work. You work, you
• 15:53
  Speaker 4: make money.
• 15:54
  Speaker 3: A lot of these tradwives are actually the breadwinners and
• 15:57
  Speaker 3: their households and their partners are like on their pay.
• 16:00
  Speaker 3: Don't tell me that you don't have a job. The
• 16:02
  Speaker 3: thing that bugs me about it is that they are
• 16:05
  Speaker 3: essentially lying and trying to make themselves seem like, oh,
• 16:10
  Speaker 3: I don't I'm just a I don't know anything about
• 16:13
  Speaker 3: content marketing when it's like, okay, you do this for
• 16:16
  Speaker 3: a living. And I feel like the video that Reese
• 16:18
  Speaker 3: Witherspoon made and got into a lot of hot water
• 16:21
  Speaker 3: about recently about AI kind of gave me the same vibe.
• 16:25
  Speaker 3: I'm not saying that Reese Witherspoon is a tad wife
• 16:27
  Speaker 3: and eddie capacity, because she's definitely not. But in this
• 16:30
  Speaker 3: video that she made about AI, she's standing in her
• 16:32
  Speaker 3: kitchen and she's making a smoothie. She's definitely going for
• 16:36
  Speaker 3: ah shucks, I'm just a mom.
• 16:38
  Speaker 4: Kind of energy.
• 16:39
  Speaker 3: And then she says, you know, hey, I was at
• 16:41
  Speaker 3: a book club recently and I asked the women in
• 16:44
  Speaker 3: my book club how many of you all are using AI?
• 16:47
  Speaker 3: And of these ten women in the book club, only
• 16:49
  Speaker 3: three of them said that they use it. So of
• 16:51
  Speaker 3: those three, she was like, okay, well, how many of
• 16:53
  Speaker 3: you feel like you know what you're doing, you're confident
• 16:55
  Speaker 3: in using it? And only one woman raised her hand,
• 16:58
  Speaker 3: and so she said, oh, if this means that one
• 17:01
  Speaker 3: out of ten women, only one out of ten women
• 17:03
  Speaker 3: is confident using AI, women are gonna get left behind.
• 17:07
  Speaker 3: Technology moves so quickly that if you don't get at
• 17:09
  Speaker 3: least a little bit familiar with it early on, it's
• 17:11
  Speaker 3: gonna advance and then you can't catch up.
• 17:13
  Speaker 4: And the tone of the video.
• 17:15
  Speaker 3: To me had this kind of awe, shucks, I don't
• 17:20
  Speaker 3: know much about AI, but let's learn about it together vibe,
• 17:23
  Speaker 3: which is what I resented.
• 17:26
  Speaker 4: I don't even it's not even.
• 17:28
  Speaker 3: That I really am that bothered by telling women to
• 17:31
  Speaker 3: get mixed up with AI. I don't personally agree with that,
• 17:34
  Speaker 3: and I don't personally agree with the framing, But it's
• 17:36
  Speaker 3: not even that that really bugs me. It's the way
• 17:38
  Speaker 3: that the packaging is so clearly a lie.
• 17:42
  Speaker 4: Why do you need to lie about this?
• 17:44
  Speaker 3: Why do you need to pretend like, aw shucks, I'm
• 17:47
  Speaker 3: just a mom making a smoothie.
• 17:48
  Speaker 4: Let's figure out this AI business together, shall we.
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: Ladies, if our brains can handle it.
• 17:54
  Speaker 3: Yes, there's like a scold. There's like a scolding element
• 17:58
  Speaker 3: to it as well. Right again, if Reese wanted to
• 18:01
  Speaker 3: make a rands, any of these people wanted to make
• 18:03
  Speaker 3: a video that was like, here's what we know about
• 18:06
  Speaker 3: what women are saying and telling us about why we
• 18:09
  Speaker 3: are adopting AI less and have an honest conversation about that.
• 18:14
  Speaker 3: I'd be all for it, you and we've all done
• 18:17
  Speaker 3: it on the podcast together. What's so different about this is.
• 18:21
  Speaker 4: Scolding women for the way that they feel.
• 18:25
  Speaker 3: So women are saying things like, hey, I am more
• 18:29
  Speaker 3: sensitive to some of the ethical concerns about using AI,
• 18:32
  Speaker 3: or hey, I know that I have more eyes and
• 18:34
  Speaker 3: more scrutiny on me in the workplace than my male counterpart.
• 18:37
  Speaker 4: So I'm incredibly.
• 18:39
  Speaker 3: Cautious about AI use because I know I'm going to
• 18:41
  Speaker 3: be able to be more scrutinized if I use it.
• 18:43
  Speaker 3: If a man uses it, they're gonna call him an innovator.
• 18:45
  Speaker 3: If I use it, they're gonna call me a cheater.
• 18:47
  Speaker 3: Those are kind of nuanced reasons that the research shows
• 18:52
  Speaker 3: that women aren't using AI the same rates as men are.
• 18:55
  Speaker 3: They are not reasons to scold women, you know what
• 18:58
  Speaker 3: I'm saying. There are topics for conversation. Sure, I don't
• 19:02
  Speaker 3: like the scolding tone and the tone of well, you're
• 19:05
  Speaker 3: gonna get left behind, You're not gonna makes as much money,
• 19:08
  Speaker 3: and you know what, it's gonna be your fault.
• 19:10
  Speaker 4: It's the same girl Boss stuff.
• 19:12
  Speaker 3: That's the same thing that the girl Boss culture sold
• 19:15
  Speaker 3: us that if I didn't lean in enough enough, I
• 19:17
  Speaker 3: didn't speak the right way, or didn't sit in the
• 19:19
  Speaker 3: right place at meetings, I would be left behind in
• 19:21
  Speaker 3: my career.
• 19:22
  Speaker 4: It's the same school the energy. Now it's just for AI.
• 19:26
  Speaker 5: And I kind of put a weird like and I
• 19:27
  Speaker 5: felt this way about the Girl Boss too. I remember
• 19:30
  Speaker 5: thinking they don't want all everyone to succeed. It kind
• 19:33
  Speaker 5: of pit other women against women with this very conversation
• 19:37
  Speaker 5: of like it's limited, there's only limited capacity for success,
• 19:41
  Speaker 5: and you women already know you're not gonna be at
• 19:44
  Speaker 5: the top priority you don't have much space to begin with.
• 19:47
  Speaker 5: So it felt like it was a lot like the
• 19:49
  Speaker 5: competitive nature of women against women. And I feel like
• 19:52
  Speaker 5: this conversation of like this other woman is going to
• 19:55
  Speaker 5: take you out, and like it still feels that way
• 19:58
  Speaker 5: even though the trying to give it to all women.
• 20:01
  Speaker 4: Yeah, that's such a good point.
• 20:03
  Speaker 3: I definitely see a little competitive But don't you want
• 20:07
  Speaker 3: the edge over other women? Listen, the women in my
• 20:10
  Speaker 3: camp are getting ahead economically using AI. Do you want
• 20:13
  Speaker 3: to be left at do you want to be part
• 20:14
  Speaker 3: of my AI circle of winners or the folks who
• 20:18
  Speaker 3: are left behind, like people whose careers are struggling, like
• 20:23
  Speaker 3: I don't know award winning celebrated writer Roxanne Gay. Cause
• 20:26
  Speaker 3: when Reese Witherspoon put this out online, somebody told Roxanne.
• 20:30
  Speaker 4: When Roxanne Gay said replied and said, oh, Reese, this
• 20:33
  Speaker 4: is not the vibe.
• 20:35
  Speaker 3: Someone was like, Roxanne Gay, you need to get on
• 20:37
  Speaker 3: board with AI or get left behind. And I'm like,
• 20:39
  Speaker 3: you're talking to Roxane Gay right now. I don't think
• 20:43
  Speaker 3: Roxanne Gay's career is in jeopardy.
• 20:46
  Speaker 4: I actually think Roxanne Gay will be fine.
• 20:48
  Speaker 5: Right as in fact that she tried AI for her job,
• 20:50
  Speaker 5: she would get in trouble.
• 20:52
  Speaker 3: Yes, exactly exactly that, And like just the like audacity
• 20:57
  Speaker 3: to tell somebody like Roxanne Gay that and Reese Witherspoon
• 21:01
  Speaker 3: not for nothing.
• 21:02
  Speaker 4: She has sort of done this before.
• 21:03
  Speaker 3: In twenty twenty one, she told women that Crypto and
• 21:06
  Speaker 3: NFTs were here to stay and if you didn't get
• 21:09
  Speaker 3: involved now, you were gonna get left behind. And we
• 21:12
  Speaker 3: see how that worked out. Right, every woman who didn't
• 21:14
  Speaker 3: get on board with Crypto and NFTs will never economically
• 21:17
  Speaker 3: recover from that terrible choice. To not get really, really
• 21:21
  Speaker 3: heavily and financially involved in NFTs and crypto. What a
• 21:25
  Speaker 3: bad choice that turned out to be for those women?
• 21:27
  Speaker 4: Am I right?
• 21:28
  Speaker 2: Right?
• 21:29
  Speaker 5: Who was it Justin Bieber who can't sell is n FD?
• 21:32
  Speaker 4: Yeah?
• 21:33
  Speaker 5: That he bought from millions.
• 21:34
  Speaker 3: And if he did sell it, he would take such
• 21:36
  Speaker 3: a lot, right, really smart decision to get in on
• 21:39
  Speaker 3: the ground floor of that one.
• 22:01
  Speaker 5: I mean, it really feels like she's a part of
• 22:04
  Speaker 5: someone someone is paying her a ridiculous like even I
• 22:07
  Speaker 5: don't know does she have a sponsor? Is someone is
• 22:10
  Speaker 5: chat JBT paying her? Is some altman paying her money
• 22:13
  Speaker 5: to be like I need you to push this out
• 22:15
  Speaker 5: for those women?
• 22:16
  Speaker 3: Ooh, this is a great question. It's not one that
• 22:18
  Speaker 3: I can completely answer. So I, like a lot of people,
• 22:22
  Speaker 3: when I saw that video, I said, well, she's this
• 22:23
  Speaker 3: is definitely this has the whiff of a of a
• 22:26
  Speaker 3: sponsored post that is not appropriately being labeled as such.
• 22:30
  Speaker 3: She did clarify that nobody was paying her to talk
• 22:34
  Speaker 3: about AI, but then a couple of weeks later, her
• 22:37
  Speaker 3: production company Hello Sunshine, which was recently about by A Blackstone,
• 22:40
  Speaker 3: did partner with Purdue University to offer online classes for
• 22:44
  Speaker 3: young women on AI adoption.
• 22:46
  Speaker 4: So I can't totally answer whether or not.
• 22:49
  Speaker 3: She's being paid specifically to talk about AI, but I
• 22:53
  Speaker 3: do feel confident in saying her stance of I was
• 22:56
  Speaker 3: just it just organically came up at my book club
• 22:59
  Speaker 3: to talk about and now I am doing a partnership
• 23:04
  Speaker 3: with Purdue University about AI adoption for women.
• 23:07
  Speaker 4: That don't sound right to me. I can tell you that, No.
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: What do your book clubs look like? That's the topic
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: of conversation. And you have another example that I was
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: interested in because I've been hearing a lot about this
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: person lately.
• 23:20
  Speaker 3: Ooh yeah, Mel Robbins. So Mel Robbins people listening. She
• 23:25
  Speaker 3: probably needs no introduction. She wrote the book Let them
• 23:28
  Speaker 3: her whole philosophy. I wouldn't really call her girl boss.
• 23:32
  Speaker 3: I'm not the most familiar with Mel Robbins, but I
• 23:34
  Speaker 3: do know that her book, her theory is all about
• 23:37
  Speaker 3: if someone or something has given you a hard time,
• 23:40
  Speaker 3: let them just let them let it. And so Mel
• 23:43
  Speaker 3: Robins does have a partnership with co Pilot, and she
• 23:46
  Speaker 3: made this post digging into some of the research that
• 23:48
  Speaker 3: we've talked about on this podcast about women adopting AI.
• 23:51
  Speaker 4: Less. So I will shout.
• 23:53
  Speaker 3: Out to her for grounding the conversation in research.
• 23:58
  Speaker 4: And she says women need to.
• 23:59
  Speaker 3: Be a adopting AI more, and she gave some specific
• 24:04
  Speaker 3: examples of how you could start if you were somebody
• 24:06
  Speaker 3: who had not used AI and you wanted to get
• 24:09
  Speaker 3: involved with it. She gave a specific prompt and she said,
• 24:13
  Speaker 3: ask Microsoft Copilot this specific question in this specific prompt
• 24:18
  Speaker 3: to help you get your finance as an order. And
• 24:20
  Speaker 3: one of the pieces of that prompt was her saying,
• 24:23
  Speaker 3: ask Microsoft Copilot what financial records, bank statements, financial information
• 24:29
  Speaker 3: it needs from you to help get your finance as
• 24:31
  Speaker 3: an order.
• 24:32
  Speaker 4: And so this is what I took real umbrage with.
• 24:35
  Speaker 3: Again, I'm not even really necessarily against them saying like, oh,
• 24:39
  Speaker 3: play around with AI, get your hands dirty with this,
• 24:42
  Speaker 3: see what it's about. I'm not even necessarily saying that
• 24:44
  Speaker 3: that's a bad thing or that they shouldn't be doing that.
• 24:46
  Speaker 4: What I took.
• 24:47
  Speaker 3: Umbrage with here is that she her post is very
• 24:51
  Speaker 3: clearly talking to an audience that doesn't really have a
• 24:54
  Speaker 3: lot of technical or AI know how. The prompt that
• 24:58
  Speaker 3: she told them to use is it's very specific. Yet
• 25:01
  Speaker 3: she didn't mention anything about redacting these documents. You know,
• 25:05
  Speaker 3: if you're gonna put together a specific prompt for people
• 25:08
  Speaker 3: who have not used AI a lot or tech or
• 25:11
  Speaker 3: maybe not even very tech savvy, you can't assume that
• 25:14
  Speaker 3: they're gonna know to like redact documents. And it is
• 25:17
  Speaker 3: absolutely a terrible idea to share your sensitive financial data
• 25:22
  Speaker 3: with Microsoft Copilot.
• 25:24
  Speaker 4: You absolutely should not do that.
• 25:25
  Speaker 3: So, even beyond the conversation of whether or not AI
• 25:28
  Speaker 3: is an actual financial advisor spoiler alert, it is not,
• 25:32
  Speaker 3: you shouldn't like it. Just felt very irresponsible to me
• 25:35
  Speaker 3: to tell women to do this, not for not the
• 25:37
  Speaker 3: Microsoft was hacked in twenty twenty four by Russian state
• 25:40
  Speaker 3: BA attackers who were able to get into the emails
• 25:43
  Speaker 3: of not just senior Microsoft staff, but they're also their
• 25:47
  Speaker 3: own security team, and so Microsoft holds all of the
• 25:50
  Speaker 3: information that you feed into Copilot for up to eighteen months.
• 25:54
  Speaker 4: Mel Robbins didn't tell anybody any of this.
• 25:57
  Speaker 3: She just said, go ahead and put your financial information
• 25:59
  Speaker 3: into Copilot. I found that to be like irresponsible advice
• 26:02
  Speaker 3: to women.
• 26:03
  Speaker 5: With all of the hacking it situations, I feel like
• 26:05
  Speaker 5: she could be held liable if someone said based on
• 26:09
  Speaker 5: her information I did this and her recommendation, which by
• 26:13
  Speaker 5: the way, she's a lawyer, Like, yeah, she's come up
• 26:15
  Speaker 5: a few times in our episodes. I can't help it
• 26:19
  Speaker 5: because there are things that I'm like, self help gurus
• 26:23
  Speaker 5: need to be stopped. Like, yeah, that's a whole different episode.
• 26:26
  Speaker 5: I'm gonna put that at that. But like, not only
• 26:30
  Speaker 5: is she giving really bad advice, I feel like legally
• 26:33
  Speaker 5: she should be thinking of that through putting your sensitive
• 26:36
  Speaker 5: financial documents into a program that has been seen as
• 26:40
  Speaker 5: unsafe also probably one of the worst known AI programs
• 26:46
  Speaker 5: out there.
• 26:46
  Speaker 3: Oh absolutely, And like I do think when it comes
• 26:50
  Speaker 3: to Mel Robbins, I'm trying to think why this left
• 26:53
  Speaker 3: such a bad taste in my mouth. I think it's
• 26:55
  Speaker 3: because we're in a financial climate that's kind of rough
• 26:58
  Speaker 3: and people, you know myself and included or experiencing economic
• 27:02
  Speaker 3: uncertainty and anxiety, and that's like a very specific kind
• 27:05
  Speaker 3: of sensitive trigger. I think using financial anxiety as a
• 27:11
  Speaker 3: way to manipulate women into using AI and then using
• 27:15
  Speaker 3: and then telling them to do it in this like
• 27:17
  Speaker 3: incredibly ill advised way just really doesn't sit well with me.
• 27:24
  Speaker 3: And you know, Mel Robbins is super wealthy. Mel Robbins
• 27:28
  Speaker 3: definitely has human financial advisors and human lawyers and the
• 27:32
  Speaker 3: human accountants. Mel Robbins is I can almost guarantee you
• 27:36
  Speaker 3: she is not uploading her bank statements into a chatbot.
• 27:39
  Speaker 3: She just thinks that you should upload your bank statements
• 27:43
  Speaker 3: into a chatbot. She thinks that that is the level
• 27:45
  Speaker 3: of financial advice that you deserve. She has access to
• 27:50
  Speaker 3: probably the best financial folks in the world. She thinks
• 27:53
  Speaker 3: that you deserve an AI chatbot that is not a
• 27:57
  Speaker 3: human financial advisor for whom if you do, if something
• 28:01
  Speaker 3: goes wrong, there is no person or.
• 28:04
  Speaker 4: Human for there to be any kind of accountability.
• 28:06
  Speaker 3: That's the kind of financial services that she thinks that
• 28:09
  Speaker 3: you deserve. And I just think in a climate where
• 28:12
  Speaker 3: a lot of women and everybody are financially struggling, that's
• 28:16
  Speaker 3: not really that cool to.
• 28:17
  Speaker 5: Me, right, I mean, you're definitely not wrong because people
• 28:21
  Speaker 5: see her the reason she is as successful as she is.
• 28:24
  Speaker 5: People really look up to what she is saying. They
• 28:28
  Speaker 5: trust what she has said, whether it's her book telling
• 28:30
  Speaker 5: them let them like, being like, let them loose, let
• 28:33
  Speaker 5: it be, let it go type of conversations. Some of
• 28:36
  Speaker 5: these conversations have changed in a life. They have paid
• 28:40
  Speaker 5: money to go and see her, They have paid money
• 28:42
  Speaker 5: to a sponsor and help. She has one of the
• 28:45
  Speaker 5: number one podcasts because it is all of these great
• 28:47
  Speaker 5: advice that they're seeking because either they're lonely, they don't
• 28:51
  Speaker 5: feel like they can trust others, and they really feel
• 28:53
  Speaker 5: this connection. So if you're trusting someone, because we know
• 28:56
  Speaker 5: as podcasters or the responsibility we hold in these conversations
• 29:00
  Speaker 5: and trying to get the right information, we are oftentimes
• 29:02
  Speaker 5: talking about how nervous we get if we think that
• 29:06
  Speaker 5: we did something, we said something, or we misspoke, like
• 29:08
  Speaker 5: coming back to like, oh, I have to change that
• 29:10
  Speaker 5: or we have to correct that in the next episode.
• 29:12
  Speaker 5: Type of conversation. Knowing that this is who she is
• 29:16
  Speaker 5: having millions and millions of listeners, probably predominantly women, who
• 29:19
  Speaker 5: are just trying to find someone to tell them it's
• 29:22
  Speaker 5: going to be okay and this is how and then
• 29:25
  Speaker 5: to do something like that feels like such a predatory act,
• 29:30
  Speaker 5: especially when it's sponsored by a company that just needs
• 29:33
  Speaker 5: to make money off of other people's skull ability.
• 29:36
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm curious.
• 29:38
  Speaker 3: I often feel like I'm just the personality type that
• 29:43
  Speaker 3: is always going to be suspicious of self help leaders
• 29:46
  Speaker 3: and gurus and all of that. It's like, and I
• 29:49
  Speaker 3: don't doubt that people have found real value in those
• 29:54
  Speaker 3: folks are I'm not, you know, no shade, but I
• 29:56
  Speaker 3: think there's something about me where as soon as somebody
• 29:58
  Speaker 3: is trying to tell me that they have the answer,
• 30:00
  Speaker 3: I'm like, oh, really, you know, I'm just I'm a
• 30:03
  Speaker 3: skeptic at heart. I guess where do you all fall
• 30:06
  Speaker 3: in this sort of self help trajectory?
• 30:08
  Speaker 4: Just out of curiosity?
• 30:10
  Speaker 5: I feel like goes pretty out in my take just now.
• 30:14
  Speaker 5: But after like our generations of watching my parents specifically,
• 30:18
  Speaker 5: I think y'all will know fall in love with the
• 30:21
  Speaker 5: content that Oprah And don't get me wrong, Oprah did
• 30:23
  Speaker 5: her thing whatever whatnot, But like bringing on people like
• 30:27
  Speaker 5: doctor Phil, bringing on people like doctor Oz and projecting
• 30:32
  Speaker 5: their fame and their notoriety in this world, that seeing
• 30:37
  Speaker 5: that has become what had become and I think still
• 30:41
  Speaker 5: is like the snake oil salesman of today. If you
• 30:44
  Speaker 5: don't actually have a degree in any of these things,
• 30:47
  Speaker 5: and if you come out with just absolute like musts
• 30:51
  Speaker 5: without any fluctuation that as a social worker, as a
• 30:55
  Speaker 5: social background, that gives me like reflags all over the place.
• 30:59
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: I think when I was younger, like middle school, I
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: was much more I don't know, desperate almost for like
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: what is the answer usually around weight loss at the time,
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: what is the thing?
• 31:14
  Speaker 2: But as I got older.
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: There's something about it that it's really hard to disconnect
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: for me because you know, a show like this one,
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: we have sponsors, but we're not necessarily trying to sell
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: you anything that's going to like change your life, Like,
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: we're just trying to keep the show running and this
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: is how it works. And I feel like it in
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: that way, it feels more transparent.
• 31:39
  Speaker 2: Like, yes, we all know that shows have to have ads.
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: I can skip the ads, but it's when someone is
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: trying to sell you something that is like, this is
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: how you turn your life around.
• 31:51
  Speaker 2: It'll completely change your life, and here's how. I don't know.
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: There's just something about it that feels you're trying to
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: sell me a way to like live longer.
• 31:59
  Speaker 2: I don't know. This something that feels a little bit
• 32:02
  Speaker 2: more wrong about it. I'm not sure.
• 32:06
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I feel you.
• 32:08
  Speaker 3: And it's interesting that you put it in the perspective
• 32:10
  Speaker 3: of being a podcaster because I once had a call
• 32:14
  Speaker 3: with a consultant about how I could try to make
• 32:17
  Speaker 3: more money from podcasting and the bit and I was like, Oh,
• 32:22
  Speaker 3: this person's seems like they haven't all figured out.
• 32:24
  Speaker 4: I'll take the call.
• 32:25
  Speaker 3: And the big thing, the big secret was you should
• 32:29
  Speaker 3: turn your podcast into an online course and then people
• 32:32
  Speaker 3: will pay for that online course. And I was like, oh,
• 32:35
  Speaker 3: scamming people. Okay, sure, great, thanks glad we took this call. Yeah,
• 32:41
  Speaker 3: your big idea with scams and I guess not that
• 32:44
  Speaker 3: it's but like I guess scam it eat too strong.
• 32:46
  Speaker 3: But you're so right that I want to make interesting,
• 32:52
  Speaker 3: informative content that people feel engaged with. I don't want
• 32:56
  Speaker 3: to sell access to something that makes it seem like
• 33:01
  Speaker 3: I have all the answers, because I do not. You
• 33:03
  Speaker 3: know anybody that says I have all the answers. There's
• 33:07
  Speaker 3: a one fits all solution to the problem that you have,
• 33:09
  Speaker 3: and if you just pay me, I'll give you that answer,
• 33:12
  Speaker 3: whether it's speaking differently at a work meeting to get
• 33:15
  Speaker 3: a raise or AI. I'm just automatically sort of skeptical
• 33:19
  Speaker 3: of that. And I think that the fact that we
• 33:21
  Speaker 3: have so many of these girl Boss relics who are
• 33:25
  Speaker 3: still around selling that as a big feminist win.
• 33:29
  Speaker 4: My spidy senses are just going off.
• 33:31
  Speaker 3: And again, I don't even really have a problem if
• 33:34
  Speaker 3: Reese Witherspoon wants to have courses that market AI to
• 33:39
  Speaker 3: women or do a skill share for women to get
• 33:42
  Speaker 3: involved in AI, I don't even really necessarily have a
• 33:44
  Speaker 3: problem with that. I don't necessarily, but I don't think
• 33:46
  Speaker 3: we need to be framing it as a feminist win.
• 33:48
  Speaker 3: I don't think we need to be framing it as
• 33:50
  Speaker 3: this is the work of the business of feminism is
• 33:54
  Speaker 3: getting more women involved in AI. Just say you want
• 33:58
  Speaker 3: to run an AI training or you want want to
• 34:00
  Speaker 3: see more women in the space. That's fine.
• 34:02
  Speaker 4: I don't really like that.
• 34:03
  Speaker 3: You know, you're not Angela Davis because they're getting women
• 34:06
  Speaker 3: invauld in AI, and that's the way that people are
• 34:08
  Speaker 3: sort of framing it.
• 34:09
  Speaker 4: There was a very.
• 34:10
  Speaker 3: Interesting piece of a cut about this it reads. One
• 34:13
  Speaker 3: startup founder Eron Gau said that the technology could be
• 34:16
  Speaker 3: a twenty four to seven mentor for women, helping to
• 34:19
  Speaker 3: free them from the weight of imposter syndrome or offering
• 34:22
  Speaker 3: feedback on overly apologetic language in their email. By the way,
• 34:27
  Speaker 3: there's been studies that demonstrate that AI will. When women
• 34:31
  Speaker 3: use AI to try to get like negotiation advice, AI
• 34:35
  Speaker 3: tells them to settle for less money than they would
• 34:37
  Speaker 3: a man. So I don't know that this would be
• 34:39
  Speaker 3: a great digital mentor to have in your back pocket
• 34:41
  Speaker 3: twenty four to seven. Given that that's the case, she
• 34:44
  Speaker 3: goes on to say, this technology could be more than
• 34:47
  Speaker 3: this another tool she wrote for Time, It could be
• 34:50
  Speaker 3: the great equalizer we've been waiting for, giving women the support, efficiency,
• 34:54
  Speaker 3: and confidence that prior systems have consistently failed to provide.
• 34:58
  Speaker 3: Growl and other prominent women in tech recently helped Gloria
• 35:01
  Speaker 3: steinem use AI for the first time. As we sat
• 35:05
  Speaker 3: with this remarkable icon in her home where countless leaders
• 35:08
  Speaker 3: have shared their stories and planned for change, we confronted
• 35:12
  Speaker 3: an uncomfortable truth. Women are once again being left behind.
• 35:16
  Speaker 3: And her Time piece ends with this, she says. As
• 35:20
  Speaker 3: we left Gloria's apartment, she reflected on what she had
• 35:23
  Speaker 3: learned about AI, and her words captured the possibility ahead.
• 35:26
  Speaker 3: You've created a whole universe here that didn't exist before,
• 35:30
  Speaker 3: but like a whole universe built for who, built by who.
• 35:35
  Speaker 4: At what cost?
• 35:36
  Speaker 3: And who is paying that cost, who's benefiting the same
• 35:38
  Speaker 3: questions that we probably should have been asking the first
• 35:41
  Speaker 3: time around we were all being sold girl boss culture
• 35:44
  Speaker 3: as our salvation.
• 35:45
  Speaker 4: Those questions are nowhere to be seen in this dynamic.
• 35:49
  Speaker 5: I mean, I feel like I don't understand AI because
• 35:53
  Speaker 5: I'm like, how is it going to change anything other
• 35:55
  Speaker 5: than your plasiarizing things in It?
• 36:00
  Speaker 4: Sounds like you do understand it from my perspective.
• 36:03
  Speaker 5: Okay, So I'm like, I don't understand how this makes
• 36:07
  Speaker 5: you successful because it just sounds like it's teaching you
• 36:10
  Speaker 5: how to steal the original content and change into new things.
• 36:14
  Speaker 5: Maybe I'm wrong. It will teach you, like I know
• 36:17
  Speaker 5: people who use it to be like teaching me how
• 36:19
  Speaker 5: to do this program, and it'll tell you how to
• 36:22
  Speaker 5: put codes and what's what and whatnot and create websites
• 36:25
  Speaker 5: that you want or change the looks of things cool.
• 36:27
  Speaker 5: Cool cool. So maybe instead of having to go to
• 36:30
  Speaker 5: the route of going to school to learn coding or
• 36:33
  Speaker 5: classes and you can just easily find 'ro outes cool.
• 36:37
  Speaker 4: I get that.
• 36:38
  Speaker 5: But even with that, outside of those small things, I
• 36:42
  Speaker 5: can't understand how women can be bigger with AI outside
• 36:48
  Speaker 5: of being actually in the companies, which is the conversation
• 36:51
  Speaker 5: we should be having with the companies about, like, are
• 36:54
  Speaker 5: you hiring developers that are women? Are you bringing in
• 36:57
  Speaker 5: people women who understand that what kind of say guards
• 37:00
  Speaker 5: are needed in these programs? Yeah, that's what we need
• 37:04
  Speaker 5: for women to be a part of the AI world.
• 37:08
  Speaker 5: Am I wrong?
• 37:09
  Speaker 3: No, You're absolutely right, And I think that's the conversation
• 37:12
  Speaker 3: that I will be completely down to have. But instead
• 37:16
  Speaker 3: the conversation that a lot of these influencers and girl
• 37:19
  Speaker 3: bossers and all of that are selling us, are you
• 37:22
  Speaker 3: can use AI to individually improve your life in these small,
• 37:27
  Speaker 3: tangible ways. It's not who built this and we're women involved.
• 37:31
  Speaker 3: And again there's some of the research about why women
• 37:33
  Speaker 3: are using AI less is that they see the people
• 37:36
  Speaker 3: who are leaders in the AI space, the people who
• 37:39
  Speaker 3: take up outside and not to say that there's not
• 37:42
  Speaker 3: other kinds of folks in this AI space. Are definitely
• 37:45
  Speaker 3: are those people just are not getting enough shine and attention.
• 37:48
  Speaker 3: But the people that you hear from are the sam
• 37:49
  Speaker 3: Altmans and the Elon Musks and the Mark.
• 37:51
  Speaker 4: Zuckerbergs of the world.
• 37:52
  Speaker 3: It's no surprise that women see the people who are
• 37:55
  Speaker 3: in charge and taking up a lot of space. They
• 37:57
  Speaker 3: know the track records that these people have when it
• 37:59
  Speaker 3: comes to build technology and how that technology harms and
• 38:02
  Speaker 3: marginalized women, the very same thing we were talking about
• 38:05
  Speaker 3: when it came to the social network, and it's no
• 38:07
  Speaker 3: surprise that these women are like, eh, I'll pass. And
• 38:10
  Speaker 3: so if you wanted to have the tougher conversation about
• 38:13
  Speaker 3: those institutional issues, let's have at it. But in the meantime,
• 38:17
  Speaker 3: the conversation that I'm really not moved by is you
• 38:21
  Speaker 3: can use AI to plan your wedding or you can
• 38:24
  Speaker 3: use AI to you know. Doctor Sarah Saska, a gender
• 38:28
  Speaker 3: and technology researcher, put it very well on Instagram recently.
• 38:31
  Speaker 3: She said, as AI becomes increasingly associated with surveillance, militarization,
• 38:36
  Speaker 3: and labor displacement, influencers are now being paid to sell
• 38:39
  Speaker 3: it to women through beauty, wellness, dating, motherhood, and self
• 38:43
  Speaker 3: help culture. AI is being softened, rebranded from infrastructure to lifestyle,
• 38:49
  Speaker 3: and I think that is really the move that you're
• 38:52
  Speaker 3: sort of describing Sam, But like they're taking something that
• 38:56
  Speaker 3: is genuinely like complicated and implicated in serious harm and
• 39:00
  Speaker 3: that we should be having a conversation about who built
• 39:03
  Speaker 3: it and the institutional failures they're in, and they're just
• 39:06
  Speaker 3: rebranding it as this individual wellness product or a self
• 39:10
  Speaker 3: optimization tool or a feminist act. And it's no wonder
• 39:15
  Speaker 3: why just from a messaging standpoint, that brand of messaging
• 39:19
  Speaker 3: is failing to connect with people. People see right through it.
• 39:22
  Speaker 3: People women don't like it. It's not we don't believe you.
• 39:26
  Speaker 3: You need more people, you know.
• 39:28
  Speaker 5: Well, Also with that, like if we're talking about feminism,
• 39:32
  Speaker 5: the age of feminism, we are well, actually we're going
• 39:34
  Speaker 5: to talk about where we are in feminism, in what
• 39:37
  Speaker 5: state we are, But like, intersexual feminism has become the
• 39:40
  Speaker 5: biggest conversation. So when we're talking about intersexual feminism, we're
• 39:44
  Speaker 5: also talking about climate change. We're also talking about making
• 39:47
  Speaker 5: sure that we are saving the world water, salvage, all
• 39:51
  Speaker 5: of these things. And what we know about AI. One
• 39:53
  Speaker 5: of the biggest things we know about AI is they
• 39:56
  Speaker 5: are killing the climate at a faster they are harming
• 40:01
  Speaker 5: the systems, they're taking water that is absolutely in dire
• 40:05
  Speaker 5: need in some of these areas, a lot of the areas,
• 40:07
  Speaker 5: especially doing droughts. So why would someone who would truly
• 40:11
  Speaker 5: be described as a feminist today, Why would we take
• 40:15
  Speaker 5: this on and be like, yeah, absolutely, this is something
• 40:17
  Speaker 5: that we need to be a part of because this
• 40:19
  Speaker 5: is gonna change feminism.
• 40:20
  Speaker 3: And that's one of the things that women self report
• 40:23
  Speaker 3: when you look at the research of why women are
• 40:25
  Speaker 3: adopting AI less than men, women are self report being
• 40:29
  Speaker 3: more sensitive to environmental impacts and concerns around AI than
• 40:32
  Speaker 3: men are.
• 40:33
  Speaker 4: And so I think that's a.
• 40:35
  Speaker 3: That's a reasonable conversation that somebody who was reasonably trying
• 40:39
  Speaker 3: to get women to embrace AI would want to talk
• 40:43
  Speaker 3: about and like make space for. But I guess what
• 40:46
  Speaker 3: I'm saying is that these people, these women that we're
• 40:49
  Speaker 3: seeing with the big platforms who are trying to lead
• 40:51
  Speaker 3: this women get involved with AI brigade, are not having
• 40:54
  Speaker 3: those conversations. It's that they're not actually listening to the
• 40:57
  Speaker 3: concerns that women are actually voicing about this tonology.
• 41:01
  Speaker 5: Well, you know, on top of that, the thing that
• 41:03
  Speaker 5: is interesting to me, especially with the Girl Boss coming back,
• 41:06
  Speaker 5: because again, as I said, it's like it's poor rich
• 41:09
  Speaker 5: white women, right, this is utterly about privilege, was what
• 41:13
  Speaker 5: it seems, And it feels like we're back to that again,
• 41:17
  Speaker 5: Like those who have privilege, are like, no, this is
• 41:19
  Speaker 5: going to really make us rich, that's the whole goal,
• 41:22
  Speaker 5: and everybody else is like, is that the goal?
• 41:25
  Speaker 4: Like I don't.
• 41:26
  Speaker 5: It's also it's not attainable for all of us. It's
• 41:29
  Speaker 5: cute for you who is being sponsored by AI, but
• 41:32
  Speaker 5: for the rest of us, this is not benefiting us
• 41:35
  Speaker 5: in any least way.
• 41:36
  Speaker 3: Oh, I love that you brought it there, because that
• 41:38
  Speaker 3: takes me to the OG girl Boss herself. Sofia Amoroso,
• 41:43
  Speaker 3: Sofia A Morosso is an interesting person. She is someone
• 41:48
  Speaker 3: who I have been following for a long time. She
• 41:52
  Speaker 3: was the OG girl Boss. She made this post about
• 41:55
  Speaker 3: how she is using AI to streamline her life and
• 41:59
  Speaker 3: when she didn't like it, or when a lot of
• 42:01
  Speaker 3: women did not like it. She said on her substack,
• 42:04
  Speaker 3: women are sleeping on AI and it's gonna cost them,
• 42:07
  Speaker 3: And that to me is very interesting because when Sophia
• 42:12
  Speaker 3: left Nasty Gal, she did not leave under good circumstances.
• 42:15
  Speaker 3: She had to step down because the company could not
• 42:18
  Speaker 3: keep operating with her, so she was sort of like
• 42:20
  Speaker 3: it just stick didn't go very well. Then she started
• 42:22
  Speaker 3: a media company called girl Boss, which there was a
• 42:25
  Speaker 3: Netflix show about her life called girl Boss. None of
• 42:27
  Speaker 3: this stuff went over very well, and so after that
• 42:32
  Speaker 3: I've sort of been watching her and for a while
• 42:35
  Speaker 3: she was doing online courses for entrepreneurs. Like basically, let's
• 42:39
  Speaker 3: just say whatever. I don't want to use the word grists,
• 42:42
  Speaker 3: because I don't think she's a grifter. Let's just say
• 42:45
  Speaker 3: that she's someone who whatever the new thing to make
• 42:49
  Speaker 3: money seems to be, whether it's selling online courses to
• 42:52
  Speaker 3: women entrepreneurs or selling women on like investment advice, she's
• 42:58
  Speaker 3: on it. And so the fact that she would be
• 43:01
  Speaker 3: pivoting to AI influencer right now is on brand. The
• 43:05
  Speaker 3: fact that people who somehow always find themselves on the
• 43:09
  Speaker 3: ground floor of the new thing that you can sell
• 43:13
  Speaker 3: to make a quick buck. The fact that those people
• 43:16
  Speaker 3: are all like, oh, it's AI now is unsurprising to me.
• 43:19
  Speaker 4: Does that make sense? You kind to pick it up
• 43:21
  Speaker 4: and I'm putting down.
• 43:22
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 43:22
  Speaker 5: Yeah, she can afford this conversation, like it literally is
• 43:26
  Speaker 5: what she was doing previously in a new hustle.
• 43:30
  Speaker 3: Yes, Like, I don't want to say these people are
• 43:52
  Speaker 3: grifters because that sounds too strong, but I think that
• 43:56
  Speaker 3: they have sniffed out that there is money to be made,
• 43:59
  Speaker 3: and why not that make I genuinely do not think
• 44:02
  Speaker 3: that The vibe here is that, sisters, we could all
• 44:05
  Speaker 3: have economic freedom if we all just embrace AI, we
• 44:07
  Speaker 3: will all be rich. I think it's I will be
• 44:10
  Speaker 3: rich if I scold you into paying me to teach
• 44:14
  Speaker 3: you how to use AI like that, Like that's what
• 44:16
  Speaker 3: I think this is really about here, And I wouldn't
• 44:19
  Speaker 3: even necessarily have a problem with that. But you don't
• 44:22
  Speaker 3: need to scare, scold or manipulate people into doing that,
• 44:25
  Speaker 3: especially not women. And you don't need to be doing
• 44:28
  Speaker 3: that and trying to sell me that as like a
• 44:30
  Speaker 3: feminist win, like you're it's not a moral cruisade.
• 44:33
  Speaker 4: You're trying to make a buck.
• 44:34
  Speaker 3: I'm yeah, like do your thing, make your money, but like, yes,
• 44:36
  Speaker 3: let me real about.
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: It, exactly the transparency you're trying to make money, got it?
• 44:42
  Speaker 2: Yes, don't scare, especially because the financial situation people are desperate.
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: And that's what makes me really angry about it is
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: when somebody's like, here, you go, just work harder, this
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: is what you need. But I also find interesting it's
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: Sophia or so how to quite a response to some
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: of the critiques she was getting about her AI pivot.
• 45:06
  Speaker 3: Yes, so she posted a screenshot on her Instagram story
• 45:10
  Speaker 3: showing how many followers she lost on Instagram after she
• 45:13
  Speaker 3: posted about the ways that she uses AI to streamline
• 45:15
  Speaker 3: her life, and she said, this is what posting about
• 45:18
  Speaker 3: AI does wild weeding.
• 45:20
  Speaker 4: Out the Luddites that had the tenor of an insult.
• 45:23
  Speaker 3: It was clear to me she meant that as an
• 45:24
  Speaker 3: insult to people who weren't down with AI or like.
• 45:26
  Speaker 4: Didn't like this post. But here's the thing about Luddites.
• 45:30
  Speaker 3: The Lunnite movement is actually often misrepresented as being anti technology.
• 45:35
  Speaker 3: The original Lutites were skilled workers in nineteenth century England
• 45:39
  Speaker 3: who were protesting how factory owners were using new machines
• 45:44
  Speaker 3: to cut wages, replace labor, and concentrate power and wealth
• 45:50
  Speaker 3: from the hands of the many to the hands of
• 45:53
  Speaker 3: the few. So the Lunites were not saying technology is bad.
• 45:57
  Speaker 3: They were pushing back and chow and asking questions about
• 46:02
  Speaker 3: who benefits from technology, who bears the cost right and so.
• 46:06
  Speaker 4: In a kind of way.
• 46:07
  Speaker 3: Even though I can tell that Sofia Amoroso meant this
• 46:10
  Speaker 3: as an insult, she kind of accidentally stumbled on the
• 46:13
  Speaker 3: truth because the loutites actually put it, who took issue
• 46:17
  Speaker 3: or took umbrage or unfollowed her after her AI post.
• 46:20
  Speaker 3: They're not anti technology. They're asking questions, questions that we
• 46:24
  Speaker 3: should be asking about this technology.
• 46:27
  Speaker 4: So in a kind of way, she ended up being
• 46:29
  Speaker 4: sort of correct.
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: Well, and that's a good segue into what I think
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: It's one of the most interesting pieces of this conversation
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: is as we've been discussing, as we've talked in previous
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: episodes about women do have hesitations about adopting AI, and
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: I think looking into those reasons is really important and
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: tells a lot about the situation of what's going on exactly.
• 46:58
  Speaker 3: And the entire Girl Lost pitch kind of rests on
• 47:01
  Speaker 3: the premise that women are not using AI as much
• 47:03
  Speaker 3: as men, which is true. And the thing that they
• 47:06
  Speaker 3: add is and that's a problem because women are going
• 47:08
  Speaker 3: to be economically left behind.
• 47:10
  Speaker 4: It's a problem that the.
• 47:11
  Speaker 3: Women need to fix, not the reasons or the institutional
• 47:16
  Speaker 3: failures that have led to this problem. It's the women
• 47:20
  Speaker 3: who are doing something wrong and they need to be
• 47:22
  Speaker 3: scolded into fixing it otherwise they're screwed. Now the data
• 47:27
  Speaker 3: is real, right, So a Harvard meta analysis of one
• 47:30
  Speaker 3: hundred and forty three thousand people across eighteen studies found
• 47:33
  Speaker 3: that women are about twenty to twenty five percent less
• 47:36
  Speaker 3: likely to use generative AI. Women make up about only
• 47:40
  Speaker 3: forty two percent of chatgybt website users globally and twenty
• 47:44
  Speaker 3: seven percent of mobile app downloads. This gender gap that's
• 47:47
  Speaker 3: consistent across education levels, regions, and industries.
• 47:51
  Speaker 4: However, the reasons.
• 47:53
  Speaker 3: Why I've alluded to some of them are very interesting
• 47:57
  Speaker 3: to me, and I think more interesting than the dynamic
• 47:59
  Speaker 3: of just scolding women for getting left behind on AI.
• 48:03
  Speaker 4: What have you believe?
• 48:04
  Speaker 3: So the standard explanation is that women have less access
• 48:08
  Speaker 3: to AI, less training and AI, and less confidence around AI.
• 48:12
  Speaker 3: That confidence thing is explicitly what Reese Witherspoon noted in
• 48:15
  Speaker 3: her AI video, and there is a little bit of
• 48:18
  Speaker 3: truth to that. However, even when researchers equalized for access
• 48:22
  Speaker 3: one study in Kenya where women were explicitly offered the
• 48:25
  Speaker 3: same training tools, women still used chat gbt about thirteen
• 48:30
  Speaker 3: percent less than men. So it's not really just about
• 48:34
  Speaker 3: access or less training or less confidence.
• 48:37
  Speaker 4: It's about something else.
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: Yes, and I think the reasons are very telling about
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: why why we shouldn't be blaming women individually and instead
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: looking at systemic things, systemic reasons.
• 48:52
  Speaker 3: Exactly, And I think women are more likely to identify
• 48:57
  Speaker 3: AI's real problems, right. Women are more likely to flag
• 49:01
  Speaker 3: biased outputs, and the bias is very real. One study
• 49:05
  Speaker 3: said that an AI chatbot advised women to ask for
• 49:08
  Speaker 3: significantly lower salaries than men with identical profiles. And so,
• 49:13
  Speaker 3: if you're selling women, oh AI could be a great
• 49:16
  Speaker 3: twenty four to seven mentor for you. AI could talking
• 49:19
  Speaker 3: to AI to get it to revise your emails to
• 49:22
  Speaker 3: make you sound more confident in the workplace. That's going
• 49:24
  Speaker 3: to help you lean in and get more money. I
• 49:26
  Speaker 3: don't know if this study seems to suggest that it's
• 49:28
  Speaker 3: like the same old, tired advice that you might get
• 49:31
  Speaker 3: from a man in a workplace. Women are also more
• 49:35
  Speaker 3: likely to cite things like privacy concerns, and of course
• 49:38
  Speaker 3: women experience higher rates of tech facilitated abuse. So none
• 49:42
  Speaker 3: of this is a rational or unreasonable hesitation around AI.
• 49:48
  Speaker 3: This is real stuff, and the thing that might be
• 49:51
  Speaker 3: able to present a fix for this is institutional Right,
• 49:54
  Speaker 3: It's exactly what you were alluding to earlier, of like
• 49:56
  Speaker 3: who is in the rooms where these tools are getting made,
• 49:59
  Speaker 3: who are asking the questions when it comes to these
• 50:01
  Speaker 3: things being developed and designed? Me using AI more as
• 50:05
  Speaker 3: one woman is not going to change any of this.
• 50:08
  Speaker 3: And so it's again just like what the girl Boss thing.
• 50:11
  Speaker 3: It is selling an individual solution to a problem that
• 50:14
  Speaker 3: is clearly institutional that you can't that one woman is
• 50:17
  Speaker 3: not going to be able to girl boss or lean
• 50:19
  Speaker 3: in her way out of.
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it kind of reminds me of the similar conversation
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: but around sort of the you know, you just have
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: to work so hard and you'll make it, but around
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: women specifically, where it's like where how does she do it?
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: How is she a mom and she has a job
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: and she has kids and all of this stuff.
• 50:37
  Speaker 2: I can very.
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: Easily see them selling this idea, these girl Boss AI
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: people selling that idea to women who need a different solution. Yes,
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: they don't need an AI is not going to come
• 50:54
  Speaker 1: in and fix that, but they do need a solution.
• 50:57
  Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly, and so are so like, there are so
• 51:02
  Speaker 3: many reasons why women are saying that they're hesitant around AI.
• 51:07
  Speaker 3: You know, as I said, women, our work is already
• 51:11
  Speaker 3: scrutinized more harshly.
• 51:13
  Speaker 4: I worry that some of this.
• 51:14
  Speaker 3: Just embrace AI ladies, it's time, it's good, could actually
• 51:18
  Speaker 3: get some women in trouble at work if they were
• 51:21
  Speaker 3: to embrace AI, because women's work is already scrutinized more
• 51:25
  Speaker 3: harshly than men. As one psychologist put it, women are
• 51:28
  Speaker 3: already discredited in workplaces. Having people know that you used
• 51:31
  Speaker 3: AI is just another thing that can be used to
• 51:34
  Speaker 3: undermine your credibility. And these rich ladies, who frankly don't
• 51:39
  Speaker 3: have to worry about office dynamics and workplace dynamics the
• 51:43
  Speaker 3: same way that the rest of us do, could actually
• 51:45
  Speaker 3: be giving people women advice that could set them back
• 51:48
  Speaker 3: in real ways.
• 51:49
  Speaker 4: Right, Like, let's just like keep it for real.
• 51:52
  Speaker 3: Mel Robbins probably isn't going to lose her job if
• 51:55
  Speaker 3: she uses AI and it goes south Sherry from the
• 52:00
  Speaker 3: real estate office in Des Moines, Iowa might actually be
• 52:03
  Speaker 3: risking her job if she uses AI because Mel Robbins
• 52:06
  Speaker 3: told her to and it doesn't go the way that
• 52:08
  Speaker 3: she was planning.
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, bad advice, just bad advice all around, or at
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: least like not taking into account the realities that most
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: people face.
• 52:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think.
• 52:20
  Speaker 3: That's a good way of putting it, Like, women are
• 52:23
  Speaker 3: already really tasked with doing a lot more domestic labor
• 52:27
  Speaker 3: and childcare labor in their homes and also in offices,
• 52:30
  Speaker 3: all kinds of labor that that's on our shoulders. So
• 52:33
  Speaker 3: then when you factor in, okay, also learn AI. More
• 52:37
  Speaker 3: than half of all professionals say that learning AI feels
• 52:40
  Speaker 3: like a second job. So if you're a woman and
• 52:42
  Speaker 3: you're already have a job, and then a second job
• 52:44
  Speaker 3: caring for your kid or your aging parents or household labor,
• 52:48
  Speaker 3: the expectation that if you can't fit learning AI on
• 52:52
  Speaker 3: top of that, that you are somehow the failure. Again,
• 52:57
  Speaker 3: these are clearly institutional issues, and so I think, as
• 52:59
  Speaker 3: you say said, Annie, when women are being sold us
• 53:04
  Speaker 3: not using AI as our individual problem to fix rather
• 53:08
  Speaker 3: than something that is the result of institutional failures, we're
• 53:12
  Speaker 3: doing the same Girl Boss thing all over. We're locating
• 53:16
  Speaker 3: the problem in an individual women's choices rather than the
• 53:20
  Speaker 3: systems that produce those choices or problems in the technology itself.
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: Right, So we've touched on this, but what are these
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: celebrities and influencers actually trying to sell for this?
• 53:36
  Speaker 3: Well, if you ask me, going back to the sort
• 53:39
  Speaker 3: of girl Boss of it all, that era really promised
• 53:42
  Speaker 3: you that if you optimized hard enough, if you just
• 53:45
  Speaker 3: made the right choices and did the right stuff, you
• 53:47
  Speaker 3: could work your way out of systemic inequality. And I
• 53:51
  Speaker 3: don't think that anybody out there believes that that actually
• 53:55
  Speaker 3: worked for women. You know, the system did not change
• 53:59
  Speaker 3: because of the girl gl Boss era. The women who
• 54:02
  Speaker 3: leaned in the hardest did not close the pay gap.
• 54:05
  Speaker 3: Some of those women probably might have had individual gains
• 54:08
  Speaker 3: and individual economic successes and gotten better jobs and better pay,
• 54:12
  Speaker 3: and like good for them, had no shade to that,
• 54:15
  Speaker 3: but those gains were certainly not systemic or meaningful.
• 54:19
  Speaker 4: And I think that women.
• 54:21
  Speaker 3: Just got better at surviving inside of an unequal structure,
• 54:26
  Speaker 3: and in a lot of cases we burnt the f out,
• 54:29
  Speaker 3: Like if I had to say, probably my biggest personal
• 54:32
  Speaker 3: takeaway from the girl Boss era is that it leads
• 54:35
  Speaker 3: to feeling really spent and burnt out and not really
• 54:41
  Speaker 3: having the energy or capacity to figure out how to
• 54:45
  Speaker 3: get yourself out of this overwork mess that you're in. Right, So,
• 54:48
  Speaker 3: I just don't think it actually accomplished the change that
• 54:52
  Speaker 3: we were sort of sold that it would.
• 54:54
  Speaker 2: Oh no, absolutely not.
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: I mean again, it's you get to the end of
• 54:58
  Speaker 1: the ten steps whatever they sold you, and you feel
• 55:01
  Speaker 1: like you have failed.
• 55:02
  Speaker 2: Where did I go wrong? What step was the one
• 55:04
  Speaker 2: that I didn't do it? And you are burning yourself.
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: Out because it feels as though I have this blueprint now,
• 55:12
  Speaker 1: I paid for this blueprint now, and it's not resulting
• 55:18
  Speaker 1: in what I'm being told and what I was sold
• 55:21
  Speaker 1: and what I see from this person. And I think, Samantha,
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: you made a good point earlier about for well off people,
• 55:27
  Speaker 1: you can take your risk and I'm in ai. No,
• 55:31
  Speaker 1: I'm in crypto now or whatever it is, and if
• 55:33
  Speaker 1: you lose money, it's not going to destroy your life, probably,
• 55:37
  Speaker 1: but for people it will. For people who don't have
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: that support, it will. So no, I think it absolutely
• 55:46
  Speaker 1: was something that just burnt out a lot of women
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: and did not result in any real success.
• 55:53
  Speaker 3: And something that you mentioned earlier, Adie, kind of along
• 55:56
  Speaker 3: those lines is I hadn't thought of it this way,
• 55:59
  Speaker 3: but now I'm seeing that a real connection to the
• 56:02
  Speaker 3: tradwife movement, because I think one of the reasons why
• 56:06
  Speaker 3: the tradwife movement really took off is that movements like
• 56:08
  Speaker 3: this really can take root when women are economically anxious,
• 56:14
  Speaker 3: during times of political or social or economic instability and anxiety,
• 56:18
  Speaker 3: which certain we're certainly in one now, and when people
• 56:21
  Speaker 3: are feeling really burnt out. You know, when I scroll
• 56:24
  Speaker 3: Instagram and I see a picture of a woman in
• 56:27
  Speaker 3: a prairie dress making bread in a lovely kitchen in
• 56:31
  Speaker 3: a lovely you know, mountain town. I'm exhausted. I work
• 56:36
  Speaker 3: a lot, and of course that looks appealing. And so
• 56:39
  Speaker 3: I think that AI is sort of the flip side
• 56:41
  Speaker 3: of that. You're saying, Okay, well you are exhausted, you
• 56:46
  Speaker 3: want to have more money so you can spend more
• 56:48
  Speaker 3: time with your kids. If it's not tradwife, maybe it's AI, right, Like,
• 56:53
  Speaker 3: it's the same kind of emotional and financial manipulation that
• 56:58
  Speaker 3: takes advantage of the way that our actual economic and
• 57:02
  Speaker 3: political climate feels very unstable right now. And so if
• 57:05
  Speaker 3: you're not gonna choose to make bread and leave your
• 57:08
  Speaker 3: job and like give a man control over your economic future,
• 57:12
  Speaker 3: maybe you'll choose AI. Maybe maybe that's gonna be the
• 57:16
  Speaker 3: thing that you choose that you're turning toward because of
• 57:20
  Speaker 3: this moment of economic instability. Again, it all comes back
• 57:23
  Speaker 3: to the same place, which to me is like manipulation, right.
• 57:26
  Speaker 5: I mean, it's definitely reminiscent as you were talking about
• 57:29
  Speaker 5: when political times and economic times are unstable, kind of
• 57:33
  Speaker 5: like the stock market. Like it feels like when we
• 57:36
  Speaker 5: were promised with the booming of Wall Street that if
• 57:39
  Speaker 5: you invest in these things kind of how our parents
• 57:43
  Speaker 5: really really thought this four oh one k system, this
• 57:46
  Speaker 5: retirement system that we're gonna have when we're gonna put
• 57:48
  Speaker 5: our money in here, and which is like any you
• 57:51
  Speaker 5: were talking about, like maybe the last bit of money
• 57:53
  Speaker 5: that you have in praying that this is gonna give
• 57:55
  Speaker 5: you tenfold and putting your whole stock into this and
• 57:59
  Speaker 5: then realize saying when it crashes and it's not stable anymore,
• 58:03
  Speaker 5: you're the one. Those who put everything trusting in this,
• 58:07
  Speaker 5: like completely have are the one that's bankrupt that it
• 58:10
  Speaker 5: has ruined your life. And the people who are okay
• 58:14
  Speaker 5: are the ones that have told you do this, yeah,
• 58:16
  Speaker 5: because they have to build the system up somehow, and
• 58:19
  Speaker 5: that's taking from those who don't have enough but are
• 58:23
  Speaker 5: hoping to get that quote unquote dream.
• 58:26
  Speaker 3: Exactly as the Cut put it, the new ambition is
• 58:29
  Speaker 3: not to scale new heights. It's to cling to what
• 58:31
  Speaker 3: you already have, don't get replaced, stay relevant, adapt or die.
• 58:35
  Speaker 3: And I think that really taps into exactly what you're
• 58:38
  Speaker 3: saying of they're cultivating this atmosphere of fear to tell women, Oh,
• 58:45
  Speaker 3: the worst thing you can do right now is not
• 58:46
  Speaker 3: embrace AI. If you don't embrace AI, you're gonna get replaced,
• 58:49
  Speaker 3: You're gonna lose all your money, You're not gonna be
• 58:51
  Speaker 3: able to economically succeed, and guess what, It'll be your
• 58:53
  Speaker 3: fault because you didn't listen to me about embracing AI,
• 58:55
  Speaker 3: Like it is creating these circumstances that, to me, do
• 59:02
  Speaker 3: not but lend themselves well to people adapting to new
• 59:07
  Speaker 3: things or adopting new things. Like the way that this
• 59:10
  Speaker 3: is being foisted on people is not a reasonable.
• 59:13
  Speaker 4: Way to get people to try a new thing.
• 59:15
  Speaker 3: Saying if you don't try this, you're basically going to
• 59:18
  Speaker 3: lose all your money and it'll be your fault is
• 59:20
  Speaker 3: not does not create the conditions of people wanting to
• 59:23
  Speaker 3: embrace this thing. And I guess, if I can make
• 59:26
  Speaker 3: one big point, it's like, I think, if these women
• 59:29
  Speaker 3: are actually interested in having women try AI now, I
• 59:33
  Speaker 3: don't think that women should be fearful of AI or
• 59:36
  Speaker 3: like think that this technology is like outside of our
• 59:39
  Speaker 3: reach or grasp, because it certainly is not. But if
• 59:41
  Speaker 3: they're interested in having more women in the space, there's
• 59:43
  Speaker 3: a way to do it and it's not this.
• 59:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and I again, it's worth asking these questions. It
• 59:50
  Speaker 1: is worth asking why women do hesitate to adopt AI
• 59:58
  Speaker 1: and think instead of, as you said, Bridgett, instead of
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 1: turning the conversation to oh.
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 2: Here women, you need to be brave and get on
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 2: board or else.
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 1: And even with the stock market, Samantha, that the same
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 1: conversation happens to the stock market. Women are too afraid
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 1: to invest, they don't know what to do with money.
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 1: It's the same conversation that we see a lot where
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 1: it is reflecting the blame back on women as opposed
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 1: to looking at the system and why why it is
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 1: that women are more hesitant because we've been burnt before?
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 1: There are reasons.
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 3: Isn't everything basically like, aren't women just stupid pieces of
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 3: trash who are to blame for their own problems? It
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 3: doesn't matter if we're talking about the stock market, AI,
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 3: our economic situations.
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 4: Marrying an abusive guy.
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 3: Like every it always comes back to, aren't women stupid
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 3: pieces of crap that can't be trusted with our own agency?
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 2: Really further proof?
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 3: See And just to like wrap it up, Listen, I'm
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 3: not saying don't use AI. Most of us are probably
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 3: interacting with AI already, sometimes interacting with AI like invisibly
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 3: without even really knowing. The question is not whether these
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 3: tools can be useful or not. The question to me
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 3: is like, who is controlling them, who is profiting from them,
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 3: who shaped them, who built them? And who is being
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 3: expected to absorb the harm that they sometimes can produce.
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 3: And so when the same women who are selling you
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 3: AI now are the same women who were selling you
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 3: lean In and girl Boss and NFTs and Crypto, and
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 3: when that pitch is identical, all of this urgency, all
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 3: of this framing of you don't want to be left behind,
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 3: Maybe the right response is not to just reach for
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 3: your credit card and play ball. Maybe a reasonable response
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 3: is to ask, like, who is benefiting from me believing this?
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 4: And why are you selling this to me right now?
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 3: You know the questions that the Luodites were asking, I
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 3: think were some of the right questions. And there's nothing
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 3: wrong with having the discernment and the pattern recognition of
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 3: really recognizing the track records of the women who sold
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 3: us on the fact that what they were selling could
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 3: actually improve conditions materially for women when they were selling
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 3: us girl Boss and Crypto and all of that. When
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 3: they're now selling us AI as the thing, there's nothing
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 3: wrong with being like, wait a minute, haven't we been
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 3: through this before?
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah?
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, everything feels so cyclical, but we need to
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 1: keep we need to remember what's happened previously and afoid
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 1: it happening again. Yes, have these conversations well, Bridget. As always,
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 1: we could go on and on. There's so much to
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 1: talk about with this conversation, but for now, thank you
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 1: so much for being here. As always, where can the
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 1: good listeners find you?
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 4: You can listen to my podcast. There are norgles on
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 4: the internet.
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 3: You can pre order my new audiobook coming on July seventeen,
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 3: called Love at First Prompt. You can get it at
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 3: Love at First Prompt dot ai, and you can follow
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 3: me on Instagram at Ridget Marie and DC.
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 1: Yes, go do all of the stuff if you haven't already, Listeners,
• 1:03:10
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• 1:03:12
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• 1:03:21
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• 1:03:23
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• 1:03:23
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• 1:03:26
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• 1:03:30
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• 1:03:31
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