Latest / 100 Stories: The Narrative Intelligence Project / Sandy Carter: Before You Tell AI Your Story | 100 Stories Ep. 13

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Sandy Carter: Before You Tell AI Your Story | 100 Stories Ep. 13 · 100 Stories: The Narrative Intelligence Project

• Paige Williams: Field of narrative intelligence, and I'm gonna write the foundational book about it, just like we have emotional intelligence. I'm a series of 100 interviews with people across different landscapes, ⁓ diversities, work, and just you know, what does it mean to you when I say these things and what's your story? And then that's gonna be those. Sandy Carter: Mm. Paige Williams: stories are foundational to the research. I've also applied or I'm in the process of applying to the Harvard Radcliffe Fellowship to be able to write the book next year. Sandy Carter: Yeah. So I was gonna ask, can I take a picture and can I post that you're gonna be doing this narrative intelligence or do you not want me to mention that? Okay. I just don't want someone else to steal it. So let me let me do a quick picture here. Okay, you ready? Paige Williams: Yes. Please. Sandy Carter: One, two, three. know Riverside does pictures, but I also know 'cause I do my own I have my own podcast. Half the pictures are so horrible that they send me that I never use them. So you do. Paige Williams: I create new ones. I use your headshot and my your headshot and write the title and that's it. And then have a little clip that links to the full episode. That's how I'm doing it. Yeah. Yeah. Great. Well, I love that. Thank you for taking that. Okay. So anyway, that's why we're doing this. That's why we're here. So we'll just jump right in and I edit and stuff. So if there's anything that comes up and you're like, I don't really want that in, or just tell me and we'll take it out. All right. Sandy Carter: Okay. Okay, good. Awesome. Okay, great. Paige Williams: Okay, ready? Sandy Carter: I am ready. Oops, hang on, let me take this off. Paige Williams: Okay. Yeah, I'm Sandy Carter: ⁓ that's weird. What just happened? ⁓ there we are. ⁓ ⁓ maybe because maybe it goes behind the screen. No, my screen of you and I just disappeared. I just need I think I need to turn something off here. ⁓ I guess ⁓ Paige Williams: Good. Are you using Riverside for yours or are you doing s other technology? Sandy Carter: Right. I I am, but I don't do it on this computer. I have a separate computer that I do it on and the o basically the only things on there are like my podcast and my Forbes articles and that sort of thing. This is my work computer. ⁓ just didn't have time to get the other one set up and so I've got messages coming in and slacks coming in and I just went and turned I to turn those off because when a Slack just came in, it took our picture and it came up with a Slack screen and I was like, Holy moly, what just happened? Okay. Paige Williams: No. Yeah. Yeah. Sandy Carter: Now I got it. Paige Williams: Yeah. I just have to tell you, I bought a brown shirt the other d yesterday with white polka dots. So I'm loving your shirt. It's purple though, isn't it? Sandy Carter: did you this is actually actually this is it's purple and I yeah I love purple but brown is the color this year right brown brown is Paige Williams: I'm loving brown and I was gonna wear pink in your honor, but I like, Well then it might be the right wrong shade and we'll be clashing. Sandy Carter: Well, you know what too? I I wore pink. ⁓ been wearing pink because people were requesting me to wear pink. And I was on a podcast on Monday and the goes, ⁓ I want you to wear something different. Everybody's expecting you in pink. And so then d went and changed my shirt for him real quick and I came back and he's like, You look better in Go so I then I went and changed I'm like, Okay, I'm not doing this again. Whatever I have is what I have. ⁓ Paige Williams: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. I love it. All right, here we go. Sandy Carter: Alright, let's do it. Paige Williams: Today I am speaking with Sandy Carter. Sandy is a pioneer in AI and technology. She has h held p executive positions in IBM, Amazon, and is now the CEO of Equis, a privacy first AI company building the trust later. I'm gonna start over. Today I'm speaking with Sandy Carter. is a pioneer in AI, working in technology in executive positions across IBM, Amazon, and is now the CEO of Equis AI, ⁓ privacy-first AI company building the trust layer for the agentic era. Building the trust layer for the agentic era. I invited Sandy to 100 Stories because she is always supporting entrepreneurs like me. I've been able to sit at tables that she's hosted and she is all about community and sharing story and is ⁓ on the forefront ⁓ t what is coming next and technology and she really understands it deeply. So Sandy, thank you for your time and thank you for saying yes to this interview. Sandy Carter: Well thank you, Paige. I am so excited to be here and mean, what you're working on is so exciting. This narrative intelligence just has me can't write the book now. Like I gotta get the book right now. It sounds so amazing. There you go. ⁓ Paige Williams: I am. Yes, I am so excited about it too. And all these interviews are teaching me so much about it. And I can't wait to dig in into and narrative. I think it's so important because it what it's what makes us special and also how AI can help us. So we'll get into that. But first I want to ask you to tell me about the work that has most shaped how you see yourself in the world. Sandy Carter: Hmm, know, I would say there's not ⁓ thing. because I would have to say that my at IBM shaped me in one direction. you know, big category creation. really understanding how to work a matrix really shaped my opinion how ⁓ do things. And their understanding the narrative was so important because had to get so many different groups in the matrix bought in. So if you didn't have a strong narrative, one that consistent yet tailored, you wouldn't win the space. And then of course at Amazon, you know, the narrative all about we're the world's largest startup. So we're ⁓ moving And a groovin, we're moving at startup speed, but yet we have bigger resources. and there the narrative was also important because it was customer So ⁓ if didn't have the right story to tell, the right features, the right things, you would You you needed to be finding that product market fit. as fast as possible. I would also tell you I have two daughters and know that job has also how I look at things and how I think about things, especially now as seeing so many mix of generations in workforce and how differently they see So for example, I had always wanted to be an astronaut. I'd always wanted to go to the moon. I did work getting Rover up to Mars when I was at AWS. so we were talking about some of the space things, and one of my daughters said to me, Mom, you that going into space has so many environmental impacts? And I was, was like, I know that, but I didn't bring to the forefront until she said it, because her generation, rightly so, is very worried that. So, you know, that has shaped me thinking about different generations. to speak to generation different generations, and important to them. So sorry I didn't give you like one answer, but it's really been a couple of different things that have me along the way. ⁓ Paige Williams: Yeah. It's the perfect answer. What story do you tell about one of the most transformative moments in your life? And has that story changed over time? Sandy Carter: It has. The most recent story for me actually came from Amazon. Amazon typically hires and promotes from within. this Amazon Web Services. So when I came into Amazon Web Services, at the level I came in, I was of the only outsiders coming in. And so it it was a little tough, you know, coming the culture, learning the culture, having everybody assume that knew everything and I didn't. with the Amazon way. And I still remember our CTO asked me to come and present. Was there six months, I think, Paige? And he said me, Come and present this mistake that you share with us how you discovered the mistake, what you did to fix it, etc. ⁓ I was like, no, I think so. I don't want to do that. Here's three great things I did. I want to share those. He's like, no, we're gonna share the that you made. I'm like, no, I don't want to. I want to do the best practices. And he's like, no, we're gonna do this. So anyway, and he's like, okay, you know, at Amazon we say disagree and commit. He goes, Okay, you've disagreed enough. Commit, you're gonna just do it. I have to say, it was probably the hardest presentation I've ever pulled together. I never been asked in my career to talk about failure, how had failed. and so I did it. did not want to do. It. I did go back one more time to try to say, okay, here's the failure pitch, here's the great pitch. Let's do the great pitch. And of course, I did more graphics and everything on the great pitch. course, we didn't use PowerPoints, we did it in ⁓ narratives, but you know, I had more pictures, more things, ⁓ graphics. and anyway, I did the pitch, ⁓ and the you know, after we read the narrative and we talked about it, I had many people come up to me and say it and said, Wow, this made me understand. understand you more like how you got to that point and then how you resolve the issue. ⁓ anyway, five years later, I leaving Amazon to go to a startup. And people were going around the room, and every person was saying three things that they really remembered about me. of course, you know, most people said energy, creativity, that sort of thing. And I was shocked. People said, Do you remember five years ago you did that failure presentation? I love Like it showed your vulnerability, it showed how you thought differently, and it helped me and my business not to make the same mistake. And so I say I thought that was a disruptive. ⁓ to teach others, a way for the leader to have to go in and said, I screwed up. ⁓ This how I screwed up. But yet impactful end And so I went my new company, I continued to do that, and hopefully I'm gonna bring that to EQIS AI as well as part of our culture. ⁓ Paige Williams: When you say bring it, what is the narrative you're bringing from that experience at AWS of what you learned from talking about the failure versus the success? And how has your own narrative shaped since that moment of learning? Sandy Carter: So what I brought with me from Amazon to Unstoppable was first of all, it's okay to fail. In fact, it's better to fail than not fail ⁓ you learn more from it. And and mean I was surprised ⁓ because was part of the culture at Amazon was, okay, after project your postmortem, you did here's the three things I did great, here's the three things I didn't. ⁓ And ⁓ always learned from the three things that we didn't do great. Not every company does that. Not every company looks at did you fail? And so what I brought over was let's look at not just the success, let's look at the failure, but let's celebrate both of them equally also no for failing, unless you fail like over and over again on the same thing. Now so I'm not saying everybody go out there and fail. But if learn from the failure, you're actually stronger and better as an employee. The company gets stronger and better. And so that's I want to bring over is the narrative that you learn from failures. ⁓ I mean think about it. Today you're at AI speed, startup speed. I mean, we're moving so fast. if you're not failing, you're probably not moving fast enough. So you've got to get comfortable that everything you do is going to be successful and not everything you do is going to be perfect. ⁓ Paige Williams: Yeah. I work with companies a lot about the narrative that's driving under their their culture, and I feel like until you address the narrative you r strategy really doesn't matter. And it feels like bringing this openness of failure is as celebrated as success would allow for a more open workplace, an honest workplace. Sandy Carter: I think so. And and I would say, you know, I have to I have to give Amazon a lot of credit for the interview I learned all these leadership principles and I was like, wow, these are really good. But I assume, just like at all the other companies I had worked at, that they were gonna be like a pretty picture on the wall and I would never talk about them again. Boy, was I surprised. Like we were we were talking about customer obsession, we were talking about be curious, we were talking about frugality, we were talking about ⁓ disagree and commit every single day. So because Amazon had that narrative that ran through everything, you're constantly reminded of it. So it wasn't wasn't that you kind of read it, understood it, hey, I really like that, and then never used it. I used it literally daily. And in fact, my farewell speech, I use many of the leadership principles. Even today, you know, I left Amazon four years ago. Even today, I use that terminology. yesterday I was in a CEO round table and there was another ex-Amazonian there, and he said. ⁓ Yeah, he goes, you know, I made one of my new leadership principles at my new company be curious. And so I I I said, Did you happen to be at Amazon? And he goes, Yeah, I used to be at Amazon. He goes, I try to embed as many of those leadership principles in my new company for my new employees because I think it's so important the that you not just ⁓ them on the wall, but that you live them. So I made them, I try to make them livable. and so I do think that that narrative needs to be lived. It can't just be a piece of paper or a poster. It's gotta be something that the company embraces and does on a daily basis. Paige Williams: I love that. Thank you for taking me through that. That was really beautiful to hear. What story about AI do you think is shaping people the most right now? Sandy Carter: what's shaping people the most or what should shape people the most? might be two different things. I mean, I think one of the things that I think ⁓ is should let me do should first that should be shaping AI right now for everybody, is the fact that Paige Williams: Might be two different things. Sandy Carter: what you put into an LLM is there to stay. So it's kinda like, you know, when my kids were growing up, I'd say, Watch what you post on Facebook, watch out what you put on Instagram, because those pictures are gonna be there and it's gonna reflect on you. ⁓ Now ⁓ Watch out what you put in the LLM because what's in there is in there. Like you can't, it's not even like a picture on Instagram that you can go back later and delete. Damage is done, but you don't stop, you don't you stop it for the future. Here is there. And so the stories that I'm hearing now, especially because I've come over to Equus and we're now focused on data that you own, you decide who gets to use it and how they get to use it, what's, you know, that privacy piece. let's see, I've talked to a young man who had cancer, got his reports from ⁓ Mayo Clinic, I believe it was Mayo Clinic, may have been MD Anderson. Anyway, got his reports back, couldn't understand a word on the report, all this medical jargon, so he put it into Chat GPT to understand it. Makes sense, right? But then he said to me, Sandy, now I'm getting for life insurance. Like you better be prepared for your future. Death is around the corner. he's getting ads for I can't remember again. He went to MD Anderson or Mayo, whatever he didn't go to, he's getting ad for the other. he's getting ads for therapy. And so he said to me, he goes, I just want to take it back. Like I want to take that information back. And you can't. It's out there now. And and so the models are being trained on it. They're seeing how it's being used. And so, I mean, that's one. another story that's being told is someone put their calendar ⁓ into LLM ⁓ and pizza night at seven o'clock. ⁓ I don't know if it can be proven. She did open a lawsuit, but somebody came to her door with a pizza at seven o'clock on a Friday night, assaulted her, and ⁓ claims because she was entering everything into the LLM talking about what she did every day, especially at 7 p.m. on Friday. the guy who assaulted her actually said he had used some of the that can so again you can't prove it, but that's a story that I heard. another story. That I heard was about a board, and the board was learning how to how to use AI. And one of exercises that they did as a board, you know, as a board, you watch after the company. And so ⁓ the instructor okay, everybody enter in that we're undergoing a hostile takeover. So everybody typed that in to try to get insight as to what would the LLM recommend that the company does. Two hours later, Media leaked that this very company was undergoing a hostile takeover, which it was not. But every board member had entered that they were going through a hostile takeover for this exercise. So somehow that data was picked up. And so for me, the story we should be talking about is let's don't recreate that same mistake we made with social media, which is just not caring and dumping everything into an LLM. You need some privacy protection. It can't just be all out in the open. And I don't think we're talking about that enough today. the story, you want me to go on to the story I think that is shaping the narrative today? ⁓ think what's shaping the narrative today is that Paige Williams: Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Sandy Carter: guys won't have to work anymore. Everything's going to be done by agents. It's going to be done instantly. So, you we need some sort of universal income. We need, you know, watch out for your job because AI is coming for your job. That is the narrative I think that's shaping the world today. I just went and talked to two high schools, high schoolers, high schoolers, like senior high schoolers, are afraid that there will be no jobs for them when they graduate from college. College students. Are you saying, I can't get a job because of AI. And I think a lot of the big frontier models. Paige Williams: Yeah. Sandy Carter: I think a lot of the big frontier models now are trying to reshape that narrative slowly. You you're watching them right now. They were before going, ⁓ A, I can do everything too. not yet. Not yet. and I think the reality is it really is not yet. I mean, if you've created an agent, I've created agents, it can't really do everything that you say yet for everybody. but I think it is shaping the narrative of how people feel about AI. Paige Williams: Yeah, I know. What what stories make people more likely to adapt or to resist a new technology like AI in your experience? I'm writing an academic research paper on that and that's our our topic, so I'd love to hear what you think. Sandy Carter: ⁓ let's see. I mean, stories to make people ad adopt it, I think, are a little different with this technology than with cloud or some of the other technologies where you could learn about it academically, understand, okay, your application's now not here, now in the cloud. Okay, I can understand that. AI is a little different. In the book I wrote called AI First Human Always, I talk about people have to play storm with it. They have to get their hands dirty so that they understand it. for example, this morning I taught a class on how to create a chief of staff. Now, when I entered with the, you know, 30 people who came to the class, a lot of them were like, ⁓ I don't need this. ⁓ it's not real. And they left going, ⁓ this is so cool. I can have somebody help me manage my calendar, just like an executive. Like I can have my own personal assistant kind of thing. And so I think that the narrative around what's going to make people adopt it is learning from others, what is really valuable, and having them show you. You how that works so that you can do it yourself. Now, on the flip side, what is the story that people ⁓ won't adopt it. I think that right now there's still a lot of techies out there. And I think that the you don't have to be technical to use AI, but I think there's, you know, there's a whole new language. I just wrote a post about this, right? An MCP server. There's the loop, there's tokens, like the whole new language. ⁓ borrowing from other terms in the dictionary. So my nephew this weekend, I was I had to take a quick work call when He was over and and he said to me, he's like Auntie Sandy, you're talking about agents? Are you a spy? I'm like, no, no, no. I'm talking about AI agents. And then I had to explain, okay, a spy agent is this, a book agent is this, but an AI agent is this. And so think that ⁓ that turns people off or is all the new language you have to learn and the perception that you have to be super technical to learn the technology or to be able to use the technology. Paige Williams: Yeah. So for Equus, to go just give me a brief d it does the protection layer lay over an LLM? Like how does it work? How is it protecting us? Why are you ⁓ this company? Because I know it's great if you're if you decided to be the CEO of it. Sandy Carter: Yeah. So essentially what it does is it's all around the premise that the data about you should be yours. You need to own that data. So it's just like the example I gave you earlier where the guy entered his medical data. And then other people started using that. Somebody sold it, right? so the whole premise is it's your data, you own it, you decide how it gets used. And so what Equist does is we use open source models, we download download them to a local server. So we can't get access to the internet. You enter your private data, that private data is stored in a private data storage. So nobody else has access to your private data except for you. So let's say your shopping preferences, your kids' schedules, ⁓ the fact that you get a pizza every Friday night. Even let's say, you know, the number one use today of AI by far is companionship. It's so sad to say it, but it is the number one use case by far. the loneliness has crept into everybody's lives, I guess, since COVID. They said it's only gone up since COVID. And so people share a lot of things with AI companions. ⁓ so, you know, keeping all that private, right? Like today you might be sad and depressed because your girlfriend left you, but a year from now, maybe you have a better life, a happier life. You don't want all that other stuff out online where people can can can get a hold of it. So you know, I think that what Equus does, Equis X, which is our product, is it protects that data from ever leaving the ⁓ the premises. And you can search on things. And you can say, hey, use the kids calendar and use the dog's vets appointments and use the sports calendar to do this. So you're able to select what you can use and what you can't use. And then it provides you like a daily dashboard. So it's really for a consumer to have their data protected. Because Paige, what I'm afraid of is right now. If you don't understand the technology, it's just like this guy put all of his cancer data. He did not know that that cancer data could then be used and sold and sent everywhere. He just didn't think about that for an LLM that could provide advice. You know, we kind of knew it if I shared it on social media. He's like, you know, if I went and did a post on LinkedIn, that's on me. But I didn't know that my data was going to be used in this fashion. And so I think a lot of it is, you know, how do you how do you educate people and protect them? I was just talking to Janet Falte, who's a co-founder of a group called Raise Us. And it's really to educate everybody about how to use AI and then kind of some of the safeguards that you should be thinking about you're using AI. And I just think that that's lacking right now. I think they're it's so easy to use AI, but most people don't understand the implications of what they do in AI. Paige Williams: Is Equus an LLM itself? Sandy Carter: No, we use other open source LLMs, so like Paige Williams: It's just a layer of protection on top of the LLM. Beautiful. That's great. Yeah, that's great. What's responsibility do you think technology leaders for the stories their products create about work and human value? Sandy Carter: Mm-hmm. That's right. are you asking, do you I think the like the frontier founders have a responsibility in that story? Paige Williams: Well, you're building new technology that to protects privacy and obviously you have a passion for that. So what responsibility do tech leaders have in what the development of, you know, like you've mentioned social media several times. If if we had asked that of the social media creators at the beginning, that's kind of what I'm saying is as a creator of AI, what responsibility do you have and others have? Sandy Carter: mean, I I will give you my opinion. It doesn't mean that everybody feels the same way. But I mean, my opinion is that if you're gonna create something that everybody's gonna use, including kids, right? We've seen children ⁓ Paige Williams: Yeah, of course. Sandy Carter: Committing suicide because an LLM recommended it after the kid tells their whole story. I feel that you have to take some responsibility. don't think, I don't know about total responsibility because some of it has to go back to you as the person, too. But I think you as the founder and the creator need to put in as many safeguards as you can. Like you got to try to protect. I think others and try to think about privacy a real way, not just a marketing way. I think I mean I think that goes for any company, not just AI, right? Like if you're if you're a safety company and you're working with railra railroads and your job is to protect the railroad worker, you have a responsibility in doing that to the best of your ability. If you're ⁓ an insurance You see, you know, new technology that can help proof to help warn you about whether I think your job is to use that technology and protect others. I don't think it's just AI, but I think it should be across all of our companies. And I think in some regards, we've lost our way and what that moral responsibility is in favor of profit. What do you think? Do you agree with that? Paige Williams: Hmm. Right. ⁓ a hundred percent. I mean, yeah, building without regard to humanity is That would be unconscious living. Sandy Carter: Yeah, and so I don't know if some of these people just don't think about it or they, you know, I know a lot because I I'm in Silicon Valley, so I'm with a lot of founders. I think a lot of them are just moving so fast, Paige. The like my daughters loved Alice in Wonderland. and with Alice in Wonderland, you know, Alice says, I have to run twice as fast just to stay in place. I feel like I feel like today it's probably 10 times as fast just to stay in place. And so I can see how you would be so absorbed as a founder. Things are moving, and you've got so many, like this is the time of the biggest competition we've ever seen because developed now is so easy that people are just moving so fast that they are just forgetting first print. Paige Williams: Mm. Sandy Carter: principles that they really need to apply. And so I do think that, you know, you need to slow down. And this is why I like your ⁓ intelligence, not just narrative. narrative intelligence because hopefully it can bring you back and really center you on what's important. Just like the Amazon principles, I would consider that narrative intelligence. And the and the ⁓ there the leadership principles don't always agree either. They're also in conflict because in life there's really no white and black. It's all like a like a little conflict going on. And so for one of the leadership principles Empower your team. other is you need to deep dive. So as a leader, you're like, ⁓ my gosh, I got to empower my team, but I've got to deep dive. And so you figure out where that balance is, where you're deep diving enough to where you can answer questions, you know, almost much as your employees. But you're still empowering them to make the decision, even though you understand it. It's not clean, it's it's a conflict. And they're designed like that on purpose. And so I think having narrative intelligence as a startup founder or in AI where things are moving so fast could help to slow you down even for a second, to just think about what is your direction? Where are you headed? What are what's most important to you? Paige Williams: Yeah, I love that. I was in this debate with a professor of information management systems and and he's deep in the AI world and teaching AI in business school at Cambridge and the University of Montana. And we were having this debate of could can AI have narrative intelligence? He's like, Well, it can if we've trained it. But the thing that I'm curious about is yes, but it doesn't have lived experience. It can only be reflect back what we've told it. And so it doesn't have the felt life of lived experience of like cha you know, coming to a fork in the road and really having that tension of which way should I go? then making that decision and then having the results of that decision come back and have consequence. Sandy Carter: Yeah, I mean this is a fascinating factoid, but fifteen percent of the knowledge on earth is Only fifteen percent. Mm-hmm. Paige Williams: Wow. Sandy Carter: ⁓ I got a source for you and everything too that that will show you that. So if only 15% is digital, now that's today. So I don't know when this is gonna air, or someone watches this 10 years from now, they're gonna be like, ⁓ no, that's much greater. But today it's only 15%. So judgment is not digitized today. Paige Williams: Thank you. Sandy Carter: experience like I to see you know piece of art and how it made me feel versus how it made you feel because maybe I think that piece of art is amazing and it moves me and you don't. Those experiences aren't digitized today. I know right now there's a movement in Africa. I was just at the World Bank and World Bank had many countries from Africa there and they were telling me they're trying to figure out How do they take tribal knowledge? And how do they digitize it? So they've been interviewing like chiefs and you know, some of the members of tribes who've lived the longest to try to get their what they have in their head that's not digitized into a digitized form so that they can use that for their LLMs in Africa so that tradition is not lost. and so there's all these things today. So we're using LLMs like it's the NLB all, right? Okay. Up if the LLM said that to me, versus how much has really been digitized? And I'll give you a great example. daughter actually interviewed me for a podcast, and she had all her little girlfriends in the room while we were doing the interview. And ⁓ it was because she asked me, if the LLM tells you, you know, you give it choice A and choice B, and it tells you to do choice A. Do you always go with it? And I said, no, I don't, because know, maybe it doesn't understand the whole context. Maybe it doesn't know that the last time I did that, this happened and it didn't look at those factors. And daughter asked me an interesting question. Well, how would I know that? Like I don't have the lived experiences that you have. So maybe I'm just gonna go with what the LLM tells me because I have nothing else to debate it with. And isn't it smarter than me? And so we had that discussion. And even after the podcast went off, I talked to her friends and they're like, you know, Ms. Carter, how do we get that learned experience? Like how how do we justify going against the LLM when we haven't had those experiences? It's a great question, right? Great question. Paige Williams: Yeah, one of the things that Dr. Firth t teaches is okay, have ask the LLM, you can save five kids and an or an elder, and you ask Deep Seek versus open, you know, versus chat or Claude, you're gonna get different answers based on culture narrative. Sandy Carter: Mm-hmm. got it. Yeah. It is, you know, it was fascinating to me when we were at Harvard. I was went to Harvard Business School. It was the first year that they introduced a of classes on ethics, which was awesome, a great move. And one of the classes was we read a case study, and this we were pretending like we were this guy whose his dream, his bucket list was to go up, climb Mount Everest and get to the top of it. Paige Williams: It's so interesting. Sandy Carter: He saved all his money. This was going to be his last time that he could ever do it. and on the way ⁓ there was a guy on the side who was clearly dying, was not dressed for an expedition. and had a choice. You either had to take him back down the hill, save his life, Or and and you know, sacrifice your bucket list, you never get to do this again, or go ahead and go to the top, reach your goal, and maybe on the way back down, try to save him if he's still alive. I was like, ⁓ man, what a stupid case. Like, what are we even gonna talk about? Of course you're gonna save the guy, you're gonna take him back down. We debated that case for two ⁓ and a half hour sessions. And I thought this is really fascinating to me because some people are like, well, look, if I've worked and saved, and here's this dude who knows he's going up Mount Everest and he's got on some outfit that can't keep him warm, it's his fault. Like, what why do I have to pay for it? It was fascinating to see. but I learned a ton around that because I seriously thought. ⁓ page, I was like, you know, this we're gonna get out of class early, like five minutes. We're gone, we're done. Like this clo this case is stupid. Seriously. And I was super surprised. Paige Williams: I think that is the core of narrative intelligence. It's thinking or narrative and then how we view it and whether we can change it. Intelligence part is an important part. But thinking that, okay, George Carlin has an a joke from way back that have you ever noticed when you're driving down the road, everyone going faster than you is a maniac and everyone going slower than you is an idiot. Sandy Carter: interesting. ⁓ Paige Williams: It's like we think, ⁓ of course we're gonna save the guy. Like I would think that too, by the way. I'm in the same boat. I'm like, yeah, that's we're gonna save the guy. And we think people think like us and and coming outside of that perception and hearing other people's stories is just everything. It's like so human. I love it. It's I love it. Sandy Carter: Yeah. I agree. I agree. Yeah, there there is are a couple of folks who are building trying to build in ethics into LLMs. ⁓ ⁓ they did a similar experience experiment to the one you had just talked about earlier. ⁓ and what they did is they're they were using it for a food bank. And so so one them, it was a deep seek model, was very efficient. ⁓ Paige Williams: Mm. Sandy Carter: So a big a big load of ramen noodles came in. And so it went through all the food bank needs and it gave it to one food bank who the lowest on the list, but who had specified, ⁓ I'll take ramen ramen noodles. Where there was several other food banks who are in desperate need of food but didn't specify, I will take ramen noodles, the Deep Seek said, ⁓ well they didn't say it, so we're going to give it to this other food bank. Whereas the ethical one said, ⁓ let's call these two food banks because they have the most need right now and see if they will take the ramen noodles. And so I was like, wow, that seems so obvious to me, right? Of course that's what you would do. again, you know, the models all show different things, ⁓ except for this ethical model that was quite interesting. There's that's another whole that's another whole can of worms. How do you define ethics? Like whose ethics are you using to do that definition? Yeah, so there is some interesting, interesting things going on there. Paige Williams: Yeah. Wow, I I I feel like we could talk about that for hours. I mean, as you said, three hours on this one. when you hear the phrase narrative intelligence, would you put your definition to it? Like, well, here's how I would define it. And what does it mean to you? Sandy Carter: So when you told me, what I thought about was Amazon leadership principles. It's the narrative that you you and your company are going to live every day that with your values and your principles. It just it in a story form, a narrative form ⁓ that enables to make the intelligent choices that you need to make on a daily basis. How close am I? Paige Williams: Yeah. Well, that's the discovery of these hundred interviews. And let me tell you something. You interview thirteen and this is the first time that anyone has spoken about it from a corporate perspective. Sandy Carter: ⁓ thirteen. really mostly personal. Paige Williams: Personal narrative intelligence. So I love your perspective and what you're bringing to the conversation. Because I think it's really important for companies and corporations think about narrative intelligence and apply it however they wish to apply it because this is because because of consumer goods and and what we take our world is so important on a personal level. Sandy Carter: Interesting. You know what? I think and maybe it's because of my background at Amazon. know, I have to give Amazon a lot of credit because those leadership principles, you you them every day, we get trained on them. And so for me, that was the the through line that flew through everything that we did. It was really how we made decisions. ⁓ Again, was never it's never black and white. There were some that were in conflict. So for example, know, you gotta be When I came into Amazon, we had a desk that was a door. and why did we have a desk that was a door? Well, Jeff Bezos tradition was when he started, he didn't have enough money for a desk. So took a door off of ⁓ one his rooms and he put legs on it, and that was his desk. So everybody coming into Amazon got a door as a desk. So I was like, I want desk to move up and down. Like I stand up half the day, I sit down half the day. If I got a door there, it doesn't move. And so you and so frugal versus. know, convenience. so anyway, we actually ⁓ were. I the cool thing was. Because of that tension, like we want to give our employees a great place to work, and part of that is being healthy, having the desk move up and down, we were able to change that decision. it had been like a hard refrugal, we're not going to replace a desk. You've got a desk, you don't need another desk, it have been a different story. So I I really like the way the through line went through everything that we did at Amazon. think that's what really made the company super strong. Paige Williams: you for sharing that. I also think of like we started. Like story of founding is so important in that company culture and until it shifted and realized, ⁓ actually maybe we need to stand. Sandy, thank so much for your time today and your expertise. This was amazing. Sandy Carter: Thank you, Paige, and thanks for what you're doing and let me know when you've got that narrative intelligence book out the door. Paige Williams: I certainly will, thank you. I know you need to go. Is there someone who you think