Is AI the New Girlboss?

Bridget Todd joins us to break down the resurgence of the girlboss mindset, now with AI.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, this is Anny and SMITHA welcome to stuff.

Speaker 2 (00:08):
Never told you a production, I heard you.

Speaker 1 (00:16):
Today. We are once again so happy to be joined
by the brilliant, the bold, brigite Todd.

Speaker 2 (00:22):
Welcome Bridget.

Speaker 3 (00:23):
I like the be alliteration, always coming with the alliterative superlative.

Speaker 4 (00:29):
Love to hear it.

Speaker 2 (00:30):
It's one of my skills, one of my many pretty
useless skills. But thank you well, Bridget.

Speaker 1 (00:38):
How have you been this sin is the last time
we spoke.

Speaker 4 (00:41):
Things are okay.

Speaker 3 (00:42):
I am trying to stay positive, you know. It's I
really really enjoyed when we hung out and watched and
talked about the social network. That was definitely the high
point of things for me, and I've been trying to
find ways to connect with what's going on in the
world through the lens of pop culture. Just was such
a nice, refreshing change of conversation. Thank you for giving

(01:06):
me the space.

Speaker 2 (01:06):
Oh thank you. That was so fun. It was I
was delighted.

Speaker 1 (01:12):
To have an excuse to rewatch it and to have
Samantha to watch it. And now I'm already thinking of
what our next installment will be.

Speaker 3 (01:19):
I'm thinking her, Oh my god, yes, please, that's one
of my favorite movies.

Speaker 5 (01:23):
I assumed with all the AI stuff, this would be
quickly coming. So I've only seen a few clips and
it seems very early two thousand's Emo Unresolved type of film.

Speaker 4 (01:38):
Yes, I would watch it.

Speaker 3 (01:39):
It pairs very nicely with Lost in Translation is what
I thought to films about the same thing from different perspectives.

Speaker 4 (01:47):
Yeah, it definitely.

Speaker 3 (01:47):
You've definitely nailed the vibe, which was kind of of
an era, you know, was the aughts.

Speaker 4 (01:54):
We're all listening to a lot of sad indie rock.

Speaker 5 (01:57):
And I mean it was like Eternal Sunshine, I Love
a Spotless Mind. Another classic Zach braf One, Oh Garden State. Yeah,
can I tell me nothing When I had the the
Garden State soundtrack. I'm dating myself here, but there was
a time where that was like the coolest record you
could put on, was the Garden State soundtrack.

Speaker 4 (02:15):
Yeah. Fun fact. Jd Vance our vice president.

Speaker 3 (02:19):
Before he became jd Vance, he was sort of a
kind of alty, artsy kid and the movie Garden State
was very meaningful to him and that he wanted to
be a filmmaker or a screenwriter because of the movie
Garden State.

Speaker 4 (02:33):
Fun fact about JD Vance.

Speaker 5 (02:34):
Man, Why why couldn't he know? I'm really sad he
didn't much.

Speaker 4 (02:38):
Better off we would all be.

Speaker 1 (02:41):
I think so many people that we are unfortunately subject
to the whims of in our government now. They just
want to be famous. They just want people to pay
attention to them. I don't know, but all right, jd Vance.
You didn't make it that way, but you made it
this way. Vice President. Well, I'm very interested in what

(03:04):
the topic you brought today, Bridget, because I haven't quite
heard of it. But when you when I was looking
over the outline, I was like, ah, yeah, that makes
complete sense to me. Can you tell us what we're
discussing today?

Speaker 4 (03:15):
Today we are talking about the resurgence of girl boss
culture being repackaged through AI and I want to start
with a question for both of you. What do you
remember about the girl Boss era?

Speaker 3 (03:28):
Was this something that you participated in that we were
at all adjacent to.

Speaker 5 (03:33):
I feel like I missed that window because a I
was aging out. I feel like because I was just
trying to maintain It was one of those moments I'm like,
I don't understand this. Okay, cool, cool, cool too. Oh
it died real quick, Like that's how that went down,
and I missed that whole moment.

Speaker 1 (03:53):
I am I remember it. I think I was at
the time, and I could be wrong, because I know
you're gonna go over kind of a brief history and reminder,
but I feel like at the time, I was freshly
out of college, and I just remember thinking it felt
like somebody was trying to sell me something like you
paid as much amount of money and give you ten

(04:15):
steps and then you won't be struggling every day. And
I would say I was adjacent to it in terms
of I was panicking about not having enough money because
it was my first job out of college, you know,
all that stuff, and I was pretty well off in
terms of that situation, but I was still.

Speaker 2 (04:35):
Thinking about, like what about retirement, what about all of this.

Speaker 1 (04:39):
I think it barked because my mom when I was
nine years old, I asked my mom if the American
dream was a real thing, and she said to me, no,
she said, you can work as hard as you can,
and you will not get past certain barriers in your life.
And then she said money doesn't buy happiness, but it

(05:02):
certainly makes it easier. And so I think I was
already in this mindset of like, I'm just trying to.

Speaker 4 (05:08):
Survive Annie's mom. That's real, probing knowledge. That's really old,
mind you.

Speaker 5 (05:17):
That's real. I love that because my mom was like,
have a family, that'll make you happy, and I'm like, okay, sure,
but I love that your mom was that honest. I
will say I really did think it was for upper
class white people, the American dream No, the Girl Boss.

Speaker 4 (05:33):
Oh yeah, yeah, I mean.

Speaker 3 (05:34):
You're not You're not wrong. That's absolutely an astute observation.

Speaker 4 (05:38):
It's tressed.

Speaker 5 (05:38):
I remember seeing the people who are really getting into it,
and it felt like that was kind of that sentiment.
I think it came initially. I don't think it was that.
I think initially it was a lot of like people
of color who are entrepreneurs really taking on things and
becoming a boss because they started their own companies. Yeah,
and that was cool. But then it felt like just

(06:00):
a bunch of rich white women, or at least like
upper middle class white women, yeah, who had some like
good support or slash network that were saying these things,
and it just didn't feel realistic.

Speaker 4 (06:14):
Yeah, Samantha, it's so interesting that you say this.

Speaker 3 (06:18):
That is exactly my sort of trajectory around Girl boss
girl boss culture really took root in the twenty tens,
and at that time in my life, I was, you know, had.

Speaker 4 (06:29):
Been out of college for a good.

Speaker 3 (06:31):
While, I was sort of figuring out what I wanted
to do, and that was the first time that I
was sort of getting the sense that maybe a traditional
nine to five job was not going to be best
for me, and that what was going to work out
for me was being my own boss entrepreneurship. And I
completely agree that for women of color, like myself, black women,

(06:52):
we are definitely folks who start businesses, who were interested
in entrepreneurship.

Speaker 4 (06:56):
And so I think that.

Speaker 3 (06:58):
In the twenty tens, we were having conversations about what
it meant, what it looked like, what it took to
be your own boss, be an entrepreneur. All of that
that happened, and so like that was very legitimate and real.
In my opinion, what ended up happening, or I guess,
at least in my personal experience, it coincided with all
of these white, very upper class women who were very

(07:22):
like who lived the kind of lives I could never,
you know, to Annie's mouth point, could never aspire to, right,
and they were selling a very specific version of what
a successful woman looked like. And in my own personal experience,
like this was incredibly confusing because I was just starting
the journey of starting my own business and being an entrepreneur.

(07:43):
I had no idea what I was doing, and that
sort of dominant message was that you are doing it wrong,
Like whenever you're doing you're doing that thing wrong. Rich
white ladies like your Cheryl Sandberg, former CEO of Facebook,
your Sophia Amoroso, a former CEO of Nasty Gal. These
were the women, these like white rich women who were

(08:04):
being like, oh, we know how to do it right,
and so if you buy my course, buy my book,
take my training, I can tell you the right way
to do this.

Speaker 4 (08:13):
And so the girl boss was born.

Speaker 3 (08:17):
The term girl boss was sort of popularized by Sophia
amorroso she founded this vintage clothing brand called Nasty Gal.
In twenty fourteen, she published her best selling memoir called
Hashtag girl Boss, which I have read.

Speaker 4 (08:29):
The cover is pink. It is a picture of her
with her.

Speaker 3 (08:33):
Arms folded, sort of doing a power pose on the cover.
Even if you've not read it, just from knowing the
title and then hearing my description of the cover, you
basically have read it like what you're thinking is basically it.
It's all about how she started her million dollar clothing
empire from her humble beginnings dumpster diving.

Speaker 4 (08:55):
And one of the critiques.

Speaker 3 (08:57):
That sort of emerged from this culture was that girl
boss culture really put the burden of systemic inequality on
individual women.

Speaker 4 (09:06):
Right.

Speaker 3 (09:07):
This era really told women the problem wasn't I don't
know the gender pay gap.

Speaker 4 (09:12):
Lack of childcare, the structure of workplaces. No, no, no, no.

Speaker 3 (09:15):
The problem is that we women weren't leaning in hard enough,
weren't working hard enough, weren't speaking the right way when
we went to meetings, we weren't sitting in the right
place when we articulated our ideas. We weren't using the
right cadence or the right words. It was aspirational for
a very specific kind of woman. Sam astutely figured out

(09:36):
very early on that woman was usually white and already
very wealthy or privileged, and it really asked everyone else
to fit themselves into this system that wasn't designed for
us and not really spend that much time asking questions
about like, well, why is a system like that? And
do I really even want to fit into the system
that is so broken and so so sort of rigged

(09:56):
against me.

Speaker 4 (09:57):
Again, Annie's mom really up in knowledge. We're a nine
year old.

Speaker 1 (10:03):
Hey, I think about it all the time. It stuck
out in my brain.

Speaker 5 (10:06):
So she did her job, Yes she did.

Speaker 3 (10:10):
This was also kind of the same era of Cheryl
Sandberg we talked. She came up in the Social Network episode.
She comes up a lot consider considering. I would say
that a lot, in my opinion, a lot of her
sort of cultural cachet has really faded. If you sneak
back to that era. When Cheryl Sandberg joined Facebook, it
was a big deal. She wrote lean In, and she

(10:31):
sort of became this like figurehead for a certain kind
of woman and a certain kind of feminism.

Speaker 4 (10:38):
Right.

Speaker 3 (10:39):
I would say that lasted for a little while, but
that we kind of thought we.

Speaker 4 (10:45):
Were done with this era, you know, we.

Speaker 3 (10:49):
We I think that most people today would acknowledge that
leanin and girl boss culture did not actually create meaningful
liberation for women. It might have helped some individual women
succeed at work or make economic gains, and I'm not
discounting that, but in terms of collective liberation for women,

(11:09):
I think most of us can probably agree it didn't
do that. However, you might have thought me left Girl
Boss lean In culture in the dust. I would argue
that AI is attempting to revitalize it right now, in
twenty twenty six, almost ten years later.

Speaker 1 (11:25):
Yes, And I find this really interesting for a lot
of reasons, but just this whole idea of Sometimes it
reminds me of people who wear like lucky shirts all
the time for their sports, whatever team they want to win,
they wear the lucky shirt because it makes you feel
like you have power. I've always felt like this is
sort of the same. If I do these sane, these

(11:47):
steps that these people are telling me to do, then
I can beat this system, that I can beat all
these rules that are around me that are really the problem.

Speaker 2 (11:58):
It's not that you're not working.

Speaker 1 (11:59):
Hard off at all, but you know, to have these
people who are so well off and who aren't facing
a lot of the same obstacles being the ones to say, hey,
lean in, you know, and it kind of seems like
it's the same girl Bosses that are coming back for
this AI.

Speaker 3 (12:20):
Yeah, that is pretty much what I would say is
going on, that these exact same figures who sort of
sold us girl bossing and leaning in as the key
to liberation for women.

Speaker 4 (12:31):
They are back.

Speaker 3 (12:32):
The message is pretty much the same, only this time
the product is not by my book take my course,
it's youth AI.

Speaker 1 (12:41):
Yes, So who are who is the cast of characters
are looking atverage it?

Speaker 4 (12:46):
Oh, let's break them down.

Speaker 3 (12:48):
We can start with Cheryl Sandberg, former CEO of Facebook.
That she's almost too perfect of an example of this.
So she was the original architect of lean In. She
wrote the book lean In started a women's organ like
a women's empowermentn organization. I've actually met her in person,
a fun fact. It's again hard to remember now because

(13:09):
it so seems like a relic of a time gone by.

Speaker 4 (13:12):
But lean In was huge.

Speaker 3 (13:15):
When it came out, and now the organization has sort
of pivoted their focus to closing what they call the
AI gender gap. And so I think I talked about
this on an episode that I did with you all
a while back. It is true that women are adopting
AI at work less than men are in the workplace,
and there's lots of very interesting reasons for that, which
we can get into. But her organization is like, you

(13:37):
know what, that is a problem we need to close
that gap.

Speaker 4 (13:40):
That is what we're gonna do. So in service of
doing that, if you.

Speaker 3 (13:43):
Were to go to the lean in social media channels,
they're posting memes where it's Carrie Bradshaw from Sex and
the City typing on her laptop and wondering, I couldn't help,
but wonder is AI the New Boys Club.

Speaker 5 (14:00):
I love that they take a dated show to make
a dated reference about the news. Yeah, Like it just
feels like they're clawing their way back with like, we
got to rebrand. This is how we're going to make
it back.

Speaker 4 (14:12):
It absolutely feels that way.

Speaker 3 (14:14):
And another part of their leaning sort of like current
thing they're doing right now is they're trying to combat
the trad wife trend by telling women to use AI
and so like that is their mission right now, is
like women need to be leaning away from the poll of.

Speaker 4 (14:31):
Tradwife nonsense and instead AI.

Speaker 3 (14:35):
And again, I feel like there's gotta be something in
the middle between trad.

Speaker 4 (14:40):
Wife and like AI.

Speaker 1 (14:44):
I was gonna bring up chadwives because I actually think
that's kind of the same thing that they're doing is
because tradwives often are like, oh, it was just me
that did this and it didn't take it. It's not
my job and all of this, but it turns out
it is their job. It took a lot of time,
and they're hiding how much money they have or how

(15:05):
well off they are. This feels like the same thing
of like, oh, if you just use AI, then you can.

Speaker 2 (15:13):
You can succeed in this way similar.

Speaker 3 (15:17):
That is such a perfect segue into what Reese Witherspoon
is doing. So I'm not even like mad at the
tradwives for real like that. The thing that bugs me
about tradwife nonsense is exactly what you just described, where
they are pretending something that is not true is true.
So they're pretending I don't work and you shouldn't work either.

(15:40):
Oh me, I just make a million dollars a year
running this multimedia content agency and branding agency.

Speaker 4 (15:47):
Honey, that's a job. You have a job, just like
I have a job. We all work. You work, you
make money.

Speaker 3 (15:54):
A lot of these tradwives are actually the breadwinners and
their households and their partners are like on their pay.
Don't tell me that you don't have a job. The
thing that bugs me about it is that they are
essentially lying and trying to make themselves seem like, oh,
I don't I'm just a I don't know anything about
content marketing when it's like, okay, you do this for

(16:16):
a living. And I feel like the video that Reese
Witherspoon made and got into a lot of hot water
about recently about AI kind of gave me the same vibe.
I'm not saying that Reese Witherspoon is a tad wife
and eddie capacity, because she's definitely not. But in this
video that she made about AI, she's standing in her
kitchen and she's making a smoothie. She's definitely going for

(16:36):
ah shucks, I'm just a mom.

Speaker 4 (16:38):
Kind of energy.

Speaker 3 (16:39):
And then she says, you know, hey, I was at
a book club recently and I asked the women in
my book club how many of you all are using AI?
And of these ten women in the book club, only
three of them said that they use it. So of
those three, she was like, okay, well, how many of
you feel like you know what you're doing, you're confident
in using it? And only one woman raised her hand,
and so she said, oh, if this means that one

(17:01):
out of ten women, only one out of ten women
is confident using AI, women are gonna get left behind.
Technology moves so quickly that if you don't get at
least a little bit familiar with it early on, it's
gonna advance and then you can't catch up.

Speaker 4 (17:13):
And the tone of the video.

Speaker 3 (17:15):
To me had this kind of awe, shucks, I don't
know much about AI, but let's learn about it together vibe,
which is what I resented.

Speaker 4 (17:26):
I don't even it's not even.

Speaker 3 (17:28):
That I really am that bothered by telling women to
get mixed up with AI. I don't personally agree with that,
and I don't personally agree with the framing, But it's
not even that that really bugs me. It's the way
that the packaging is so clearly a lie.

Speaker 4 (17:42):
Why do you need to lie about this?

Speaker 3 (17:44):
Why do you need to pretend like, aw shucks, I'm
just a mom making a smoothie.

Speaker 4 (17:48):
Let's figure out this AI business together, shall we.

Speaker 1 (17:51):
Ladies, if our brains can handle it.

Speaker 3 (17:54):
Yes, there's like a scold. There's like a scolding element
to it as well. Right again, if Reese wanted to
make a rands, any of these people wanted to make
a video that was like, here's what we know about
what women are saying and telling us about why we
are adopting AI less and have an honest conversation about that.

(18:14):
I'd be all for it, you and we've all done
it on the podcast together. What's so different about this is.

Speaker 4 (18:21):
Scolding women for the way that they feel.

Speaker 3 (18:25):
So women are saying things like, hey, I am more
sensitive to some of the ethical concerns about using AI,
or hey, I know that I have more eyes and
more scrutiny on me in the workplace than my male counterpart.

Speaker 4 (18:37):
So I'm incredibly.

Speaker 3 (18:39):
Cautious about AI use because I know I'm going to
be able to be more scrutinized if I use it.
If a man uses it, they're gonna call him an innovator.
If I use it, they're gonna call me a cheater.
Those are kind of nuanced reasons that the research shows
that women aren't using AI the same rates as men are.
They are not reasons to scold women, you know what
I'm saying. There are topics for conversation. Sure, I don't

(19:02):
like the scolding tone and the tone of well, you're
gonna get left behind, You're not gonna makes as much money,
and you know what, it's gonna be your fault.

Speaker 4 (19:10):
It's the same girl Boss stuff.

Speaker 3 (19:12):
That's the same thing that the girl Boss culture sold
us that if I didn't lean in enough enough, I
didn't speak the right way, or didn't sit in the
right place at meetings, I would be left behind in
my career.

Speaker 4 (19:22):
It's the same school the energy. Now it's just for AI.

Speaker 5 (19:26):
And I kind of put a weird like and I
felt this way about the Girl Boss too. I remember
thinking they don't want all everyone to succeed. It kind
of pit other women against women with this very conversation
of like it's limited, there's only limited capacity for success,
and you women already know you're not gonna be at
the top priority you don't have much space to begin with.

(19:47):
So it felt like it was a lot like the
competitive nature of women against women. And I feel like
this conversation of like this other woman is going to
take you out, and like it still feels that way
even though the trying to give it to all women.

Speaker 4 (20:01):
Yeah, that's such a good point.

Speaker 3 (20:03):
I definitely see a little competitive But don't you want
the edge over other women? Listen, the women in my
camp are getting ahead economically using AI. Do you want
to be left at do you want to be part
of my AI circle of winners or the folks who
are left behind, like people whose careers are struggling, like
I don't know award winning celebrated writer Roxanne Gay. Cause

(20:26):
when Reese Witherspoon put this out online, somebody told Roxanne.

Speaker 4 (20:30):
When Roxanne Gay said replied and said, oh, Reese, this
is not the vibe.

Speaker 3 (20:35):
Someone was like, Roxanne Gay, you need to get on
board with AI or get left behind. And I'm like,
you're talking to Roxane Gay right now. I don't think
Roxanne Gay's career is in jeopardy.

Speaker 4 (20:46):
I actually think Roxanne Gay will be fine.

Speaker 5 (20:48):
Right as in fact that she tried AI for her job,
she would get in trouble.

Speaker 3 (20:52):
Yes, exactly exactly that, And like just the like audacity
to tell somebody like Roxanne Gay that and Reese Witherspoon
not for nothing.

Speaker 4 (21:02):
She has sort of done this before.

Speaker 3 (21:03):
In twenty twenty one, she told women that Crypto and
NFTs were here to stay and if you didn't get
involved now, you were gonna get left behind. And we
see how that worked out. Right, every woman who didn't
get on board with Crypto and NFTs will never economically
recover from that terrible choice. To not get really, really
heavily and financially involved in NFTs and crypto. What a

(21:25):
bad choice that turned out to be for those women?

Speaker 4 (21:27):
Am I right?

Speaker 2 (21:28):
Right?

Speaker 5 (21:29):
Who was it Justin Bieber who can't sell is n FD?

Speaker 4 (21:32):
Yeah?

Speaker 5 (21:33):
That he bought from millions.

Speaker 3 (21:34):
And if he did sell it, he would take such
a lot, right, really smart decision to get in on
the ground floor of that one.

Speaker 5 (22:01):
I mean, it really feels like she's a part of
someone someone is paying her a ridiculous like even I
don't know does she have a sponsor? Is someone is
chat JBT paying her? Is some altman paying her money
to be like I need you to push this out
for those women?

Speaker 3 (22:16):
Ooh, this is a great question. It's not one that
I can completely answer. So I, like a lot of people,
when I saw that video, I said, well, she's this
is definitely this has the whiff of a of a
sponsored post that is not appropriately being labeled as such.
She did clarify that nobody was paying her to talk
about AI, but then a couple of weeks later, her

(22:37):
production company Hello Sunshine, which was recently about by A Blackstone,
did partner with Purdue University to offer online classes for
young women on AI adoption.

Speaker 4 (22:46):
So I can't totally answer whether or not.

Speaker 3 (22:49):
She's being paid specifically to talk about AI, but I
do feel confident in saying her stance of I was
just it just organically came up at my book club
to talk about and now I am doing a partnership
with Purdue University about AI adoption for women.

Speaker 4 (23:07):
That don't sound right to me. I can tell you that, No.

Speaker 1 (23:09):
What do your book clubs look like? That's the topic
of conversation. And you have another example that I was
interested in because I've been hearing a lot about this
person lately.

Speaker 3 (23:20):
Ooh yeah, Mel Robbins. So Mel Robbins people listening. She
probably needs no introduction. She wrote the book Let them
her whole philosophy. I wouldn't really call her girl boss.
I'm not the most familiar with Mel Robbins, but I
do know that her book, her theory is all about
if someone or something has given you a hard time,
let them just let them let it. And so Mel

(23:43):
Robins does have a partnership with co Pilot, and she
made this post digging into some of the research that
we've talked about on this podcast about women adopting AI.

Speaker 4 (23:51):
Less. So I will shout.

Speaker 3 (23:53):
Out to her for grounding the conversation in research.

Speaker 4 (23:58):
And she says women need to.

Speaker 3 (23:59):
Be a adopting AI more, and she gave some specific
examples of how you could start if you were somebody
who had not used AI and you wanted to get
involved with it. She gave a specific prompt and she said,
ask Microsoft Copilot this specific question in this specific prompt
to help you get your finance as an order. And

(24:20):
one of the pieces of that prompt was her saying,
ask Microsoft Copilot what financial records, bank statements, financial information
it needs from you to help get your finance as
an order.

Speaker 4 (24:32):
And so this is what I took real umbrage with.

Speaker 3 (24:35):
Again, I'm not even really necessarily against them saying like, oh,
play around with AI, get your hands dirty with this,
see what it's about. I'm not even necessarily saying that
that's a bad thing or that they shouldn't be doing that.

Speaker 4 (24:46):
What I took.

Speaker 3 (24:47):
Umbrage with here is that she her post is very
clearly talking to an audience that doesn't really have a
lot of technical or AI know how. The prompt that
she told them to use is it's very specific. Yet
she didn't mention anything about redacting these documents. You know,
if you're gonna put together a specific prompt for people

(25:08):
who have not used AI a lot or tech or
maybe not even very tech savvy, you can't assume that
they're gonna know to like redact documents. And it is
absolutely a terrible idea to share your sensitive financial data
with Microsoft Copilot.

Speaker 4 (25:24):
You absolutely should not do that.

Speaker 3 (25:25):
So, even beyond the conversation of whether or not AI
is an actual financial advisor spoiler alert, it is not,
you shouldn't like it. Just felt very irresponsible to me
to tell women to do this, not for not the
Microsoft was hacked in twenty twenty four by Russian state
BA attackers who were able to get into the emails
of not just senior Microsoft staff, but they're also their

(25:47):
own security team, and so Microsoft holds all of the
information that you feed into Copilot for up to eighteen months.

Speaker 4 (25:54):
Mel Robbins didn't tell anybody any of this.

Speaker 3 (25:57):
She just said, go ahead and put your financial information
into Copilot. I found that to be like irresponsible advice
to women.

Speaker 5 (26:03):
With all of the hacking it situations, I feel like
she could be held liable if someone said based on
her information I did this and her recommendation, which by
the way, she's a lawyer, Like, yeah, she's come up
a few times in our episodes. I can't help it
because there are things that I'm like, self help gurus

(26:23):
need to be stopped. Like, yeah, that's a whole different episode.
I'm gonna put that at that. But like, not only
is she giving really bad advice, I feel like legally
she should be thinking of that through putting your sensitive
financial documents into a program that has been seen as
unsafe also probably one of the worst known AI programs

(26:46):
out there.

Speaker 3 (26:46):
Oh absolutely, And like I do think when it comes
to Mel Robbins, I'm trying to think why this left
such a bad taste in my mouth. I think it's
because we're in a financial climate that's kind of rough
and people, you know myself and included or experiencing economic
uncertainty and anxiety, and that's like a very specific kind
of sensitive trigger. I think using financial anxiety as a

(27:11):
way to manipulate women into using AI and then using
and then telling them to do it in this like
incredibly ill advised way just really doesn't sit well with me.
And you know, Mel Robbins is super wealthy. Mel Robbins
definitely has human financial advisors and human lawyers and the

(27:32):
human accountants. Mel Robbins is I can almost guarantee you
she is not uploading her bank statements into a chatbot.
She just thinks that you should upload your bank statements
into a chatbot. She thinks that that is the level
of financial advice that you deserve. She has access to
probably the best financial folks in the world. She thinks

(27:53):
that you deserve an AI chatbot that is not a
human financial advisor for whom if you do, if something
goes wrong, there is no person or.

Speaker 4 (28:04):
Human for there to be any kind of accountability.

Speaker 3 (28:06):
That's the kind of financial services that she thinks that
you deserve. And I just think in a climate where
a lot of women and everybody are financially struggling, that's
not really that cool to.

Speaker 5 (28:17):
Me, right, I mean, you're definitely not wrong because people
see her the reason she is as successful as she is.
People really look up to what she is saying. They
trust what she has said, whether it's her book telling
them let them like, being like, let them loose, let
it be, let it go type of conversations. Some of
these conversations have changed in a life. They have paid

(28:40):
money to go and see her, They have paid money
to a sponsor and help. She has one of the
number one podcasts because it is all of these great
advice that they're seeking because either they're lonely, they don't
feel like they can trust others, and they really feel
this connection. So if you're trusting someone, because we know
as podcasters or the responsibility we hold in these conversations

(29:00):
and trying to get the right information, we are oftentimes
talking about how nervous we get if we think that
we did something, we said something, or we misspoke, like
coming back to like, oh, I have to change that
or we have to correct that in the next episode.
Type of conversation. Knowing that this is who she is
having millions and millions of listeners, probably predominantly women, who
are just trying to find someone to tell them it's

(29:22):
going to be okay and this is how and then
to do something like that feels like such a predatory act,
especially when it's sponsored by a company that just needs
to make money off of other people's skull ability.

Speaker 4 (29:36):
Yeah, I'm curious.

Speaker 3 (29:38):
I often feel like I'm just the personality type that
is always going to be suspicious of self help leaders
and gurus and all of that. It's like, and I
don't doubt that people have found real value in those
folks are I'm not, you know, no shade, but I
think there's something about me where as soon as somebody
is trying to tell me that they have the answer,

(30:00):
I'm like, oh, really, you know, I'm just I'm a
skeptic at heart. I guess where do you all fall
in this sort of self help trajectory?

Speaker 4 (30:08):
Just out of curiosity?

Speaker 5 (30:10):
I feel like goes pretty out in my take just now.
But after like our generations of watching my parents specifically,
I think y'all will know fall in love with the
content that Oprah And don't get me wrong, Oprah did
her thing whatever whatnot, But like bringing on people like
doctor Phil, bringing on people like doctor Oz and projecting

(30:32):
their fame and their notoriety in this world, that seeing
that has become what had become and I think still
is like the snake oil salesman of today. If you
don't actually have a degree in any of these things,
and if you come out with just absolute like musts
without any fluctuation that as a social worker, as a

(30:55):
social background, that gives me like reflags all over the place.

Speaker 4 (30:59):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (31:00):
I think when I was younger, like middle school, I
was much more I don't know, desperate almost for like
what is the answer usually around weight loss at the time,
what is the thing?

Speaker 2 (31:14):
But as I got older.

Speaker 1 (31:15):
There's something about it that it's really hard to disconnect
for me because you know, a show like this one,
we have sponsors, but we're not necessarily trying to sell
you anything that's going to like change your life, Like,
we're just trying to keep the show running and this
is how it works. And I feel like it in

(31:36):
that way, it feels more transparent.

Speaker 2 (31:39):
Like, yes, we all know that shows have to have ads.

Speaker 1 (31:43):
I can skip the ads, but it's when someone is
trying to sell you something that is like, this is
how you turn your life around.

Speaker 2 (31:51):
It'll completely change your life, and here's how. I don't know.

Speaker 1 (31:54):
There's just something about it that feels you're trying to
sell me a way to like live longer.

Speaker 2 (31:59):
I don't know. This something that feels a little bit
more wrong about it. I'm not sure.

Speaker 4 (32:06):
Yeah, I feel you.

Speaker 3 (32:08):
And it's interesting that you put it in the perspective
of being a podcaster because I once had a call
with a consultant about how I could try to make
more money from podcasting and the bit and I was like, Oh,
this person's seems like they haven't all figured out.

Speaker 4 (32:24):
I'll take the call.

Speaker 3 (32:25):
And the big thing, the big secret was you should
turn your podcast into an online course and then people
will pay for that online course. And I was like, oh,
scamming people. Okay, sure, great, thanks glad we took this call. Yeah,
your big idea with scams and I guess not that
it's but like I guess scam it eat too strong.

(32:46):
But you're so right that I want to make interesting,
informative content that people feel engaged with. I don't want
to sell access to something that makes it seem like
I have all the answers, because I do not. You
know anybody that says I have all the answers. There's

(33:07):
a one fits all solution to the problem that you have,
and if you just pay me, I'll give you that answer,
whether it's speaking differently at a work meeting to get
a raise or AI. I'm just automatically sort of skeptical
of that. And I think that the fact that we
have so many of these girl Boss relics who are
still around selling that as a big feminist win.

Speaker 4 (33:29):
My spidy senses are just going off.

Speaker 3 (33:31):
And again, I don't even really have a problem if
Reese Witherspoon wants to have courses that market AI to
women or do a skill share for women to get
involved in AI, I don't even really necessarily have a
problem with that. I don't necessarily, but I don't think
we need to be framing it as a feminist win.
I don't think we need to be framing it as
this is the work of the business of feminism is

(33:54):
getting more women involved in AI. Just say you want
to run an AI training or you want want to
see more women in the space. That's fine.

Speaker 4 (34:02):
I don't really like that.

Speaker 3 (34:03):
You know, you're not Angela Davis because they're getting women
invauld in AI, and that's the way that people are
sort of framing it.

Speaker 4 (34:09):
There was a very.

Speaker 3 (34:10):
Interesting piece of a cut about this it reads. One
startup founder Eron Gau said that the technology could be
a twenty four to seven mentor for women, helping to
free them from the weight of imposter syndrome or offering
feedback on overly apologetic language in their email. By the way,
there's been studies that demonstrate that AI will. When women

(34:31):
use AI to try to get like negotiation advice, AI
tells them to settle for less money than they would
a man. So I don't know that this would be
a great digital mentor to have in your back pocket
twenty four to seven. Given that that's the case, she
goes on to say, this technology could be more than
this another tool she wrote for Time, It could be
the great equalizer we've been waiting for, giving women the support, efficiency,

(34:54):
and confidence that prior systems have consistently failed to provide.
Growl and other prominent women in tech recently helped Gloria
steinem use AI for the first time. As we sat
with this remarkable icon in her home where countless leaders
have shared their stories and planned for change, we confronted
an uncomfortable truth. Women are once again being left behind.

(35:16):
And her Time piece ends with this, she says. As
we left Gloria's apartment, she reflected on what she had
learned about AI, and her words captured the possibility ahead.
You've created a whole universe here that didn't exist before,
but like a whole universe built for who, built by who.

Speaker 4 (35:35):
At what cost?

Speaker 3 (35:36):
And who is paying that cost, who's benefiting the same
questions that we probably should have been asking the first
time around we were all being sold girl boss culture
as our salvation.

Speaker 4 (35:45):
Those questions are nowhere to be seen in this dynamic.

Speaker 5 (35:49):
I mean, I feel like I don't understand AI because
I'm like, how is it going to change anything other
than your plasiarizing things in It?

Speaker 4 (36:00):
Sounds like you do understand it from my perspective.

Speaker 5 (36:03):
Okay, So I'm like, I don't understand how this makes
you successful because it just sounds like it's teaching you
how to steal the original content and change into new things.
Maybe I'm wrong. It will teach you, like I know
people who use it to be like teaching me how
to do this program, and it'll tell you how to
put codes and what's what and whatnot and create websites

(36:25):
that you want or change the looks of things cool.
Cool cool. So maybe instead of having to go to
the route of going to school to learn coding or
classes and you can just easily find 'ro outes cool.

Speaker 4 (36:37):
I get that.

Speaker 5 (36:38):
But even with that, outside of those small things, I
can't understand how women can be bigger with AI outside
of being actually in the companies, which is the conversation
we should be having with the companies about, like, are
you hiring developers that are women? Are you bringing in
people women who understand that what kind of say guards

(37:00):
are needed in these programs? Yeah, that's what we need
for women to be a part of the AI world.
Am I wrong?

Speaker 3 (37:09):
No, You're absolutely right, And I think that's the conversation
that I will be completely down to have. But instead
the conversation that a lot of these influencers and girl
bossers and all of that are selling us, are you
can use AI to individually improve your life in these small,
tangible ways. It's not who built this and we're women involved.

(37:31):
And again there's some of the research about why women
are using AI less is that they see the people
who are leaders in the AI space, the people who
take up outside and not to say that there's not
other kinds of folks in this AI space. Are definitely
are those people just are not getting enough shine and attention.
But the people that you hear from are the sam
Altmans and the Elon Musks and the Mark.

Speaker 4 (37:51):
Zuckerbergs of the world.

Speaker 3 (37:52):
It's no surprise that women see the people who are
in charge and taking up a lot of space. They
know the track records that these people have when it
comes to build technology and how that technology harms and
marginalized women, the very same thing we were talking about
when it came to the social network, and it's no
surprise that these women are like, eh, I'll pass. And
so if you wanted to have the tougher conversation about

(38:13):
those institutional issues, let's have at it. But in the meantime,
the conversation that I'm really not moved by is you
can use AI to plan your wedding or you can
use AI to you know. Doctor Sarah Saska, a gender
and technology researcher, put it very well on Instagram recently.
She said, as AI becomes increasingly associated with surveillance, militarization,

(38:36):
and labor displacement, influencers are now being paid to sell
it to women through beauty, wellness, dating, motherhood, and self
help culture. AI is being softened, rebranded from infrastructure to lifestyle,
and I think that is really the move that you're
sort of describing Sam, But like they're taking something that
is genuinely like complicated and implicated in serious harm and

(39:00):
that we should be having a conversation about who built
it and the institutional failures they're in, and they're just
rebranding it as this individual wellness product or a self
optimization tool or a feminist act. And it's no wonder
why just from a messaging standpoint, that brand of messaging
is failing to connect with people. People see right through it.

(39:22):
People women don't like it. It's not we don't believe you.
You need more people, you know.

Speaker 5 (39:28):
Well, Also with that, like if we're talking about feminism,
the age of feminism, we are well, actually we're going
to talk about where we are in feminism, in what
state we are, But like, intersexual feminism has become the
biggest conversation. So when we're talking about intersexual feminism, we're
also talking about climate change. We're also talking about making
sure that we are saving the world water, salvage, all

(39:51):
of these things. And what we know about AI. One
of the biggest things we know about AI is they
are killing the climate at a faster they are harming
the systems, they're taking water that is absolutely in dire
need in some of these areas, a lot of the areas,
especially doing droughts. So why would someone who would truly
be described as a feminist today, Why would we take

(40:15):
this on and be like, yeah, absolutely, this is something
that we need to be a part of because this
is gonna change feminism.

Speaker 3 (40:20):
And that's one of the things that women self report
when you look at the research of why women are
adopting AI less than men, women are self report being
more sensitive to environmental impacts and concerns around AI than
men are.

Speaker 4 (40:33):
And so I think that's a.

Speaker 3 (40:35):
That's a reasonable conversation that somebody who was reasonably trying
to get women to embrace AI would want to talk
about and like make space for. But I guess what
I'm saying is that these people, these women that we're
seeing with the big platforms who are trying to lead
this women get involved with AI brigade, are not having
those conversations. It's that they're not actually listening to the

(40:57):
concerns that women are actually voicing about this tonology.

Speaker 5 (41:01):
Well, you know, on top of that, the thing that
is interesting to me, especially with the Girl Boss coming back,
because again, as I said, it's like it's poor rich
white women, right, this is utterly about privilege, was what
it seems, And it feels like we're back to that again,
Like those who have privilege, are like, no, this is
going to really make us rich, that's the whole goal,

(41:22):
and everybody else is like, is that the goal?

Speaker 4 (41:25):
Like I don't.

Speaker 5 (41:26):
It's also it's not attainable for all of us. It's
cute for you who is being sponsored by AI, but
for the rest of us, this is not benefiting us
in any least way.

Speaker 3 (41:36):
Oh, I love that you brought it there, because that
takes me to the OG girl Boss herself. Sofia Amoroso,
Sofia A Morosso is an interesting person. She is someone
who I have been following for a long time. She
was the OG girl Boss. She made this post about
how she is using AI to streamline her life and

(41:59):
when she didn't like it, or when a lot of
women did not like it. She said on her substack,
women are sleeping on AI and it's gonna cost them,
And that to me is very interesting because when Sophia
left Nasty Gal, she did not leave under good circumstances.
She had to step down because the company could not
keep operating with her, so she was sort of like

(42:20):
it just stick didn't go very well. Then she started
a media company called girl Boss, which there was a
Netflix show about her life called girl Boss. None of
this stuff went over very well, and so after that
I've sort of been watching her and for a while
she was doing online courses for entrepreneurs. Like basically, let's
just say whatever. I don't want to use the word grists,

(42:42):
because I don't think she's a grifter. Let's just say
that she's someone who whatever the new thing to make
money seems to be, whether it's selling online courses to
women entrepreneurs or selling women on like investment advice, she's
on it. And so the fact that she would be
pivoting to AI influencer right now is on brand. The

(43:05):
fact that people who somehow always find themselves on the
ground floor of the new thing that you can sell
to make a quick buck. The fact that those people
are all like, oh, it's AI now is unsurprising to me.

Speaker 4 (43:19):
Does that make sense? You kind to pick it up
and I'm putting down.

Speaker 3 (43:22):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (43:22):
Yeah, she can afford this conversation, like it literally is
what she was doing previously in a new hustle.

Speaker 3 (43:30):
Yes, Like, I don't want to say these people are

(43:52):
grifters because that sounds too strong, but I think that
they have sniffed out that there is money to be made,
and why not that make I genuinely do not think
that The vibe here is that, sisters, we could all
have economic freedom if we all just embrace AI, we
will all be rich. I think it's I will be
rich if I scold you into paying me to teach

(44:14):
you how to use AI like that, Like that's what
I think this is really about here, And I wouldn't
even necessarily have a problem with that. But you don't
need to scare, scold or manipulate people into doing that,
especially not women. And you don't need to be doing
that and trying to sell me that as like a
feminist win, like you're it's not a moral cruisade.

Speaker 4 (44:33):
You're trying to make a buck.

Speaker 3 (44:34):
I'm yeah, like do your thing, make your money, but like, yes,
let me real about.

Speaker 1 (44:37):
It, exactly the transparency you're trying to make money, got it?

Speaker 2 (44:42):
Yes, don't scare, especially because the financial situation people are desperate.

Speaker 1 (44:47):
And that's what makes me really angry about it is
when somebody's like, here, you go, just work harder, this
is what you need. But I also find interesting it's
Sophia or so how to quite a response to some
of the critiques she was getting about her AI pivot.

Speaker 3 (45:06):
Yes, so she posted a screenshot on her Instagram story
showing how many followers she lost on Instagram after she
posted about the ways that she uses AI to streamline
her life, and she said, this is what posting about
AI does wild weeding.

Speaker 4 (45:20):
Out the Luddites that had the tenor of an insult.

Speaker 3 (45:23):
It was clear to me she meant that as an
insult to people who weren't down with AI or like.

Speaker 4 (45:26):
Didn't like this post. But here's the thing about Luddites.

Speaker 3 (45:30):
The Lunnite movement is actually often misrepresented as being anti technology.
The original Lutites were skilled workers in nineteenth century England
who were protesting how factory owners were using new machines
to cut wages, replace labor, and concentrate power and wealth

(45:50):
from the hands of the many to the hands of
the few. So the Lunites were not saying technology is bad.
They were pushing back and chow and asking questions about
who benefits from technology, who bears the cost right and so.

Speaker 4 (46:06):
In a kind of way.

Speaker 3 (46:07):
Even though I can tell that Sofia Amoroso meant this
as an insult, she kind of accidentally stumbled on the
truth because the loutites actually put it, who took issue
or took umbrage or unfollowed her after her AI post.
They're not anti technology. They're asking questions, questions that we
should be asking about this technology.

Speaker 4 (46:27):
So in a kind of way, she ended up being
sort of correct.

Speaker 1 (46:32):
Well, and that's a good segue into what I think
It's one of the most interesting pieces of this conversation
is as we've been discussing, as we've talked in previous
episodes about women do have hesitations about adopting AI, and
I think looking into those reasons is really important and

(46:54):
tells a lot about the situation of what's going on exactly.

Speaker 3 (46:58):
And the entire Girl Lost pitch kind of rests on
the premise that women are not using AI as much
as men, which is true. And the thing that they
add is and that's a problem because women are going
to be economically left behind.

Speaker 4 (47:10):
It's a problem that the.

Speaker 3 (47:11):
Women need to fix, not the reasons or the institutional
failures that have led to this problem. It's the women
who are doing something wrong and they need to be
scolded into fixing it otherwise they're screwed. Now the data
is real, right, So a Harvard meta analysis of one
hundred and forty three thousand people across eighteen studies found

(47:33):
that women are about twenty to twenty five percent less
likely to use generative AI. Women make up about only
forty two percent of chatgybt website users globally and twenty
seven percent of mobile app downloads. This gender gap that's
consistent across education levels, regions, and industries.

Speaker 4 (47:51):
However, the reasons.

Speaker 3 (47:53):
Why I've alluded to some of them are very interesting
to me, and I think more interesting than the dynamic
of just scolding women for getting left behind on AI.

Speaker 4 (48:03):
What have you believe?

Speaker 3 (48:04):
So the standard explanation is that women have less access
to AI, less training and AI, and less confidence around AI.
That confidence thing is explicitly what Reese Witherspoon noted in
her AI video, and there is a little bit of
truth to that. However, even when researchers equalized for access
one study in Kenya where women were explicitly offered the

(48:25):
same training tools, women still used chat gbt about thirteen
percent less than men. So it's not really just about
access or less training or less confidence.

Speaker 4 (48:37):
It's about something else.

Speaker 1 (48:39):
Yes, and I think the reasons are very telling about
why why we shouldn't be blaming women individually and instead
looking at systemic things, systemic reasons.

Speaker 3 (48:52):
Exactly, And I think women are more likely to identify
AI's real problems, right. Women are more likely to flag
biased outputs, and the bias is very real. One study
said that an AI chatbot advised women to ask for
significantly lower salaries than men with identical profiles. And so,

(49:13):
if you're selling women, oh AI could be a great
twenty four to seven mentor for you. AI could talking
to AI to get it to revise your emails to
make you sound more confident in the workplace. That's going
to help you lean in and get more money. I
don't know if this study seems to suggest that it's
like the same old, tired advice that you might get
from a man in a workplace. Women are also more

(49:35):
likely to cite things like privacy concerns, and of course
women experience higher rates of tech facilitated abuse. So none
of this is a rational or unreasonable hesitation around AI.
This is real stuff, and the thing that might be
able to present a fix for this is institutional Right,
It's exactly what you were alluding to earlier, of like

(49:56):
who is in the rooms where these tools are getting made,
who are asking the questions when it comes to these
things being developed and designed? Me using AI more as
one woman is not going to change any of this.
And so it's again just like what the girl Boss thing.
It is selling an individual solution to a problem that
is clearly institutional that you can't that one woman is

(50:17):
not going to be able to girl boss or lean
in her way out of.

Speaker 1 (50:21):
Yeah, it kind of reminds me of the similar conversation
but around sort of the you know, you just have
to work so hard and you'll make it, but around
women specifically, where it's like where how does she do it?
How is she a mom and she has a job
and she has kids and all of this stuff.

Speaker 2 (50:37):
I can very.

Speaker 1 (50:38):
Easily see them selling this idea, these girl Boss AI
people selling that idea to women who need a different solution. Yes,
they don't need an AI is not going to come
in and fix that, but they do need a solution.

Speaker 3 (50:57):
Yeah, exactly, and so are so like, there are so
many reasons why women are saying that they're hesitant around AI.
You know, as I said, women, our work is already
scrutinized more harshly.

Speaker 4 (51:13):
I worry that some of this.

Speaker 3 (51:14):
Just embrace AI ladies, it's time, it's good, could actually
get some women in trouble at work if they were
to embrace AI, because women's work is already scrutinized more
harshly than men. As one psychologist put it, women are
already discredited in workplaces. Having people know that you used
AI is just another thing that can be used to
undermine your credibility. And these rich ladies, who frankly don't

(51:39):
have to worry about office dynamics and workplace dynamics the
same way that the rest of us do, could actually
be giving people women advice that could set them back
in real ways.

Speaker 4 (51:49):
Right, Like, let's just like keep it for real.

Speaker 3 (51:52):
Mel Robbins probably isn't going to lose her job if
she uses AI and it goes south Sherry from the
real estate office in Des Moines, Iowa might actually be
risking her job if she uses AI because Mel Robbins
told her to and it doesn't go the way that
she was planning.

Speaker 1 (52:10):
Yeah, bad advice, just bad advice all around, or at
least like not taking into account the realities that most
people face.

Speaker 2 (52:19):
Yeah, I think.

Speaker 3 (52:20):
That's a good way of putting it, Like, women are
already really tasked with doing a lot more domestic labor
and childcare labor in their homes and also in offices,
all kinds of labor that that's on our shoulders. So
then when you factor in, okay, also learn AI. More
than half of all professionals say that learning AI feels
like a second job. So if you're a woman and

(52:42):
you're already have a job, and then a second job
caring for your kid or your aging parents or household labor,
the expectation that if you can't fit learning AI on
top of that, that you are somehow the failure. Again,
these are clearly institutional issues, and so I think, as
you say said, Annie, when women are being sold us

(53:04):
not using AI as our individual problem to fix rather
than something that is the result of institutional failures, we're
doing the same Girl Boss thing all over. We're locating
the problem in an individual women's choices rather than the
systems that produce those choices or problems in the technology itself.

Speaker 1 (53:25):
Right, So we've touched on this, but what are these
celebrities and influencers actually trying to sell for this?

Speaker 3 (53:36):
Well, if you ask me, going back to the sort
of girl Boss of it all, that era really promised
you that if you optimized hard enough, if you just
made the right choices and did the right stuff, you
could work your way out of systemic inequality. And I
don't think that anybody out there believes that that actually
worked for women. You know, the system did not change

(53:59):
because of the girl gl Boss era. The women who
leaned in the hardest did not close the pay gap.
Some of those women probably might have had individual gains
and individual economic successes and gotten better jobs and better pay,
and like good for them, had no shade to that,
but those gains were certainly not systemic or meaningful.

Speaker 4 (54:19):
And I think that women.

Speaker 3 (54:21):
Just got better at surviving inside of an unequal structure,
and in a lot of cases we burnt the f out,
Like if I had to say, probably my biggest personal
takeaway from the girl Boss era is that it leads
to feeling really spent and burnt out and not really
having the energy or capacity to figure out how to

(54:45):
get yourself out of this overwork mess that you're in. Right, So,
I just don't think it actually accomplished the change that
we were sort of sold that it would.

Speaker 2 (54:54):
Oh no, absolutely not.

Speaker 1 (54:55):
I mean again, it's you get to the end of
the ten steps whatever they sold you, and you feel
like you have failed.

Speaker 2 (55:02):
Where did I go wrong? What step was the one
that I didn't do it? And you are burning yourself.

Speaker 1 (55:07):
Out because it feels as though I have this blueprint now,
I paid for this blueprint now, and it's not resulting
in what I'm being told and what I was sold
and what I see from this person. And I think, Samantha,
you made a good point earlier about for well off people,

(55:27):
you can take your risk and I'm in ai. No,
I'm in crypto now or whatever it is, and if
you lose money, it's not going to destroy your life, probably,
but for people it will. For people who don't have
that support, it will. So no, I think it absolutely
was something that just burnt out a lot of women

(55:48):
and did not result in any real success.

Speaker 3 (55:53):
And something that you mentioned earlier, Adie, kind of along
those lines is I hadn't thought of it this way,
but now I'm seeing that a real connection to the
tradwife movement, because I think one of the reasons why
the tradwife movement really took off is that movements like
this really can take root when women are economically anxious,

(56:14):
during times of political or social or economic instability and anxiety,
which certain we're certainly in one now, and when people
are feeling really burnt out. You know, when I scroll
Instagram and I see a picture of a woman in
a prairie dress making bread in a lovely kitchen in
a lovely you know, mountain town. I'm exhausted. I work

(56:36):
a lot, and of course that looks appealing. And so
I think that AI is sort of the flip side
of that. You're saying, Okay, well you are exhausted, you
want to have more money so you can spend more
time with your kids. If it's not tradwife, maybe it's AI, right, Like,
it's the same kind of emotional and financial manipulation that

(56:58):
takes advantage of the way that our actual economic and
political climate feels very unstable right now. And so if
you're not gonna choose to make bread and leave your
job and like give a man control over your economic future,
maybe you'll choose AI. Maybe maybe that's gonna be the
thing that you choose that you're turning toward because of

(57:20):
this moment of economic instability. Again, it all comes back
to the same place, which to me is like manipulation, right.

Speaker 5 (57:26):
I mean, it's definitely reminiscent as you were talking about
when political times and economic times are unstable, kind of
like the stock market. Like it feels like when we
were promised with the booming of Wall Street that if
you invest in these things kind of how our parents
really really thought this four oh one k system, this

(57:46):
retirement system that we're gonna have when we're gonna put
our money in here, and which is like any you
were talking about, like maybe the last bit of money
that you have in praying that this is gonna give
you tenfold and putting your whole stock into this and
then realize saying when it crashes and it's not stable anymore,
you're the one. Those who put everything trusting in this,

(58:07):
like completely have are the one that's bankrupt that it
has ruined your life. And the people who are okay
are the ones that have told you do this, yeah,
because they have to build the system up somehow, and
that's taking from those who don't have enough but are
hoping to get that quote unquote dream.

Speaker 3 (58:26):
Exactly as the Cut put it, the new ambition is
not to scale new heights. It's to cling to what
you already have, don't get replaced, stay relevant, adapt or die.
And I think that really taps into exactly what you're
saying of they're cultivating this atmosphere of fear to tell women, Oh,
the worst thing you can do right now is not

(58:46):
embrace AI. If you don't embrace AI, you're gonna get replaced,
You're gonna lose all your money, You're not gonna be
able to economically succeed, and guess what, It'll be your
fault because you didn't listen to me about embracing AI,
Like it is creating these circumstances that, to me, do
not but lend themselves well to people adapting to new

(59:07):
things or adopting new things. Like the way that this
is being foisted on people is not a reasonable.

Speaker 4 (59:13):
Way to get people to try a new thing.

Speaker 3 (59:15):
Saying if you don't try this, you're basically going to
lose all your money and it'll be your fault is
not does not create the conditions of people wanting to
embrace this thing. And I guess, if I can make
one big point, it's like, I think, if these women
are actually interested in having women try AI now, I
don't think that women should be fearful of AI or

(59:36):
like think that this technology is like outside of our
reach or grasp, because it certainly is not. But if
they're interested in having more women in the space, there's
a way to do it and it's not this.

Speaker 1 (59:46):
Yeah, and I again, it's worth asking these questions. It
is worth asking why women do hesitate to adopt AI
and think instead of, as you said, Bridgett, instead of
turning the conversation to oh.

Speaker 2 (01:00:05):
Here women, you need to be brave and get on
board or else.

Speaker 1 (01:00:10):
And even with the stock market, Samantha, that the same
conversation happens to the stock market. Women are too afraid
to invest, they don't know what to do with money.
It's the same conversation that we see a lot where
it is reflecting the blame back on women as opposed
to looking at the system and why why it is
that women are more hesitant because we've been burnt before?

(01:00:32):
There are reasons.

Speaker 3 (01:00:34):
Isn't everything basically like, aren't women just stupid pieces of
trash who are to blame for their own problems? It
doesn't matter if we're talking about the stock market, AI,
our economic situations.

Speaker 4 (01:00:46):
Marrying an abusive guy.

Speaker 3 (01:00:47):
Like every it always comes back to, aren't women stupid
pieces of crap that can't be trusted with our own agency?

Speaker 2 (01:00:56):
Really further proof?

Speaker 3 (01:00:58):
See And just to like wrap it up, Listen, I'm
not saying don't use AI. Most of us are probably
interacting with AI already, sometimes interacting with AI like invisibly
without even really knowing. The question is not whether these
tools can be useful or not. The question to me

(01:01:18):
is like, who is controlling them, who is profiting from them,
who shaped them, who built them? And who is being
expected to absorb the harm that they sometimes can produce.
And so when the same women who are selling you
AI now are the same women who were selling you
lean In and girl Boss and NFTs and Crypto, and

(01:01:39):
when that pitch is identical, all of this urgency, all
of this framing of you don't want to be left behind,
Maybe the right response is not to just reach for
your credit card and play ball. Maybe a reasonable response
is to ask, like, who is benefiting from me believing this?

Speaker 4 (01:01:53):
And why are you selling this to me right now?

Speaker 3 (01:01:55):
You know the questions that the Luodites were asking, I
think were some of the right questions. And there's nothing
wrong with having the discernment and the pattern recognition of
really recognizing the track records of the women who sold
us on the fact that what they were selling could
actually improve conditions materially for women when they were selling

(01:02:17):
us girl Boss and Crypto and all of that. When
they're now selling us AI as the thing, there's nothing
wrong with being like, wait a minute, haven't we been
through this before?

Speaker 2 (01:02:27):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (01:02:28):
Yeah, absolutely, everything feels so cyclical, but we need to
keep we need to remember what's happened previously and afoid
it happening again. Yes, have these conversations well, Bridget. As always,
we could go on and on. There's so much to
talk about with this conversation, but for now, thank you

(01:02:50):
so much for being here. As always, where can the
good listeners find you?

Speaker 4 (01:02:54):
You can listen to my podcast. There are norgles on
the internet.

Speaker 3 (01:02:57):
You can pre order my new audiobook coming on July seventeen,
called Love at First Prompt. You can get it at
Love at First Prompt dot ai, and you can follow
me on Instagram at Ridget Marie and DC.

Speaker 1 (01:03:06):
Yes, go do all of the stuff if you haven't already, Listeners,
if you would like to contact us, you can. Our
email is hello at steffnevertold you dot com. We're on
Blue Sky at molstaff podcast and on Instagram and TikTok
at stuff I've Never Told You for us on YouTube.
We have some merchandise Accompton Bureau, and we have a
book you can get wherever you get your books.

Speaker 2 (01:03:23):
Thanks.

Speaker 1 (01:03:23):
It's always to our superroducers Chandler and Casey and our
executive producer Maya. Thank you, and thanks to you for
listening stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:03:31):
And Never Told Respection by a Heart Radio.

Speaker 1 (01:03:32):
For more podcast from my heart Radio, you can check
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