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February 11, 2026 • 17 mins

In this episode, Indra explores the multifaceted role of AI in our lives, emphasizing its potential as a tool for accessibility, communication, and personal growth. She discusses how AI can enhance our work, serve as a thinking partner, and help us engage with broader audiences. Indra also highlights the importance of human agency in shaping the tools we use, advocating for a thoughtful approach to technology that prioritizes clarity and dignity.

Takeaways

  • AI is not about cheating; it's a reflection of our input.
  • Using AI can enhance accessibility in communication.
  • AI can serve as a partner in amplifying our thoughts.
  • Engaging with AI is crucial for shaping the future.
  • AI helps distill complex ideas into digestible formats.
  • The world was not built for everyone; AI can help navigate that.
  • AI can provide perspectives that enhance our understanding.
  • It's important to communicate in ways that resonate with diverse audiences.
  • Tools like AI are essential for scaling our efforts effectively.
  • Human agency must shape the tools we use, not the other way around.

More from Indra and The Messy Middle Matters

Keywords

AI, accessibility, communication, human agency, technology, innovation, thinking partner, future of work, systems thinking, digital tools

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Episode Transcript

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Indra Klavins (00:05):
Hi. I'm Indra, and I'd like to welcome you to
the messy middle matters, wheremy friends and I explore all the
twists, turns and challengesthat arise in the messy middle
of work. Welcome back to themessy middle matters. Today, I'm
going to be talking about AI.
For me, AI isn't about cheating.For me, it's a mirror, right?

(00:28):
And lately, I've been watchingpeople make broad
generalizations, mistakingheuristics for the truth,
confusing style with intent,
and treating ambiguity as athreat instead of a potential
feature,

(01:33):
I don't use it to takeshortcuts, to separate me from
my thinking or my work. I use itto make my work more accessible
to
make it more impactful, and ifyou can actually believe it, to
make it more human centered. Solet's talk about accessibility.
I want to be really, reallyclear. I'm not talking about the
really important, deep lifechanging accessibility work

(01:57):
where people are doing seriousheavy lifting, serious invisible
labor to make meaningful changesin the lives of so many you know
that work deserves its ownspotlight, its own standards,
and I am not the person who canspeak to that, but just the same
way that curb cuts have helpedso many of us along the way,

(02:18):
there are, there's so Much workthat's being done in that
accessibility world that helpsus in these small ways,
sometimes in visible ways. Youknow, for example, one of the
things that I am have beencommitted to from the start is
making sure that every one of myepisodes that goes out for the
messy middle matters is it has atranscript attached to it, you

(02:41):
know, fancy file name, SRT files
I would not be able to generateeven if I sat there and typed
all the words myself andlistened to the episode and made
sure I got everything right inthe typing. I can't generate an
SRT file on my own. I needsoftware for that. And thanks to
AI, I don't need to sit thereand type everything, and I'm

(03:01):
able to generate that SRT fileso that folks who are consuming
the episodes, no matter whatplatform they're looking at or
listening to it from, rather,they can take advantage of that
if they want to, you know,whether that is to help them
with auditory processing, or ifthey themselves are trying to do
a little bit of research ormaking sure that they got the

(03:21):
like the clip for whatever theywant, to save words away,
because Heaven knows I'm a quotequeen. I love collecting words.
They might be one of thosepeople, and that might help them
out. I also make sure that theclips and the videos that I have
all have open captions. Samereason heaven knows that I'm
also one more thing that I'mworking on is making sure that I

(03:44):
enunciate more clearly, and I'ma clearer communicator overall.
And these tools when I'm, youknow, when I swallow some of my
words, make sure that a lot ofthose are really available to
you all. Does it get itperfectly? No, but I like to
think that it's far better thanif I had nothing at all, you
know. But for me, it's not. Idon't just use AI for the

(04:07):
outputs like what I was justtalking about. I also use it to
amplify my thinking and workthrough things for myself and
for others, because one of thethings that I'm committed to is
trying to do my part to make theworld a little bit better
through the work that I do. Youknow, for me, AI is a thinking

(04:30):
partner. You know, a lot of thestuff that you do when you are a
solopreneur, sometimes you dohave collaborators, but a lot of
times you're thinking throughthings by yourself. And if
there's one thing that I learnedalong the way is that I do
better work when I'm incommunity, you know, and I also
do better work when I focus onmy strengths and don't try and

(04:52):
play outside of those strengthsand try and do things that I'm
really, really not well suitedfor, you know. A lesson. And
many, many moons ago through thebook tool Clifton
StrengthsFinder, is thatsometimes it's better to
strengthen your strengths thanit is to try and strengthen your

(05:14):
weaknesses. Sometimes it'sbetter to find yourself a
partner that's really good atthe things that you're not good
at, and bring them in. So anexample for me, I am a systems
thinker. It's a label I've onlyrecently leaned into. But in

(05:36):
that systems thinking what Iwhen I'm imagining a scenario, I
can see it in so many differentdimensions and in a now, next
later, you know that is, Ialways say it's one of my
occupational hazards that Ihave. But the challenge that
happens with that is that whenyou can see so many different
dimensions, and when you can seeso many different facets, and

(05:58):
you can see so many differentelements to it, sometimes it's
hard to distill that intosomething that somebody can wrap
their head around in just a fewminutes. They don't need the
full picture. They don't needall those pieces of the puzzle.
And for me, some of what I workwith AI is figuring out, how do
I compress those thoughts, howdo I pull them together so that

(06:20):
others can benefit from mythinking, and then I can, in
turn, then benefit from theirsand their reactions. You know, I
said earlier for me, AI is amirror. It mirrors back to me
what I've put into it. Itmirrors back to me how I've
trained it. You know, I've spentyears training that thing, and I
and I'm grateful to it becauseit does. It does help me see my

(06:44):
work from a very from adifferent perspective, from an
outsider's perspective. And thatit's not, it's not taking that
to it never does my thinking forme, but it looks at me like
looks at my work from adifferent point of view. And for
that I am, I am eternallygrateful right now for that.

(07:06):
It's helping me grow. Becausethe reality of it is, is that,
you know, we only know thethings that we've been exposed
to. And there are so many thingsthat I mean, I will say this
world was not designed for me.It was not built for me in so
many ways. But the reality of itis, is that that's the world

(07:28):
that I live in. And because theworld was not built for me, I
don't understand the why of howthings were structured. I
understand some of it, but notall of it, and some of these
institutional norms and patternsare just not familiar to me, and
I work with AI to helpunderstand how I can map my

(07:50):
thinking, my way of being in theworld, to not conform to it.
Because heaven knows, I've triedto do that in my life, and that
has not worked out well. But asFrancis fry would say, I it
gives me the secret memos andhelps me understand how I can
align with, work with, you know,mesh with, or, you know, react

(08:16):
against, potentially, how theworld was shaped. You know, for
me, I think of AI as a sparringpartner a little bit as a
training ground. Since I've beenworking with it, I will say that
my work has gotten sharper, mythinking has gotten clearer.

(08:37):
It's not to say I would havegotten there eventually, but you
know, I've spent so much of mylife thinking through things on
my own that I have so manydeveloped muscles. What it does
is it allows me proverbialmuscles, yes, the literal ones,
but put those to the side, butI've got those proverbial
muscles so well developed. It'shelped me figure out how I can

(08:59):
leverage them to the maximumimpact. And yes, I could stumble
through that on my own, but Iget through that a lot more
quickly because I have AI towork with to think through that.
And so for me, it's a lot ofdifferent things, but that
training, as I noted before, isbecause the world wasn't built
for me. You know, there's a lotof people who are choosing to

(09:22):
opt out of AI, and they're like,oh, that thing, as I said
earlier, you know, it's takingaway jobs, it's changing the
planet. It's doing all thesethings. And we can talk about
all all of that. I'm not takingany of that away. But the
reality of it is that AI is hereto stay, whether we like it or
not, and it's our choice to doeither engage with it or to, you

(09:46):
know, reject it and step away.You know, way back when, I
remember when computers startedbeing a thing, when we got our
email addresses for the firsttime, when I was in college.
Yes, I'm dating myself. I was soresistant to it. I. And I see
what that did. When I did that,it took me out of the
conversation. It took me out ofshaping the future. Right for

(10:09):
me, engaging with AI is reallyimportant because it is shaping
the world that we're in. And Iwant to understand its lexicon.
I want to understand how it'sworking. I want to understand
how it's impacting things, and Ialso want my voice to be part of
what's training it. I'm notnaive. In the world that we live
in, there's very littleinformation that's really

(10:32):
private anymore. You just needto open a newspaper on any given
day to figure that one out. Butfor me, when I'm working with
AI, not only am I thinking aboutthe benefits that it's giving to
me, I'm often wondering, how ismy one little conversation
helping to shape the largerthing, right? And that's really
important for us. If you reallywant to be the part of the

(10:54):
dialog and the shaping of thefuture of AI, it, kind of need
to engage with it, and that'sthe way that I think about it,
you know, and so as I work withit, I think about, how can it
help me shape my ideas? How canit make those things more
digestible? And how can I make adigestible to people who are

(11:18):
unlike myself, you know, if Iwalk into a room of people who
are, you know, human centricglue, work, loving invisible,
work, celebrating folks, wecould talk all day long, and
that's wonderful, but we're notthe people in power. We're not
the ones who are shaping theconversations. For me, how I

(11:42):
know I'll make the most impactin the world is if I can
communicate in a way that thevoices that are not like my own
can hear what I have to say. Youknow, how can I talk about
things and talk about, let'ssay, the invisible work in a way
that they can understand it andthey can appreciate it, and they
can understand the value of itand why they should care about

(12:05):
it. You know, working withsomething like AI, which has
been trained with those othervoices in large part, you know,
not necessarily mine, it helpsme to speak to broader audiences
about that human centric stuffthat I love so dearly. It helps
me. I get to say, here's mythinking. How would it resonate

(12:29):
for this kind of person? Hey,how would it resonate for that
kind of person? It gives me farmore perspective than I would
ever have, even if I was workingwith a team of humans, right?
And it also does one more thing,if you are somebody who is not
part of the dominant group, yourecognize how much the world

(12:52):
expects you to show up with allyour T's crossed, all your eyes
dotted, you know, look likeyou've got an entire team
running behind you, making surethat you're posting blogs
regularly, making sure that youhave show notes, making sure
that you're on social media,making sure that you're doing
all these things that look likehave the equivalency of what a

(13:15):
corporation might have, youknow, and if you don't have
that, sadly, they don't oftentake you seriously. So to be
able to keep up with that scale.Having tools is really
important. So you know, it's notit's it's impossible to work at
that scale without without help.It's impossible to work at that

(13:38):
scale with and have Polishwithout help, you know, and I do
daydream about the day when Iwill have a team, but then even
so, I bet you will still beusing the tools, because that's
the world that we're living in.And you know, for me, as long as
I'm being thoughtful about whatI'm using AI for, as long as I'm

(14:03):
being clear about what I'mreceiving from Ai, how I'm in
taking the feedback that it hasto have, or the revisions that
it shows to me, or the turns ofphrase that it wants to give me,
or whether or not it uses an Mdash, My goodness, how one piece
of punctuation has polarized us.I haven't seen anything polarize

(14:24):
us that much since the ellipsis.How everyone is criticizing
older generations for usingellipses. I do love an ellipsis.
But, you know, I think that ifyou're if you use it well, it
won't, you won't lose yourhumanity. You know, what you
will do is you will gain abroader perspective and a

(14:46):
broader point of view thatallows you to not work faster
for faster sake, like that's notthe fun part. What it does is it
helps you make. Or at least forme, it helps me make my work
more visible. It helps me makemy work more available, more

(15:08):
accessible, and it allows me toparticipate in forums and in
conversations that I wouldn't beable to if I just tried to
muscle my way through it, tryingto develop skills that were
never going to be my strengths,and it helps me be part of
shaping a world that has beendominated by systems and tools

(15:32):
and, you know, organizations andall of the above that are that
are failing us, that are failingus, and it's time for us to be
part of the change that replacesthem. So, you know, the question
that I leave you all with is,how are you choosing to show up
in the systems around you, youknow? And how are you making
sure that your humanity shapesthe tools you don't the tools

(15:56):
don't get to shape you? How areyou making sure that the your
humanity shapes the tools thatyou use, that we all use. So for
me, it's about human agency,clarity, dignity, and making
sure that we're helping to shapea world that's shaped by the

(16:17):
systems that are imperfect. Seeyou all next time when we cover
another topic from the messymiddle, bye.
Thanks for taking time with usin the messy middle. Word of
mouth remains most powerful wayfor people to find us. If this
episode sparked something foryou, we'd love it if you'd

(16:39):
subscribe to the podcast on yourfavorite app, download a few
episodes and share it withsomeone else who's navigating
the in between. Do you haveideas for future episodes or
topics you'd like us to explore?You can find our feedback form
at the messy middle matters.com,or in the show notes. Thank you
for joining us on this journey.This work is better when we do
it together, until next timeyou.
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