00:00:49.980If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home.
00:00:55.400Pro Society is a weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse.
00:01:04.060Each week, we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and pop culture with your favorite writers, book talk creators, and plenty of overthought opinions.
00:03:01.080And welcome to Stuff I Never Told You, a production of iHeartRadio.
00:03:09.720Today, we are once again so happy to be joined by the brilliant, the bold, Bridget Todd. Welcome, Bridget.
00:03:16.460I like the B alliteration, always coming with the alliterative superlatives. Love to hear it.
00:03:23.560It's one of my skills, one of my many pretty useless skills, but thank you.
00:03:29.820Well, Bridget, how have you been since the last time we spoke?
00:03:34.240Things are okay. 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. But through the lens of pop culture, it just was such a nice, refreshing change of conversation. Thank you for giving me the space.
00:08:29.160That's absolutely an astute observation that is correct.
00:08:31.820I remember seeing the people who are really getting into it, and it felt like that was kind of that sentiment.
00:08:39.080I think it came—initially, I don't think it was that.
00:08:42.000I 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.
00:08:52.020But then it felt like just a bunch of rich white women or at least like upper middle class white women who had some like good support or slash network that were saying these things.0.99
00:09:08.580Yeah, Samantha, it's so interesting that you say this.
00:09:11.580That is exactly my sort of trajectory around Girlboss.
00:09:14.940Girlboss culture really took root in the 2010s.
00:09:18.760And at that time in my life, I was, you know, had been out of college for a good 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.
00:09:39.260And I completely agree that for women of color like myself, Black women, we are definitely folks who start businesses, who are interested in entrepreneurship. And so I think that in the 2010s, 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.
00:10:00.440that happened and so like that was very legitimate and real in my opinion what ended up happening or0.67
00:10:06.240i guess at least in my my personal experience it coincided with all of these white very upper0.99
00:10:13.640class women who were very like who lived the kind of lives i could never you know to annie's mom's1.00
00:10:20.080point could never aspire to right and they were selling a very specific version of what a successful1.00
00:10:26.880woman looked like. And in my own personal experience, like this was incredibly confusing
00:10:32.440because I was just starting the journey of starting my own business and being an entrepreneur.
00:10:37.120I had no idea what I was doing. And that sort of dominant message was that you are doing it wrong.
00:10:43.620Like whatever you're doing, you're doing that thing wrong. Rich white ladies like your Sheryl1.00
00:10:48.960Sandberg, former CEO of Facebook, your Sofia Amoroso, former CEO of Nasty Gal. These were1.00
00:10:55.220the women, these white, rich women, who were being like, oh, we know how to do it right. And so if1.00
00:11:00.020you buy my course, buy my book, take my training, I can tell you the right way to do this. And so
00:11:06.920the girl boss was born. The term girl boss was sort of popularized by Sofia Amoroso.1.00
00:11:14.860She founded this vintage clothing brand called Nasty Gal. In 2014, she published her best-selling
00:11:20.320memoir called Hashtag Girlboss, which I have read. The cover is pink. It has a picture of her
00:11:26.080with her arms folded, sort of doing a power pose on the cover. Even if you've not read it,
00:11:32.480just from knowing the title and then hearing my description of the cover, you basically have read
00:11:38.020it. Like, what you're thinking is basically it. It's all about how she started her million-dollar
00:11:44.260clothing empire from her humble beginnings, dumpster diving. And one of the critiques that1.00
00:11:50.960sort of emerged from this culture was that girlboss culture really put the burden of systemic0.51
00:11:57.440inequality on individual women, right? This era really told women the problem wasn't, I don't know,
00:12:04.960the gender pay gap, lack of childcare, the structure of workplaces. No, no, no, no. The0.89
00:12:09.340problem is that we women weren't leaning in hard enough, weren't working hard enough, weren't1.00
00:12:14.620speaking the right way. When we went to meetings, we weren't sitting in the right place. When we1.00
00:12:18.780articulated our ideas, we weren't using the right cadence or the right words. It was aspirational
00:12:24.940for a very specific kind of woman. Sam astutely figured out very early on that woman was usually1.00
00:12:31.080white and already very wealthy or privileged. And it really asked everyone else to fit themselves0.92
00:12:37.800into this system that wasn't designed for us
00:14:19.480And I find this really interesting for a lot of reasons.
00:14:22.260But just this whole idea of, sometimes it reminds me of people who wear like lucky shirts all the time for their sports.
00:14:32.240Whatever team they want to win, they wear the lucky shirt because it makes you feel like you have power.
00:14:36.620I've always felt like this is sort of the same.
00:14:39.140If I do these steps that these people are telling me to do, then I can beat this system.
00:14:46.200I can beat all these rules that are around me that are really the problem.0.54
00:14:52.100It's not that you're not working hard enough 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 A.I.0.75
00:15:13.520Yeah, that is pretty much what I would say is going on, that these exact same figures who sort of sold us girlbossing and leaning in as the key to liberation for women, they are back.
00:15:25.900The message is pretty much the same, only this time the product is not buy my book, take my course.
00:15:40.980We can start with Sheryl Sandberg, former CEO of Facebook.0.99
00:15:45.120She's almost too perfect of an example of this.
00:15:48.160So she was the original architect of Lean In.
00:15:50.920She wrote the book Lean In, started a women's organization, like a women's empowerment organization.
00:15:55.660I've actually met her in person, a fun fact.
00:15:58.920It's, again, hard to remember now because it so seems like a relic of a time gone by.
00:16:05.720But Lean In was huge when it came out.
00:16:09.380And 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.
00:16:29.080But her organization is like, you know what?
00:16:35.300So in service of doing that, if you 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?
00:17:07.680And another part of Lean In's 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.0.61
00:17:19.040And so, like, that is their mission right now is, like, women need to be leaning away from the pull of trad wife nonsense.
00:18:10.740That is such a perfect segue into what Reese Witherspoon is doing.0.97
00:18:14.740So I'm not even like mad at the trad wives for real like that.0.99
00:18:20.140The thing that bugs me about tradwife nonsense is exactly what you just described, where they are pretending something that is not true is true.0.65
00:18:30.520So they're pretending, I don't work and you shouldn't work either.
00:18:34.380Oh, me? I just make a million dollars a year running this multimedia content agency and branding agency.
00:18:41.320Honey, that's a job. You have a job, just like I have a job.
00:18:45.220We all work. You work. You make money.
00:18:47.340A lot of these trad wives are actually the breadwinners in their households and their partners are like on their payroll.1.00
00:18:54.100Don't tell me that you don't have a job.0.97
00:18:56.060The 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 I don't I don't know anything about content marketing when it's like, OK, you do this for a living.
00:19:10.020And I feel like the video that Reese Witherspoon made and got under a lot of hot water about recently about AI kind of gave me the same vibe.
00:19:19.220I'm not saying that Reese Witherspoon is a trad wife in any capacity because she's definitely not.
00:19:22.980But in this video that she made about AI, she's standing in her kitchen and she's making a smoothie.0.91
00:19:28.180She's definitely going for, ah, shucks, I'm just a mom kind of energy.
00:19:33.040And 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?
00:19:40.660And of these 10 women in the book club, only three of them said that they use it.
00:19:44.560So of those three, she was like, OK, well, how many of you feel like you know what you're doing?
00:19:48.260You're confident in using it. And only one woman raised her hand.
00:19:51.860And so she said, oh, if this means that one out of 10 women, only one out of 10 women is confident using AI, women are going to get left behind.
00:20:00.180And technology moves so quickly that if you don't get at least a little bit familiar with it early on, it's going to advance and then you can't catch up.
00:20:06.940And the tone of the video to me had this kind of, aw shucks, I don't know much about AI, but let's learn about it together vibe, which is what I resented.
00:20:19.540I don't even, it's not even that I really am that bothered by telling women to get mixed up with AI.
00:20:25.840I don't personally agree with it, and I don't personally agree with the framing, but it's not even that that really bugs me.
00:20:31.460It's the way that the packaging is so clearly a lie.
00:20:49.320There's, like, a scolding element to it as well, right?0.93
00:20:53.240Again, if Reese wanted to make, or if 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, I'd be all for it.
00:21:09.660We've all done it on the podcast together.0.78
00:21:12.400What's so different about this is scolding women for the way that they feel.1.00
00:21:18.220So 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 counterparts. So I'm incredibly cautious about AI use because I know I'm going to be more scrutinized if I use it.0.97
00:21:36.680if a man uses it, they're going to call him an innovator. If I use it, they're going to call me
00:21:40.160a cheater. Those are kind of nuanced reasons that the research shows that women aren't using AI the1.00
00:21:47.360same rates as men are. They are not reasons to scold women. You know what I'm saying? There are
00:21:52.820topics for conversation, sure. I don't like the scolding tone and the tone of, well, you're going
00:21:58.860to get left behind. You're not going to make as much money. And you know what? It's going to be
00:22:03.240your fault. It's the same girl boss stuff. That's the same thing that the girl boss culture sold us1.00
00:22:08.720that if I didn't lean in enough and if I didn't speak the right way or didn't sit in the right1.00
00:22:12.840place at meetings, I would be left behind in my career. It's the same scoldy energy. Now it's
00:22:18.360just for AI. And I kind of put a weird like, and I felt this way about the girl boss too.0.80
00:22:23.020I remember thinking they don't want everyone to succeed. It kind of pit other women against women
00:22:28.880with this very conversation of like it's limited there's only limited capacity for success and
00:22:34.980women already know you're not going to be at that top priority you don't have much space to begin
00:22:40.880with so it felt like it was a lot like the competitive nature of women against women
00:22:45.480and I feel like this conversation of like this other woman is going to take you out0.94
00:22:49.740it still feels that way even though they're trying to gear it to all women yeah that's such a good
00:22:56.440point, I definitely see a little competitive. Don't you want the edge over other women? Listen,1.00
00:23:03.120the women in my camp are getting ahead economically using AI. Do you want to be left out? Do you want0.75
00:23:07.800to be part of my AI circle of winners or the folks who are left behind, like people whose
00:23:14.620careers are struggling? Like, I don't know, award-winning celebrated writer Roxane Gay,
00:23:19.840because when Reese Witherspoon put this out online, somebody told Roxane, when Roxane Gay
00:23:25.120said replied and said oh reese this is not the vibe someone was like roxane gay you need to get
00:23:31.140on board with ai or get left behind and i'm like you're talking to roxane gay right now i don't
00:23:36.280think roxane gay's career is in jeopardy i actually think roxane gay will be fine right as in fact if
00:23:42.640she tried ai for her job she would get in trouble yeah as we saw exactly exactly that and like just
00:23:49.020a like audacity to tell somebody like Roxane Gay that. And Reese Witherspoon, not for nothing,
00:23:55.440she has sort of done this before in 2021. She told women that crypto and NFTs were here to stay. And0.54
00:24:02.240if you didn't get involved now, you were going to get left behind. And we see how that worked out.
00:24:07.000Every woman who didn't get on board with crypto and NFTs will never economically recover from
00:24:11.720that terrible choice to not get really, really heavily and financially involved in NFTs and
00:24:17.980crypto. What a bad choice that turned out to be for those women. Am I right? Right. Who was it?
00:24:23.000Justin Bieber who can't sell his NFT. Yeah. That he bought for millions. And if he did sell it,
00:24:29.160he would take such a loss. Right. Really smart decision to get it on the ground floor of that
00:24:33.640one behind every night spent making the kids lunches there's a lot of suspense will they
00:24:49.520finally eat the veggies will the pesto survive the first bite will the lunchbox come home empty
00:24:54.620half full or come home at all and will you finish episode eight before you're done slicing the
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00:25:41.800started that's 844-844-iheart when i was 14 years old i was kidnapped and held captive for nine
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00:26:45.200If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home.
00:26:51.240This is Prose Society, the weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for thought daughters,
00:26:57.380pop culture obsessives, and anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse.
00:27:03.080I'm Eli Rallo, and every week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having.
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00:28:40.540So I can't totally answer whether or not she's being paid specifically to talk about AI, but I do feel confident in saying her stance of, it just organically came up at my book club to talk about AI, and now I am doing a partnership with Purdue University about AI adoption for women.
00:29:26.620I'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.
00:29:36.820And so Mel Robbins does have a partnership with Copilot.
00:29:40.100And she made this post digging into some of the research that we've talked about on this podcast about women adopting AI less.
00:29:46.320So I will, like, shout out to her for grounding the conversation in research.0.50
00:29:52.100And she says women need to be adopting AI more.
00:29:56.300And 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.
00:30:04.680She gave a specific prompt and she said, ask Microsoft Copilot this specific question in this specific prompt to help you get your finances in order.
00:30:14.300And 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 finances in order.
00:30:26.480And so this is what I took real umbrage with.
00:30:30.000Again, I'm not even really necessarily against them saying like, oh, play around with AI,
00:30:35.440get your hands dirty with it, see what it's about.
00:30:37.280I'm not even necessarily saying that that's a bad thing or that they shouldn't be doing
00:32:13.460But, 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
00:32:22.520into a program that has been seen as unsafe.
00:32:26.180Also, probably one of the worst known AI programs out there.
00:32:33.040And like, I do think when it comes to Mel Robbins,
00:32:37.200I'm trying to think why this left such a bad taste in my mouth.
00:32:39.560I think it's because we're in a financial climate that's kind of rough
00:32:43.620and people, you know, myself included,
00:32:45.200are experiencing economic uncertainty and anxiety.
00:32:48.200And that's like a very specific kind of sensitive trigger.
00:32:50.980I think using financial anxiety as a way to manipulate women into using AI and then using and then telling them to do that, do it in this like incredibly ill-advised way just really doesn't sit well with me.
00:33:08.860And, you know, Mel Robbins is super wealthy.
00:33:12.100Mel Robbins definitely has human financial advisors and human lawyers and human accountants.
00:33:18.340Mel Robbins is, I can almost guarantee you, she is not uploading her bank statements into0.84
00:33:24.520She just thinks that you should upload your bank statements into a chatbot.
00:33:28.720She thinks that that is the level of financial advice that you deserve.
00:33:33.460She has access to probably the best financial folks in the world.
00:33:38.020She thinks that you deserve an AI chatbot that is not a human financial advisor, a chatbot for whom if something goes wrong, there is no person or human for there to be any kind of accountability.
00:33:51.500That's the kind of financial services that she thinks that you deserve.
00:33:55.040And I just think in a climate where a lot of women and everybody are financially struggling, that's not really that cool to me.
00:34:02.680Right. I mean, you're definitely not wrong because people see her.
00:34:06.600the reason she is as successful as she is, people really look up to what she is saying.
00:34:12.680They trust what she has said, whether it's her book telling them, let them, like being like,
00:34:17.240let them loose, let it be, let it go type of conversation. Some of these conversations
00:34:22.460have changed their life. They have paid money to go and see her. They have paid money to sponsor
00:34:28.280and help. She has one of the number one podcasts because it is all of these great advice that
00:34:33.640they're seeking because either they're lonely, they don't feel like they can trust others,
00:34:37.060and they really feel this connection. So if you're trusting someone, because we know as podcasters
00:34:41.940the responsibility we hold in these conversations and trying to get the right information,
00:34:46.740we are oftentimes talking about how nervous we get if we think that we did something,
00:34:51.560we said something, or we misspoke, like coming back to like, oh, I have to change that,
00:34:55.380or we have to correct that in the next episode type of conversation. Knowing that this is who
00:34:59.760she is, having millions and millions of listeners, probably predominantly women, who are just trying
00:35:05.620to find someone to tell them it's going to be okay and this is how. And then to do something
00:35:10.980like that feels like such a predatory act, especially when it's sponsored by a company
00:35:17.440that just needs to make money off of other people's gullibility.
00:35:21.620Yeah, I'm curious. I often feel like I'm just a personality type that is always going to be
00:35:28.840suspicious of self-help leaders and gurus and all of that. And I don't doubt that people have found
00:35:37.100real value in those folks. I'm not, you know, no shade. But I think there's something about me
00:35:42.360where as soon as somebody is trying to sell me that they have the answer, I'm like, oh, really?
00:35:47.100You know, I'm just, I'm a skeptic at heart, I guess. Where do you all fall in this sort of
00:35:51.720self-help trajectory? Just out of curiosity. I feel like I was pretty adamant in my take just now.
00:35:58.840But after, like, our generations of watching my parents specifically, I think y'all know,0.71
00:36:04.800fall in love with the content that Oprah, and don't get me wrong, Oprah did her thing,
00:36:09.980whatever, whatnot, but, like, bringing on people like Dr. Phil, bringing on people like Dr. Oz,
00:36:15.360and projecting their fame and their notoriety in this world, that seeing that has become what
00:36:24.120had become and I think still is like the snake oil salesman of today if you don't actually have
00:36:30.080a degree in any of these things and if you come out with just absolute like musts without any
00:36:37.080fluctuation that as a social worker as social background that gives me like red flags all over
00:36:43.660the place yeah I think when I was younger like middle school I was much more I don't know
00:36:52.020desperate almost for like what what is the answer usually around weight loss at the time what is
00:36:57.940the thing but as I got older there's something about it that is really hard to disconnect for me
00:37:03.680because you know a show like this one we have sponsors but we're not necessarily trying to
00:37:11.160sell you anything that's gonna like change your life like we're just trying to keep the show
00:37:17.320running and this is how it works and I feel like it in that way it feels more transparent like yes
00:37:24.980we all know that shows have to have ads I can skip the ads but it's when someone is trying to
00:37:32.180sell you something that is like this is how you turn your life around it'll completely change your
00:37:36.960life and here's how I don't know there's just something about it that feels you're trying to
00:37:42.240sell me away to like live longer. I don't know. There's something that feels a little bit more
00:37:47.860wrong about it. I'm not sure. Yeah, I feel you. And it's interesting that you put it in the
00:37:54.980perspective of being a podcaster because I once had a call with a consultant about how I could
00:38:01.800try to make more money from podcasting. And I was like, oh, this person seems like they have it all
00:38:08.920figure it out. I'll take the call. And the big thing, the big secret was you should turn your
00:38:14.300podcast into an online course and then people will pay for that online course. And I was like,
00:38:20.020oh, scamming people. Okay, sure. Great. Thanks. Glad we took this call. That's your big idea.
00:38:26.520Yeah, your big idea was scams. And I guess not that it's like, I guess scam might be too strong,
00:38:31.540But you're so right that I want to make interesting, informative content that people feel engaged with.
00:38:40.860I don't want to sell access to something that makes it seem like I have all the answers because I do not.
00:38:47.980You know, and anybody that says I have all the answers, there is a one fits all solution to the problem that you have.
00:38:54.880And 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.
00:39:01.540I'm just automatically sort of skeptical of that.0.58
00:39:05.340And 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, my spidey senses are just going off.
00:39:16.660And 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.0.60
00:39:27.840I don't even really necessarily have a problem with that.
00:39:29.580I don't necessarily, but I don't think we need to be framing it as a feminist win.0.96
00:39:33.700I don't think we need to be framing it as this is the work of the business of feminism0.80
00:39:38.600is getting more women involved in AI.0.99
00:39:41.380Just say you want to run an AI training or you want more, want to see more women in the1.00
00:39:48.660You know, you're not Angela Davis because you're getting women involved in AI.0.60
00:39:51.880And that's the way that people are sort of framing it.
00:39:54.340There was a very interesting piece in the cut about this.
00:39:56.720It reads, one startup founder, Aaron Gao, said that the technology could be a 24-7 mentor for women, helping to free them from the weight of imposter syndrome or offering feedback on overly apologetic language in their email.
00:40:10.860By the way, there has been studies that demonstrate that AI will, when women use AI to try to get, like, negotiation advice, AI tells them to settle for less money than they would a man.0.74
00:40:22.700So I don't know that this would be a great digital mentor to have in your back pocket 24-7, given that that's the case.0.92
00:47:38.860She made this post about how she is using AI to streamline her life.
00:47:43.760And when she didn't like it, or when a lot of women did not like it, she said on her
00:47:48.740Substack, women are sleeping on AI and it's going to cost them. And that to me is very interesting
00:47:54.980because when Sophia left Nasty Gal, she did not leave under good circumstances. She had to step
00:48:01.240down because the company could not keep operating with her. So she was sort of like, it just didn't
00:48:05.860go very well. Then she started a media company called Girlboss, which there was a Netflix show
00:48:10.780about her life called Girlboss. None of this stuff went over very well. And so after that,
00:48:16.700I've sort of been watching her. And for a while, she was doing online courses for entrepreneurs.
00:48:23.220Like, basically, let's just say whatever the—I don't want to use the word grift because I don't think she's a grifter.
00:48:29.400Let'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.
00:48:43.680And so the fact that she is would be pivoting to AI influencer right now is on brand. The 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. Does that make sense? You kind of pick it up and I'm putting down.
00:49:06.840Yeah, yeah. She can afford this conversation. Like, it literally is what she was doing previously in a new hustle.
00:53:51.700Yes. So she posted a screenshot on her Instagram story showing how many followers she lost on
00:53:57.920Instagram after she posted about the ways that she uses AI to streamline her life.0.98
00:54:01.640And she said, this is what posting about AI does, wild, weeding out the Luddites.
00:54:07.360That had the tenor of an insult. It was clear to me she meant that as an insult to people who
00:54:11.080weren't down with AI or like didn't like this post. But here's the thing about Luddites.
00:54:16.060The Luddite movement is actually often misrepresented as being anti-technology.
00:54:20.640The original Luddites were skilled workers in 19th century England who were protesting how factory owners were using new machines to cut wages, replace labor, and concentrate power and wealth from the hands of the many to the hands of the few.
00:54:39.200So the Luddites were not saying technology is bad. They were pushing back and challenging and asking questions about who benefits from technology, who bears the cost, right? And so in a kind of way, even though I can tell that Sophia Amoroso meant this as an insult, she kind of accidentally stumbled on the truth because the Luddites, as she put it, who took issue or took umbrage or unfollowed her after her AI post, they're not anti-technology.
00:55:07.040They're asking questions, questions that we should be asking about this technology.
00:55:13.240So in a kind of way, she ended up being sort of correct.
00:55:17.400Well, and that's a good segue into what I think is one of the most interesting pieces of this conversation,
00:55:23.800is as we've been discussing, as we've talked in previous episodes about,
00:55:29.660women do have hesitations about adopting AI.
00:55:35.520And I think looking into those reasons is really important and tells a lot about the situation of what's going on.
00:55:43.360Exactly. And the entire Girlboss pitch kind of rests on the premise that women are not using AI as much as men, which is true.0.97
00:55:50.860And the thing that they add is, and that's a problem because women are going to be economically left behind.0.86
00:55:56.140It's a problem that the women need to fix, not the reasons or the institutional failures that have led to this problem.0.98
00:56:04.380It's the women who are doing something wrong, and they need to be scolded into fixing it.1.00
00:57:24.560Yes. And I think the reasons are very telling about why we shouldn't be blaming women individually and instead looking at systemic things, systemic reasons.
00:57:37.600Exactly. 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.
00:57:58.440And so if you're selling women, oh, AI could be a great 24-7 mentor for you.
00:58:04.300AI could, like, 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.
00:58:44.900Who are asking the questions when it comes to these things being developed and designed?0.95
00:58:48.860Me using AI more as one woman is not going to change any of this.0.81
00:58:53.920And so it's, again, just like with 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 not going to be able to girl boss or lean in her way out of.0.97
00:59:06.620Yeah. It kind of reminds me of a 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, how does she do it? How is she a mom? And she has a job and she has kids and all of this stuff.
00:59:23.260I can very easily see them selling this idea, these girl boss AI people selling that idea to women who need a different solution.0.93
00:59:36.100They don't need an AI is not going to come in and fix that, but they do need a solution.0.69
00:59:42.700Yeah, exactly. And so there 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.
00:59:58.440I worry that some of this 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.0.76
01:00:11.880As one psychologist put it, women are already discredited in workplaces.
01:00:15.940Having people know that you used AI is just another thing that can be used to undermine your credibility.1.00
01:00:21.040And these rich ladies who, frankly, don't 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, right?1.00
01:00:35.380Like, let's just, like, keep it for real. 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.1.00
01:00:55.900Yeah. Bad advice. Just bad advice.0.99
01:01:05.960I think that's a good way of putting it. Like, women are already really tasked with doing a lot more domestic labor and child care labor in their homes and also in offices, all kinds of labor that's on our shoulders.1.00
01:01:18.300So then when you factor in, OK, 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 you 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.
01:01:44.500And so I think, as you said, Annie, when women are being sold us 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.
01:02:00.560We're locating the problem in an individual women's choices rather than the systems that produce those choices or problems in the technology itself.0.71
01:02:10.880Right. So we've touched on this, but what are these celebrities and influencers actually trying to sell for this?0.96
01:02:22.360Well, 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.
01:02:36.080And I don't think that anybody out there believes that that actually worked for women.0.94
01:02:42.300You know, the system did not change because of the girl boss era.0.89
01:02:46.720The women who leaned in the hardest did not close the pay gap.1.00
01:02:50.580some of those women probably might have had individual gains and individual economic successes1.00
01:02:55.760and gotten better jobs and better pay and like good for them. No shade to that. But those gains1.00
01:03:01.820were certainly not systemic or meaningful. And I think that women just got better at surviving0.99
01:03:09.040inside of an unequal structure. And in a lot of cases, we burnt the F out. Like if I had to say1.00
01:03:15.940probably my biggest personal takeaway from the girl boss era is that it leads to feeling really1.00
01:03:23.360spent and burnt out and not really having the energy or capacity to figure out how to get0.98
01:03:31.040yourself out of this overwork mess that you're in. Right. So I just don't think it actually
01:03:35.380accomplished the change that we were sort of sold that it would.
01:03:40.060Oh, no, absolutely not. I mean, again, it's you get to the end of the 10 steps,
01:03:45.100whatever they sold you, and you feel like you have failed. Where did I go wrong? What step was
01:03:50.000the one that I didn't do it? And you are burning yourself out because it feels as though I have
01:03:56.660this blueprint now. I paid for this blueprint now. And it's not resulting in what I'm being told and
01:04:05.960what I was sold and what I see from this person. And I think, Samantha, you made a good point
01:04:10.860earlier about for well-off people, you can take your risk and I'm an AI now, I'm in crypto now,
01:04:18.100or whatever it is. And if you lose money, it's not going to destroy your life probably. But for
01:04:23.720people, it will. For people who don't have that support, it will. So no, I think it absolutely
01:04:31.420was something that just burnt out a lot of women and did not result in any real success.
01:04:38.620And something that you mentioned earlier, Annie, kind of along those lines is I hadn't thought of it this way, but now I'm seeing the real connection to the trad wife movement, because I think one of the reasons why the trad wife movement really took off is that movements like this really can take root when women are economically anxious during times of political or social or economic instability and anxiety, which we are certainly in one now.
01:05:06.180And 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 a lot. And of course, that looks appealing.
01:05:24.140And so I think that AI is sort of the flip side of that. You're saying, OK, well, you are exhausted. You want to have more money so you can spend more time with your kids. If it's not trad wife, maybe it's AI, right?
01:05:38.720Like, it's the same kind of emotional and financial manipulation that takes advantage of the way that our actual economic and political climate feels very unstable right now.0.61
01:05:50.280And so if you're not going to choose to make bread and leave your job and, like, give a man control over your economic future, maybe you'll choose AI.
01:06:00.240Maybe that's going to be the thing that you choose that you're turning toward because of this moment of economic instability.
01:06:07.520Again, it all comes back to the same place, which to me is like manipulation.
01:06:11.620Right. 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.
01:06:20.340Like, 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 401k system, this retirement system that we're going to have when we're going to put our money in here.
01:06:35.020And which is like Annie, you were talking about like maybe the last bit of money that you have and praying that this is going to give you tenfold and putting your whole stock into this and then realizing when it crashes and it's not stable anymore, you're the one, those who put everything trusting in this completely are the one that's bankrupt.
01:06:55.960It has ruined your life. And the people who are OK are the ones that have told you do this 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.
01:07:11.560Exactly. 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 embrace AI. If you don't embrace AI, you're going to get replaced. You're going to lose all your money. You're not going to be able to economically succeed. And guess what? It'll be your fault because you didn't listen to me about embracing AI.
01:07:41.380Like, it is creating these circumstances that, to me, do not lend themselves well to people adapting to new things or adopting new things.
01:07:54.820Like, the way that this is being foisted on people is not a reasonable way to get people to try a new thing.
01:08:01.340Saying, if you don't try this, you're basically going to lose all your money and it'll be your fault, does not create the conditions of people wanting to embrace this thing.
01:08:10.040And 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, I don't think that women should be fearful of AI or think that this technology is outside of our reach or grasp, because it certainly is not.
01:08:26.540But if they're interested in having more women in the space, there's a way to do it, and it's not this.
01:08:31.200Yeah. And I, again, it's worth asking these questions. It is worth asking why women do hesitate to adopt AI. And I think instead of, as you said, Bridget, instead of turning the conversation to, oh, here, women, you need to be brave and get on board or else.
01:08:55.660And even with the stock market, Samantha, the same conversation happened with the stock market.0.99
01:09:01.480They don't know what to do with money.
01:09:02.820It is 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 it is that women are more hesitant.