00:10:00.140What do you, so, like, given this open AI saga as a template, but also, like, it's about open AI, but it's also not about open AI.
00:10:09.100Like, it's about, like, as someone who covers tech, I think this is Taylor's oldest time.
00:10:14.060You know, sole young white male leader who has been able to spin up, whether earned or unearned, this attitude around him that he is a genius.
00:10:27.880We all need him if like he and only he is the key to all of this not falling apart and really getting the media to sort of go along with it.
00:10:36.800Like it's really a clever trick they pulled.
00:10:39.160And so, yeah, I'm wondering, like, what do you see as the state of male leadership today and how it's impacting what's going on and how we're thinking about it?
00:10:49.720Yeah, you know, and it's not only convincing the media to go along with it, but also convincing, you know, funders and donors, right?
00:10:58.620Like Microsoft was 100% ready to go to bat.
00:11:03.220You know, like they were willing to accept the change until they weren't, right?
00:11:08.160Until I'm assuming there was some like, you know, behind the curtain conversation, phone calls between like, you know, Sam and his folks at Microsoft.
00:11:20.540So here's what happened after the announcement that Sam Altman had been fired as CEO of OpenAI.
00:11:54.800Your actions made it obvious that you are incapable of overseeing OpenAI.
00:11:59.340We are unable to work for or with people that lack competence, judgment, and care for our mission and employees.
00:12:05.520Investors and funders threatened to pull out, too.
00:12:08.600Mira Marati, OpenAI's chief technology officer, was appointed interim CEO in Sam's absence.
00:12:15.160That is, until negotiations, when Sam Altman was brought back and reinstated as CEO of OpenAI, with a new board in tow, too.
00:12:22.780Like an episode of Succession meets Silicon Valley, the whole thing was dizzying to watch.0.93
00:12:29.000Women know that this happens, right?0.99
00:12:31.060You can think about this in terms of gender, but you can also think about it in terms of race and ethnicity or sexuality.0.59
00:12:36.920Or there's like lots of different demographic ways in which we can think about, if you will, the people who are allowed to live in ignorant bliss.
00:12:47.960and then like the rest of us who, who see these things happening. And I, and I think what in this
00:12:55.320space, like if we're to learn anything, I think what, what I would want us to learn is I would
00:13:00.800want more men to take accountability for their actions and to call out this behavior.
00:13:09.120uh I you know it's it's really amazing to me that you have a board that was constructed in
00:13:18.040certain way with rules and these rules are followed and somebody gets ousted
00:13:22.960refuses to follow the rules of being ousted and you know kind of in some sense
00:13:31.040bullies his way back in and I don't know if he bullied but like you know getting the staff to
00:13:37.820go along with him getting you know the funders to go along to kind of get back into that space
00:13:43.560it's like an unwillingness to accept the reality and then the rest of us are watching
00:13:50.340and you know after the reality becomes just so unreal somehow the stories that are coming out
00:14:01.300are justifying the craziness and you know or just saying like oh now it'll be all okay and it's like
00:14:08.800no I mean I don't know if I'm not watching the same drama as others are but um it's really not
00:14:18.200okay what happened yes innovation is cool yes you know venture capital projects and like pushing
00:14:26.820the envelope. I mean, I study high-skilled workforce. I, you know, study innovation and
00:14:32.200all of these things. And they're great, but we need to hold people accountable. And I think in
00:14:39.700this instance, and again, I don't know any of the dynamics of what happened and whether it was
00:14:44.860justified or not. I only know that there were certain rules that the company and the board had
00:14:50.680And that those were followed, you know, until they weren't, you know, or until exceptions were made. And I think we need to critically ask ourselves, why did that play out the way it did?
00:15:08.460Why are we not calling out this insistence on not accepting the reality? And where are we making that normative in a culture, in an environment that is already struggles to keep women, you know, like engaged in the industry?
00:15:32.520Tech is already a field where people who are not white cisgender men don't always feel represented, don't always feel included. And so when you are projecting that like, oh, no, it's OK for this person to not follow the rules, you are sort of sending a message that there's a rule book for one kind of person and then a different rule book for another.
00:15:55.200Because as you pointed out in your piece, if I if I was if I was Sam Altman and I was a black woman, certainly this kind of behavior would be framed very differently.
00:16:04.880I'll just say that. I think that's a given.
00:18:04.540at our back. The double standard for what kind of behavior is acceptable for men versus people
00:18:14.800who are not men in workplaces is real. And this is something Misty knows all too well.
00:18:20.340She's had to navigate these tensions in her own career. So I worked in a federal statistical
00:18:25.680agency for over a decade. And I can tell you that when I was kind of in an upper level management
00:18:33.880position. If I asked things of people, like I once had a junior to me who was male on my team,
00:18:43.060come on my team. And I asked him to schedule forward the rest of the team meetings. And
00:18:48.280it wasn't even 24 hours. His supervisor was at my desk. Why are you asking him to do that?
00:18:56.460That's your job. If I was a man, that would have never happened. And so I think this is where
00:19:03.860the rubber hits the road. This is where I would like, like, if we're going to learn anything from
00:19:07.680this experience, can we learn that not everybody can get away with everything, but certain people
00:19:15.540can? And then what are we going to do to, you know, specifically in this instance, in my head,
00:19:24.440I'm like, what are men going to do to fix this, you know, environment for the women around them?
00:19:31.140I mean, I am honestly worried about the women in OpenAI, like, what is going to happen to them?
00:19:38.760You know, are others going to want to come and join?
00:19:42.180You know, I think we need to be having these conversations.
00:19:45.220And, you know, I think there's some folks who need to really eat some humble pie, like, really, a lot of it.
00:19:53.600The entire OpenAI shakeup left a bad taste in the mouths of anybody who cares about things like gender representation and inclusion in tech.
00:20:01.500The OpenAI board, who voted to sack Altman, included two women, Helen Toner and Tasha McCauley.
00:20:08.500But after bringing Altman back to the company, only one member of the board who voted to oust him remained, Adam D'Angelo.
00:20:15.380So that means the only two women on the board are gone, replaced by men.
00:20:19.340Men like Larry Summers, economist and former Obama administration secretary of the Treasury, and who you might recall was kind of pressured into resigning as the president of Harvard University after a pretty poorly received talk that speculated that innate gender differences might be why so few women are represented in STEM.
00:20:38.700And Meera Maradi, that former OpenAI chief technology officer who was named interim CEO,
00:20:44.420she was only CEO for just a few days until Altman was reinstated,
00:20:48.380and she publicly signaled support for his return.0.81
00:20:51.500It's like women are being shuffled around to make room for more men.
00:20:56.160Once Sam Altman was back at the helm and a new board was in place,
00:21:00.060Greg Brockman, OpenAI's former president now reinstated,
00:21:03.800tweeted a picture of the team, captioned,
00:21:07.840And a quick glance tells you all you need to know about the demographics.
00:21:11.780This was my reaction when my producer first showed it to me on Twitter.
00:21:16.580Okay, so it is definitely mostly white men.
00:21:22.320Let's talk about that because, you know, we know now that the only two women on OpenAI's board are now gone.
00:21:28.880They brought in men like Larry Summers, who we know was famously forced to resign as president of Harvard for making like deeply misogynistic and sexist remarks about women in STEM.
00:21:39.860I get the sense that like you don't necessarily feel like people are really looking out for the women at these companies.
00:21:45.100And I do think like or do you think there's a dynamic in some of these tech companies that just see women as support or like pieces to be moved along a game board to further support the leadership of the men in the space?
00:22:01.120Yeah. So, you know, again, I don't know the details behind the screen of what happened, but it seems to me like Mira was one of those pawns, right?
00:22:09.180Like she was just asked to be temporary CEO. She lasted, you know.
00:22:14.460like a weekend like such a short amount of time you know and then I mean and then she you know
00:22:20.920through the reporting you could see like she had Sam's back you know and that's one of the reasons
00:22:25.620why what so like all the saga but I am just really worried about um all of the housekeeping that she
00:22:34.660has been having to do over the past handful of weeks dealing with these egos like you know how0.99
00:22:41.200is she managing? And we're not hearing from her. You know, I think the board that was put in place
00:22:47.620is honestly laughable in terms of giving any sort of confidence that they're actually
00:22:55.500thinking about these issues. I know that there were statements put out after the fact, after this
00:23:01.220like three board member, you know, and by the way, the men survived, right? So the women on the board
00:23:07.420were out the men survived in different roles or you know one of them kept their role on the board
00:23:12.400um but um I know there were statements put out after it came out like Larry Summers and these
00:23:18.420other people um where it was like well we're we're not done we're not done filling the board yet we're
00:23:24.880you know we'll put women on it's like the damage is already done you know if you're thinking about
00:23:32.020women as an afterthought, if you're thinking about women as like a way to salvage your reputation,
00:23:39.400like that is exactly backwards. And I think the current board gives even less confidence
00:23:45.740that it's a good environment for women to thrive. You know, I personally don't have any confidence
00:23:51.440in that. I mean, I, you know, Larry, you know, has a very big name in the field of economics,
00:23:57.720but it's not clear to me that he understands
00:26:58.000And I guess what is shocking to me, and maybe it shouldn't be, is how you have this incredibly clumsy, I would be embarrassed, I guess I'll say that, and then to still be told, no, no, these are the smartest guys around, these are the men that you can trust with safely architecting the future for all of us, you're in good hands.
00:27:24.500It's like, I can't, like, those two things, like, I can't square that circle.
00:29:42.980And I've seen pieces come out that are like, oh, you know, it's all good now.
00:29:49.820And, you know, Sam's reputation is better than it's ever been.
00:29:54.400Because that's what we really care about.
00:29:56.240I can't figure out, you know, there's a lot of goofiness happening here.
00:30:03.520And somebody needs to take accountability for it.
00:30:06.300And I don't know whether it's like the investors or the leaders of this company or, you know, us as a society for like not being louder about, you know, our intolerance or tolerance for these shenanigans.
00:30:28.520I think it's a sad state of affairs what happened with that company. And it's a sad state of it. It demonstrates a lot of the really core issues of what happens in the tech industry and what happens in innovative spaces.
00:30:43.360You know, when you have people who haven't been trained in how to appropriately manage and how to appropriately lead a diverse workforce, you know, you're left with these type of situations, which is unfortunate.
00:31:02.180Yeah, and I think you really ground it in something that I think is important to repeat, which is that this really matters, right? Like, we are all having these conversations about the way that AI is poised to perhaps deeply change our world and change the way that we work, change the way that we do a lot of things.
00:31:20.820And so if the people who are leading in that change are not able to do so in a way where they are effectively managing inclusive and diverse workforces to do that, I think it hurts all of us.
00:31:32.740Like, I know that you're not necessarily like an AI person, but I did want to get your thoughts on this.
00:31:38.080So Lynette Mukami is a social search and analytics editor at Kenya's Nation Media Group, and she argues that conversations around AI has, up until now, really centered around things like power, profit, and efficiencies, with little focus on its potential for social good.
00:31:54.140She says a lot of this has to do with who is leading the conversation, which is it's white men.
00:31:58.840So it's all the perspectives of white men.
00:32:01.140And if we had more female techies and thought leaders in that conversation, we might see different AI solutions.
00:32:07.060So I guess, do you think that the way that we are centering the voices of white men in these conversations are really just leaving us all having like limited insights and views and perspectives because we're just reflecting a very specific kind of mindset?0.70
00:32:25.900I 100 percent agree. So, again, not in the AI space, but I am in the statistics space and the official statistics, you know, national statistics space.0.83
00:32:35.600And so I have done a lot of thinking and writing and research on the idea of, you know, the stories that we know, the stories that we tell about who we are, are very much reflected by the voice of people in power.
00:32:53.720And one example of that, which I think overlays this idea of whose story is AI telling, think
00:33:20.120Women have been extremely economically active throughout the entire existence of humans.
00:33:29.980And yet when you look at economic statistics like labor force participation, you see a really big gap between women and men's labor force participation.
00:33:41.900And it's partly because the only type of economic activity who captures the type of economic activity that historically has been done by men.
00:33:49.280We just completely ignore all the economic activity that women do in their homes for their families, etc. You know, all the unpaid work. And so, you know, part of like what I've been trying to do in the field of economics is really kind of force this reckoning of an awareness that we need to stop telling the economic stories of women through the lenses of men.0.60
00:34:15.560And we need to start telling the economic stories of women through the lenses of women.
00:34:20.820And that means we need to stop tying ourselves to these storylines that men have built.
00:34:26.320And I think that the same is true in AI.
00:34:29.660Like, you know, to the extent that it's using training data that's historical and was built0.79
00:34:35.600to describe, you know, the world in which white men live, like that is what it's going0.69
00:34:44.440And, you know, that's not OK. And we need to be thinking harder about that.
00:34:49.120And I'll just say this current turn of events at OpenAI gives me zero confidence in the company's ability to take those things seriously.
00:34:59.620We need people from more backgrounds and identities making decisions about technology like AI, not just because it's nice or it's good to have diversity, but because it is critical to making technology that safely and effectively serves the most people.
00:35:44.700Meanwhile, women and women of color like Timnet Gabru, who was pushed out of Google for being critical about the risks associated with AI, are punished for it.
00:35:53.740Shutting already traditionally marginalized people out of the rooms where decisions are being made and power is being held is not just bad because, like, it's not nice or, like, just like, yay, diversity.
00:36:04.800It's as I've seen men joking about on Twitter, like if you search open AI and women on Twitter, you have men, some of whom like work in tech and like have the place that they work in their bio.
00:36:16.680When people are complaining that like, oh, the women are pushed out of the board, they're like, oh, it's not a bad.
00:36:21.640Open AI is not a battered women's shelter, it turns out, like things like that.
00:36:25.500And it's like, you really don't get it because it harms us all when technology and economic decisions that are connected to that technology are made by just not enough kinds of people.
00:36:40.340It makes technology, like, we've already seen all the different ways that technology harms people of color, harms non-native English speakers, harms women, or, you know, at best doesn't see us, at worst harms us.
00:36:50.860And so it's not just something to do because it's nice.
00:36:55.120It actually matters for all of us that we are included in a meaningful way.
00:37:00.460And I think the fact that so many men are just unable to see that, they still think it's like, we got to have women on the board because it looks good or because it's nice or because it's diversity and it's woke in 2023, as opposed to really not seeing the way that it truly does matter for everybody, them included, really does not fill me with confidence.
00:37:52.840the dynamic or how women can be disadvantaged by the world we live in is to really for them to see1.00
00:38:02.280it through the eyes of their children, through the eyes of their daughters. Like, is this the1.00
00:38:07.440legacy that they want to leave for their children? Is this, you know, the stifled opportunities that
00:38:13.800women often have or, you know, the additional challenges that women experience in engaging
00:38:20.240in leadership roles? Like, is that the legacy that they want to leave for the next generation1.00
00:38:25.460and for their own daughters? And, you know, hopefully the answer would be no, but maybe it
00:38:30.320would be yes. I mean, you know, part of the problem is that when people have power, you know,
00:38:35.120they rarely want to give it away. So it's like, you know, that's right there is the core of this
00:38:43.500struggle is like, how do we get people to understand that by being more inclusive, you're
00:38:49.400not actually giving your power away. You're actually strengthening your power because you're
00:38:54.420allowing for more diverse voices to be heard, which allows you to improve whatever it is that
00:39:02.140you're doing. Like, I think a lot of people just don't get that. We have this idea that there's
00:39:08.360only a certain amount of the pie. And, you know, if I have to share any of my pie with somebody
00:39:15.980else, that's going to be less for me. And I think that's a really short-sighted perspective to have.
00:39:24.720Yeah. I mean, it's true and it doesn't always feel good to talk about. It's like kind of heavy
00:39:32.320and grim, but I have to say like reading your work, you actually strike me as somebody who is,
00:39:39.940despite all of that dark stuff, is actually kind of like positive and hopeful when it comes to
00:39:45.580women and our place in economics. Bonus question, what does Taylor Swift tell us about women and1.00
00:39:54.620our place in the economy right now? I mean, people can't see because this is a podcast, but
00:39:58.640I assume you're in your office and there's a Taylor Swift Eras tour poster behind you.
00:40:05.240Yes. What is Swiftinomics and what does it tell us about where we are as women right now?
00:40:11.760Yeah, I'm so glad you asked this question. So, you know, I lived the first portion of my life, like I said, feeling very frustrated that the struggle was real for women and that it was, you know, we had to think more, we had to process more in terms of like leadership and how we wanted to present ourselves because people would react to us in a different way.
00:40:36.640I finally got to a point where I was just tired of being frustrated. And so I thought, you know,
00:40:44.140can we flip the storyline here? Men have enormous amounts of privilege in, you know, our nation,
00:40:52.240but also across the globe. And they have a lot of men have something that I call care privilege,
00:40:57.880meaning that they have other people taking care of their care needs. I don't have anybody taking
00:41:03.780care of my care needs. And I have two children and a spouse, an aging mom. So I am always having
00:41:13.220to give care. And that means that the way that I present myself at my job and at work looks
00:41:17.660different. And I'm tired of feeling frustrated about that inequality. And so I just have decided
00:41:25.260that it's time to flip the script. And I'm tired of living in a man's world. And I just want to1.00
00:41:30.640live in my own and my own world looks different and represents itself differently. And, you know,
00:41:35.840I can't feel bad about that anymore. And, you know, the Swiftinomics, my book that's coming out
00:41:41.380is really about celebrating the ways in which even though adversity confronts all of us in
00:41:49.800different ways, it's really about thriving through that adversity. It's about celebrating
00:41:57.820reinvention. And so we all know Taylor Swift is essentially my muse for the book because she is
00:42:03.900the queen of reinvention, if you know anything about her story and how she survived. And so
00:42:09.340it's really, I think we need to give ourselves more credit and we need to create a space for
00:42:16.800ourselves just mentally and emotionally where we can stop feeling like we need to fight the struggle
00:42:25.900and just start living the life that we want to live
00:42:29.840in whatever form that takes place.0.99
00:42:32.740And yeah, calling people out on their bullshit,0.99
00:42:35.140you know, never going to stop doing that.0.99
00:42:36.880But I just really want women to appreciate,
00:43:30.640And I really hope that as we move forward, things get better and not worse in this space.
00:43:39.280And I hope that more people start calling out kind of the inequalities that we're seeing take place before our very eyes in a very juvenile fashion.