Speaker 1: There's a lot of goofiness happening here, and somebody needs
Speaker 1: to take accountability for it.
Speaker 2: There are no Girls on the Internet.
Speaker 3: As a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative, I'm brigitad
Speaker 3: and this is there are no girls on the Internet.
Speaker 3: You've probably heard of open Ai, the company that makes
Speaker 3: chat GPT.
Speaker 2: Last week, open.
Speaker 3: Ai had major drama and a major board shakeup. Now
Speaker 3: there's been no shortage of coverage of what happened. We'll
Speaker 3: get into the broad strokes in this episode. But even
Speaker 3: before all of this, the truth is that open Ai,
Speaker 3: this company that has taken up so much space and
Speaker 3: conversations about what kind of future we're going to have,
Speaker 3: was already very white and very male. And that's even
Speaker 3: more true after this week's board shakeup. So what does
Speaker 3: all of this say about gender and identity in tech
Speaker 3: and beyond and what does it mean for the rest
Speaker 3: of us? Doctor Misty heganis Associate professor in the School
Speaker 3: of Public Affairs and Administration at University of Kansas studies
Speaker 3: how gender plays out in places like tech company boardrooms.
Speaker 3: How did you come to be somebody who cares about
Speaker 3: how women show up in workplaces? In the economy and
Speaker 3: in data.
Speaker 1: Well, I am a woman who lives in this society
Speaker 1: and tries to thrive.
Speaker 4: In this economy.
Speaker 1: And so, you know, I guess I'll just say I
Speaker 1: came by it naturally.
Speaker 4: You know, I'm.
Speaker 1: A data nerd. I'm an economist by training. I've always
Speaker 1: been interested and driven to really try to understand kind
Speaker 1: of how we can all live our best lives and
Speaker 1: to figure out what are the barriers and challenges that.
Speaker 4: Hold people back.
Speaker 3: So last week, Misty and I both watched the open
Speaker 3: Ai CEO drama unfold. There are lots of AI companies
Speaker 3: and organizations out there, but open Ai and their CEO,
Speaker 3: Sam Altman have kind of become the face of AI
Speaker 3: right now, and pretty unexpectedly. Open AI's board voted to
Speaker 3: terminate Sam Altman as the CEO last week. In a
Speaker 3: statement the kind of statement that seems to be signaling
Speaker 3: that the ousted person did something bad. The board said
Speaker 3: Altman quote was not consistently candid in his communications with
Speaker 3: the board, hindering its ability to exercise its responsibilities. To
Speaker 3: this day, we still don't know what communications he was
Speaker 3: not candid about specifically, but this was just the start so,
Speaker 3: as someone who cares about the way that women show
Speaker 3: up in places like boardrooms, I have to know your
Speaker 3: thoughts on the Open Ai CEO drama. When I watched
Speaker 3: it unfold, all I could think was like, Wow, these
Speaker 3: men really do not feel like competent, stable leaders to me,
Speaker 3: What were your initial thoughts?
Speaker 4: Same?
Speaker 3: Misty is an economist and she specifically studies high skilled
Speaker 3: workers like the kind whose staff tech companies like open Ai.
Speaker 3: Her work doesn't have a specific AI focus, but she
Speaker 3: saw the ways the Open Ai saga wasn't just a
Speaker 3: story about who runs this company, it's a story about gender.
Speaker 3: In an op ed for Fast Company called how the
Speaker 3: Open Ai Saga Illustrates Tech's toxic masculinity problem, she breaks
Speaker 3: down with the entire things has about male leadership in
Speaker 3: tech and beyond.
Speaker 1: You know, there's a story here about the women, but
Speaker 1: there's perhaps even a more interesting story about the men.
Speaker 1: And I just couldn't get over the feelings that I
Speaker 1: was having of the way in which male privilege and
Speaker 1: this ability to refuse to back down when told Noh
Speaker 1: was really showing up in this story, and the gender
Speaker 1: piece was so glaring for me that I just couldn't
Speaker 1: not see it, and I think that was happening for
Speaker 1: a lot of us.
Speaker 2: I completely agree.
Speaker 3: And what's funny is that I think it took a
Speaker 3: while for that narrative to sort of like become the conversation.
Speaker 3: I think early on the conversation was look at these
Speaker 3: powerful men like disagreeing with each other in public, like
Speaker 3: what's going on? But I think after a while people
Speaker 3: were like, Hey, this is a conversation about gender, about
Speaker 3: the dynamics at play with male leadership, and we should
Speaker 3: be paying attention to that. I think that a lot
Speaker 3: of people might have you believe that when you're only
Speaker 3: talking largely about men, there are no gender dynamics at play,
Speaker 3: Like this is something that I've often thought that, like,
Speaker 3: you know, when it's all men, like, for there to
Speaker 3: be a gender dynamic at play, there has to be
Speaker 3: someone who's not a man, And so we've just sort
Speaker 3: of like accepted maleness as the default gender in a
Speaker 3: way that I think invites people to not see when
Speaker 3: there are very obvious gender dynamics shaping what's happening.
Speaker 4: Totally.
Speaker 1: I will tell you that you know, a couple of
Speaker 1: the men around me when I started thinking about this
Speaker 1: opinion piece were really like the reaction was, well, what
Speaker 1: does this have to do with gender? Like they just
Speaker 1: didn't get it. And I think this is where the
Speaker 1: criks of the conversation needs to happen, because we all
Speaker 1: live together in the.
Speaker 4: Society, you know, we all show up in spaces and you.
Speaker 1: Know, have our own realities, and what ends up happening
Speaker 1: is you know, I think what ends up happening is
Speaker 1: people who have been given privilege, either through their own
Speaker 1: knowledge or not, in the way that they live with
Speaker 1: their lives.
Speaker 4: It's really hard for them.
Speaker 1: To see beyond that, to understand what's going on with
Speaker 1: the person across from them, across the table from them,
Speaker 1: who perhaps doesn't have that same level of privilege. So
Speaker 1: I searched up Sam Altman, you know, I Wikipedia him
Speaker 1: if you will, and you know, here's a guy who
Speaker 1: if I was to look at his CV and not
Speaker 1: know anything about how he's been trumping around the globe
Speaker 1: and trying to you know, really a crew funding for
Speaker 1: this this venture and and you know, this innovative space, like,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure that I would be too impressed with
Speaker 1: his CV. And he, you know, has hopped around a
Speaker 1: lot and I just couldn't help but think, you know,
Speaker 1: if his gender was different. There's some assumption that happened
Speaker 1: in the media, you know, that this guy was ousted
Speaker 1: out of this business, and we couldn't let that happen,
Speaker 1: Like the world would crumble if that happened. And I
Speaker 1: feel like that's kind of the attitude that he and
Speaker 1: his colleagues took as well, like the world will crumble
Speaker 1: if I don't get to stay on top here. And
Speaker 1: you know, women rarely, if ever, are given, you know,
Speaker 1: are allowed to portray themselves in that light, and I
Speaker 1: just I think we can't, Like it would be a
Speaker 1: lost opportunity if we got through this whole saga and
Speaker 1: we're no more aware of how gender plays a role
Speaker 1: in the space than previously. And so I think, you know,
Speaker 1: that's why I wrote the opinion piece. That's why, you know,
Speaker 1: for me, it was really important to kind of name
Speaker 1: some of this behavior that we were seeing for what
Speaker 1: it actually was, which was just, you know, somebody had
Speaker 1: enough privilege and enough gumption to believe that they should
Speaker 1: be there no matter what, and they were going to
Speaker 1: fight for it in whatever way possible and in a
Speaker 1: very visible way. And you know, documenting all of it
Speaker 1: on x or Twitter, and you know women would never
Speaker 1: get away with that.
Speaker 2: She's right.
Speaker 3: Can you imagine if everyone at open Ai was a
Speaker 3: woman or a person of color, how differently the entire
Speaker 3: thing would have been reported and framed. Misty says, the
Speaker 3: entire saga provides context for how identity shapes decisions and
Speaker 3: how they get made at tech companies like open Ai
Speaker 3: and Thust will impact us all. She writes, this story
Speaker 3: went from Pallas intrigue to gossip Girl all in the
Speaker 3: span of forty eight hours and made it clear that
Speaker 3: the men of today are not okay. The shock and
Speaker 3: awe quickly turned into a sad case of the state
Speaker 3: of male leadership, the kind where hot headed frustration and
Speaker 3: anger drives impulsive decision making and where society bends over
Speaker 3: backward to accommodate the male ego as it oozes privilege.
Speaker 2: That line.
Speaker 3: I was like, yes, double click underline plus plus plus snap,
Speaker 3: snap snap, what do you so like given this open
Speaker 3: Ai saga as a template, but also like it's it's
Speaker 3: about open Ai, but it's also not about open Ai,
Speaker 3: Like it's about like, as someone who covers tech, I
Speaker 3: think this is tailor's old as time, you know, sole
Speaker 3: young white male leader who has been able to spin up,
Speaker 3: whether earned or unearned, this attitude around him that he
Speaker 3: is a genius, He is a singular savior. We all
Speaker 3: need him if like he and only he is the
Speaker 3: key to all of this not falling apart and really
Speaker 3: getting the media to sort of go along with it.
Speaker 3: Like it's really a clever trick they pulled. And so yeah,
Speaker 3: I'm wondering, like what do you see as the state
Speaker 3: of male leadership today and how how it's impacting what's
Speaker 3: going on and how we're thinking about it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, and it's not only convincing the media
Speaker 1: to go along with it, but also convincing.
Speaker 4: You know, funders and donors.
Speaker 1: Right like Microsoft was one hundred percent ready to go
Speaker 1: to bat, you know, like they were willing to except
Speaker 1: the change until they weren't. Right until I'm assuming there
Speaker 1: was some like you know, behind the curtain conversation phone
Speaker 1: calls between like, you know, Sam and his folks at Microsoft.
Speaker 3: So here's what happened. After the announcement that Sam Altman
Speaker 3: had been fired as CEO of open Ai, Microsoft open
Speaker 3: AI's largest investor immediately announced that they were hiring Autman
Speaker 3: to lead their AI shop, along with former open ai
Speaker 3: president Greg Brockman, who resigned in protest after Aughtman was canned.
Speaker 3: The remaining open ai staff was very vocally against Altman's firing.
Speaker 3: Almost all of them, over seven hundred staffers signed a
Speaker 3: letter demanding the board that austed him, resigned themselves, and
Speaker 3: for Aughtman to be reinstated. The letter reads, your actions
Speaker 3: made it obvious that you are incapable of overseeing open Ai.
Speaker 3: We are unable to work for or with people that
Speaker 3: lack competence, judgment and care for our mission, and employee,
Speaker 3: investors and funders threaten to pull out to Miramrati, Open
Speaker 3: AI's chief technology officer was appointed interim CEO in Sam's absence.
Speaker 3: That is, in to negotiations when Sam Altman was brought
Speaker 3: back and reinstated a CEO of open Ai with a
Speaker 3: new board in tow too, like an episode of Succession
Speaker 3: meets Silicon Valley. The whole thing was dizzying to watch.
Speaker 4: Women know that this happens.
Speaker 1: Right. You can think about this in terms of gender,
Speaker 1: but you can also think about it in terms of
Speaker 1: race and ethnicity, or sexuality or there's like lots of
Speaker 1: different demographic ways in which we can think about, if
Speaker 1: you will, the people who are allowed to live in
Speaker 1: ignorant bliss, and then like the rest of us who
Speaker 1: see these things happening, And I think, what in this space, like,
Speaker 1: if we're to learn anything, I think what I would
Speaker 1: want us to learn is I would want more men
Speaker 1: to take accountability for their actions and to call out
Speaker 1: this behavior. I you know, it's it's really amazing to
Speaker 1: me that you have a board that was constructed in
Speaker 1: a certain way with rules, and these rules are followed,
Speaker 1: and somebody gets ousted, refuses to follow the rules of
Speaker 1: being ousted, and you know, kind of in some sense
Speaker 1: bullies his way back in. And I don't know if
Speaker 1: he bullied, but like, you know, getting the staff to
Speaker 1: go along with him, getting you know, the funders to
Speaker 1: go along to kind of get back into that space.
Speaker 1: It's like an unwillingness to accept the reality. And then
Speaker 1: the rest of us are watching, and you know, after
Speaker 1: the reality becomes just so unreal, somehow the stories that
Speaker 1: are coming out are justifying the craziness, you know, or
Speaker 1: just saying like oh now it'll be all okay, and
Speaker 1: it's like no, I mean, I don't know if I'm
Speaker 1: not watching the same drama as others are, but it's
Speaker 1: really not okay what happened. Yes, innovation is cool, Yes,
Speaker 1: you know, venture capital projects and like pushing the envelope.
Speaker 1: I mean, I study high skilled workforce, I you know,
Speaker 1: study innovation and all of these things, and they're great,
Speaker 1: but we need to hold people accountable. And I think
Speaker 1: in this instance, and again I don't know any of
Speaker 1: the dynamics of what happened and whether it was justified
Speaker 1: or not. I only know that there were certain rules
Speaker 1: that the company and the board had and that those
Speaker 1: were followed, you know, until they weren't, you know, or
Speaker 1: until exceptions were made. And I think we need to
Speaker 1: critically ask ourselves why did that play out the way
Speaker 1: it did. Why are we not calling out this insistence
Speaker 1: on not accepting the reality, and where are we making
Speaker 1: that normative in a culture, in an environment that is
Speaker 1: already struggles to keep women, you know, like engaged in
Speaker 1: the industry.
Speaker 3: Tech is already a field where people who are not white,
Speaker 3: cisender men don't always feel represented, don't always feel included,
Speaker 3: And so when you are projecting that like oh no,
Speaker 3: it's okay for this this person to not follow the rules.
Speaker 3: You are sort of sending a message that there's a
Speaker 3: rule book for one kind of person and then a
Speaker 3: different rule book for another. Because, as you pointed out
Speaker 3: in your piece, if I was if I was Sam
Speaker 3: Altman and I was a black woman, certainly this kind
Speaker 3: of behavior would be framed very different. I'll just say
Speaker 3: that I think that's a given.
Speaker 2: Let's take a quick break at her back.
Speaker 3: The double standard for what kind of behavior is acceptable
Speaker 3: for men versus people who are not mad in workplaces
Speaker 3: is real, and this is something Misty knows all too well.
Speaker 3: She's had to navigate these tensions in her own career.
Speaker 1: So I worked in a federal statistical agency for over
Speaker 1: a decade, and I can tell you that when I
Speaker 1: was kind of in an upper level of management position,
Speaker 1: if I asked things of people like I once had
Speaker 1: a junior to me who was male on my team
Speaker 1: come on my team and I asked him to schedule
Speaker 1: forward the rest of the team meetings. And even it
Speaker 1: wasn't even twenty four hours, his supervisor was at my desk.
Speaker 1: Why are you asking him to do that? That's your job.
Speaker 1: If I was a man that would have never happened,
Speaker 1: and you know, and so I think this is where
Speaker 1: the rubber hits the road. This is where I would like, like,
Speaker 1: if we're gonna learn anything from this experience, can we
Speaker 1: learn that not everybody can get away with everything, but
Speaker 1: certain people can? And then what are we gonna do
Speaker 1: to you know, specifically in this instance? In my head,
Speaker 1: I'm like, what are men gonna do to fix this, uh,
Speaker 1: you know environment for the women around them? I mean
Speaker 1: I am honestly worried about the women in open Aye,
Speaker 1: Like what is going to happen to them?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 1: Are our others going to want to come and join?
Speaker 1: You know, I think we need to be having these conversations.
Speaker 1: And you know, I think there's some folks who need
Speaker 1: to really eat some home pie, like really a lot
Speaker 1: of it.
Speaker 3: The entire open Ai shakeup left a bad taste in
Speaker 3: the mouths of anybody who cares about things like gender
Speaker 3: representation and inclusion in tech. The open Ai board who
Speaker 3: voted to sack Altman included two women, Helen Toner and
Speaker 3: Tasha McCauley, but after bringing Altman back to the company,
Speaker 3: only one member of the board who voted to oust
Speaker 3: him remained Adam DiAngelo, So that means the only two
Speaker 3: women on the board are gone replaced by men, men
Speaker 3: like Larry Summers, economist and former Obama administration Secretary of
Speaker 3: the Treasury, and who you might recall was kind of
Speaker 3: pressured into resigning as the president of Harvard University after
Speaker 3: a pretty poorly received talk that speculated that innate gender
Speaker 3: differences might be why so few women are represented in
Speaker 3: STEM and Miramuradi, that former open ai Chief technology officer
Speaker 3: who was named interim CEO. She was only CEO for
Speaker 3: just a few days until Altman was reinstated, and she
Speaker 3: publicly signaled support for his return. It's like women are
Speaker 3: being shuffled around to make room for more men. Once
Speaker 3: Sam Appman was back at the helm and a new
Speaker 3: board was in place, Greg Brockman, open AI's former president,
Speaker 3: now reinstated, tweeted a picture of the team captioned we
Speaker 3: are so back and a quick glance tells you all
Speaker 3: you need to know about the demographics. This was my
Speaker 3: reaction when my producer first showed it to me on Twitter. Okay,
Speaker 3: so it is definitely mostly white men. Let's talk about that,
Speaker 3: because you know, we know now that the only two
Speaker 3: women on open AI's board are now gone. They brought
Speaker 3: in men like Larry Summers, who we know was famously
Speaker 3: forced to resign as president of Harvard for making like
Speaker 3: deeply misogynistic and sexist remarks about women in stem I
Speaker 3: get the sense that, like, you don't necessarily feel like
Speaker 3: people are really looking out for the women at these companies.
Speaker 3: And I do think, like, or do you think there's
Speaker 3: a dynamic in some of these tech companies that just
Speaker 3: women as support or like pieces to be moved along
Speaker 3: a game board to further support the leadership of the
Speaker 3: men in the space.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you know, again, I don't know the details
Speaker 1: behind the screen of what happened, but it seems to
Speaker 1: me like Miro was one of those pawns, right like
Speaker 1: she was just asked to be temporary CEO. She lasted
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 3: Like a weekend, like such a sort amount of time,
Speaker 3: you know.
Speaker 1: And then I mean, and then she you know, through
Speaker 1: the reporting, you could see like she had Sam's back,
Speaker 1: you know, And that's one of the reasons why so
Speaker 1: like all the saga, but I am just really worried
Speaker 1: about all of the housekeeping that she has been having
Speaker 1: to do over the past handful of weeks dealing with
Speaker 1: these egos like you know, how is she managing and
Speaker 1: and we don't we're not hearing from her, you know.
Speaker 1: I think the board that was put in place is
Speaker 1: honestly laughable in terms of giving any sort of confidence
Speaker 1: that they're actually thinking about these issues. I know that
Speaker 1: there were statements put out after the fact after this,
Speaker 1: like three board member, you know, and by the way,
Speaker 1: the men survived, right, so the women on the board
Speaker 1: were out. The men survived in different roles or you know,
Speaker 1: one of them kept their role on the board. But
Speaker 1: I know there were statements put out after it came out,
Speaker 1: like Larry Summers and these other people, where it was like, well,
Speaker 1: we're we're not done, We're not done filling the board yet.
Speaker 1: We're you know, we'll put women on. It's like the
Speaker 1: damage is already done. You know, if you're thinking about
Speaker 1: women as an afterthought, if you're thinking about women as
Speaker 1: like a way to salvage your reputation, like that is
Speaker 1: exactly backwards. And I think the current board gives even
Speaker 1: less confidence that it's a good environment for women to thrive.
Speaker 1: You know, I personally, I don't have any confidence in that.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, Larry, you know, has a very
Speaker 1: big name in the field of economics, but it's not
Speaker 1: clear to me that he understands any of these gender dynamics.
Speaker 1: And he's a very privileged person himself. So I'm just
Speaker 1: I worry about that.
Speaker 4: And you know.
Speaker 1: I'm just shocked. It just like shocks me the way
Speaker 1: this all unfolded. I just I don't even know. I'm
Speaker 1: like in a loss of words.
Speaker 2: More after a quick break, let's get right back into it.
Speaker 3: Men like Sam Autman are being put in charge of
Speaker 3: building and ushering in the future for all of us,
Speaker 3: and we're being told they're all geniuses, so smart and
Speaker 3: so visionary that we can trust them to be in charge.
Speaker 3: And I bet that now Sam Autman, it is more
Speaker 3: empowered than ever. They tried to get rid of him.
Speaker 3: We still don't even really know why they couldn't. And
Speaker 3: now he's back. He has got to believe that there's
Speaker 3: no line that he could cross that would lead to
Speaker 3: him actually being successfully ousted. A blank check endorsement for
Speaker 3: his own leadership deserved or not. So what does that
Speaker 3: mean for the rest of us who are kind of
Speaker 3: along for the ride. It is shocking. And I guess
Speaker 3: what is shocking to me, and maybe it shouldn't be,
Speaker 3: is how you have this incredibly like clumsy. I would
Speaker 3: be embarrassed, I guess I'll say that, and then to
Speaker 3: still be told like, no, no, these are the smartest
Speaker 3: guys around. These are the men that you can trust
Speaker 3: with safely architecting the future for all of us. They're like,
Speaker 3: you're in good hands. Like I can't like those two things,
Speaker 3: Like I can't square that circle, the math's not mathing.
Speaker 2: I don't.
Speaker 3: I can't watch something like this unfold and then be like, oh,
Speaker 3: I trust these guys. I wouldn't trust these guys to
Speaker 3: like drive the first leg of a long car trip,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean, let alone be ushering in
Speaker 3: this like incredibly important tech enabled future for all of us.
Speaker 3: It's just like it's just a lot. Yeah, it's just
Speaker 3: a lot to be asked to swallow.
Speaker 4: Totally. It totally is.
Speaker 1: And you know, I think the big question that I
Speaker 1: have right now is like what's going on with the funders?
Speaker 4: Like what you know?
Speaker 1: So, I mean, who's pushing you know, who's pushing against
Speaker 1: this grain. I'm starting to wonder about the composition, demographic
Speaker 1: composition of funders. You live in a society where change
Speaker 1: move moves at a glacial pace, and you know, lots
Speaker 1: of times it feels like two steps forward, one step back.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it feels like one step forward, two steps back.
Speaker 1: You know, like there's just and then something like this happens,
Speaker 1: and it kind of in some sense makes you feel
Speaker 1: like a total loss for all of humanity that you know,
Speaker 1: this can be so played out so blatantly, you know,
Speaker 1: in such a public way, and that there are still
Speaker 1: investors and still people who have hope or belief that
Speaker 1: the clowns leading the show are going to really like
Speaker 1: be able to salvage trust and confidence in the company again,
Speaker 1: you know, loss of words for trying to figure out
Speaker 1: why this isn't more of an issue that's being talked
Speaker 1: about on a broader national level, Like why you know,
Speaker 1: I think when everything first played out, there was like
Speaker 1: this chakunah and then you know, and I said it
Speaker 1: in my piece and then it turned into like, you know,
Speaker 1: gossip girl, like what this craziness like that you know,
Speaker 1: this company cannot survive because of the behavior of their
Speaker 1: ousted leader doing all these shenanigans trying to like squirm
Speaker 1: his way back in, and you know, and then here
Speaker 1: we are, and I've seen pieces come out that are like,
Speaker 1: oh uh, you know, it's all good now, and you
Speaker 1: know Sam's reputation is better than it's ever been.
Speaker 2: Because that's what you really care about.
Speaker 1: I can't figure out, you know, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: goofiness happening here, and somebody needs to take accountability for it.
Speaker 1: And I don't know whether it's like the investors or
Speaker 1: the leaders of this company, or you know, us as
Speaker 1: a society for like not being louder about you know,
Speaker 1: are tolerant or intolerance or tolerance for these shenanigans.
Speaker 4: I just don't know.
Speaker 1: I think it's a sad state of affairs what happened
Speaker 1: with that company, And it's a sad state of it
Speaker 1: demonstrates a lot of the really core issues of what
Speaker 1: happens in the tech industry and what happens in innovative spaces.
Speaker 1: You know, when you have people who haven't been trained
Speaker 1: in how to appropriately manage and how to appropriately lead
Speaker 1: a diverse workforce, you know, you're left with these type
Speaker 1: of situations, which is unfortunate.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I think you really ground it in something
Speaker 3: that I think is important to repeat, which is that
Speaker 3: this really matters. Right, Like, we are all having these
Speaker 3: conversations about the way that AI is poised to perhaps
Speaker 3: deeply change our world and change the way that we work,
Speaker 3: change the way that we do a lot of things.
Speaker 3: And so if the people who are leading in that
Speaker 3: change are not able to do so in a way
Speaker 3: where they are effectively managing inclusive and diverse workforces to
Speaker 3: do that, I think it hurts all of us. Like,
Speaker 3: I know that you're not necessarily like an AI per,
Speaker 3: but I did want to get your thoughts on this.
Speaker 2: So.
Speaker 3: Lynette Mukami is a social search and analytics editor at
Speaker 3: Kennya's Nation media group, and she argues that conversations around
Speaker 3: AI has up until now really centered around things like power,
Speaker 3: profit and efficiencies, with little focus on its potential for
Speaker 3: social good. She says a lot of this has to
Speaker 3: do with who is leading the conversation, which is it's
Speaker 3: white men, So it's all the perspectives of white men.
Speaker 3: And if we had more female techies and thought leaders
Speaker 3: in that conversation, we might see different AI solutions.
Speaker 2: So I guess do you think that the way that we.
Speaker 3: Are centering the voices of white men in these conversations
Speaker 3: are really just leaving us all having like limited insights
Speaker 3: and views and perspectives because we're just reflecting a very
Speaker 3: pacific kind of mindset.
Speaker 4: I agree.
Speaker 1: So again, not in the AI space, but I am
Speaker 1: in the statistics space and the official statistics you know,
Speaker 1: national statistics space, and so I have done a lot
Speaker 1: of thinking and writing and research on the idea of,
Speaker 1: you know, the stories that we know, the stories that
Speaker 1: we tell about who we are, are very much reflected
Speaker 1: by the voice of people in power. And one example
Speaker 1: of that which I think overlays this idea of whose
Speaker 1: story is AI telling. Think about economic statistics, right, and
Speaker 1: you think about how we capture economic statistics. At the
Speaker 1: end of the day, you know, economics is really about
Speaker 1: doing something that produces a good, or produces a benefit,
Speaker 1: or produces something for somebody else or something for yourself.
Speaker 1: Women have been extremely economically active throughout the entire existence
Speaker 1: of humans, and yet when you look at economic statistics
Speaker 1: like labor force participation, you see really big gap between
Speaker 1: women and men's labor force participation. And it's partly because
Speaker 1: the only type of economic activity who captures the type
Speaker 1: of economic activity that historically has been done by men.
Speaker 1: We just completely ignore all the economic activity that women
Speaker 1: do in their homes, for their families, et cetera, you know,
Speaker 1: all the unpaid work.
Speaker 4: And so.
Speaker 1: You know, part of like what I've been trying to
Speaker 1: do in the field of economics is really kind of
Speaker 1: force this reckoning of an awareness that we need to
Speaker 1: stop telling the economic stories of women through the lenses
Speaker 1: of men, and we need to start telling the economic
Speaker 1: stories of women through the lenses of women. And that
Speaker 1: means we need to stop tying ourselves to these storylines
Speaker 1: that men have built. And I think that the same
Speaker 1: is true in AI, like you know, to the extent
Speaker 1: that it's using training data that's historical and was built
Speaker 1: to describe, you know, the world in which white men live,
Speaker 1: Like that is what is going to start predicting back
Speaker 1: out to us. And you know, that's not okay, and
Speaker 1: we need to be thinking harder about that. And I'll
Speaker 1: just say those current turn of events that open AI
Speaker 1: gives me zero confidence in the company's ability to take
Speaker 1: those things seriously.
Speaker 3: We need people from more backgrounds and identities making decisions
Speaker 3: about technology, like AI, not just because it's nice or
Speaker 3: it's good to have diversity, but because it is critical
Speaker 3: to making technology that safely and effectively serves the most people.
Speaker 3: Those voices are out there too. On Mozilla's podcast Irl,
Speaker 3: the other podcast I host, we talk to them and
Speaker 3: about their work, asking who has the power in AI.
Speaker 3: But these same voices are often at best ignored or
Speaker 3: at worse punished when they speak up about ethics and
Speaker 3: technology like AI, and it hurts all of us. For instance,
Speaker 3: when Jeffrey Hinton, some times called the godfather of AI,
Speaker 3: recently spoke out about his fears around AI technology he
Speaker 3: helped build, he was championed. Meanwhile, women and women of
Speaker 3: color like tim net Gabru, who was pushed out of
Speaker 3: Google for being critical about the risks associated with AI,
Speaker 3: are punished for it. Shutting already traditionally marginalized people out
Speaker 3: of the rooms where decisions are being made and power
Speaker 3: is being held. Is not just bad because like it's
Speaker 3: not nice or like just like ya diversity. It's as
Speaker 3: I've seen men joking about on Twitter, Like if you
Speaker 3: searched open AI and women on Twitter, you have men,
Speaker 3: some of whom like work in tech and like have
Speaker 3: the place that they work in their bio. When people
Speaker 3: are complaining that, like oh, the women are pushed out
Speaker 3: of the board, they're like, oh, it's not a bad
Speaker 3: open AI is not a battered women's shelter. It turns
Speaker 3: out like things like that that it's like, you really
Speaker 3: don't get it because it harms us all when technology
Speaker 3: and economic decisions that are connected to that technology are
Speaker 3: made by just not enough kinds of people, like, it's
Speaker 3: actually dangerous. It makes technology, Like we've already seen all
Speaker 3: the different ways that technology harms people of color, harms
Speaker 3: non native English speakers, harms women, or you know, at best,
Speaker 3: doesn't see us. At worse harms us. And so it's
Speaker 3: not just something to do because it's nice. It actually
Speaker 3: matters for all of us that we are included in
Speaker 3: a meaningful way. And I think the fact that so
Speaker 3: many men are just unable to see that. They still
Speaker 3: think it's like people like we got to have women
Speaker 3: on the board because it looks good, or because it's nice,
Speaker 3: or because it's diversity and it's woke in twenty twenty three,
Speaker 3: as opposed to really not seeing the way that it
Speaker 3: truly does matter for everybody them included really does not
Speaker 3: fill me with confidence.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I agree, I mean, and I do think that,
Speaker 1: you know, the kind of space where we need to
Speaker 1: really focus in on moving forward.
Speaker 4: Is a space that really.
Speaker 1: Forces kind of all of the voices to the table.
Speaker 1: And you know, one way that I think is sometimes
Speaker 1: powerful in getting men to understand the dynamic or how
Speaker 1: women can be disadvantaged by the world we live in
Speaker 1: is to really for them to see it through the
Speaker 1: eyes of their children, through the eyes of their daughters, Like,
Speaker 1: is this the legacy that they want to leave for
Speaker 1: their children? Is this you know, these stifled opportunities that
Speaker 1: women often have, or you know, the additional challenges that
Speaker 1: women experience and engaging in leadership roles, Like is that
Speaker 1: is that the legacy that they want to leave for
Speaker 1: the next generation and for their own daughters? And you know,
Speaker 1: hopefully the answer would be no, but maybe it would
Speaker 1: be yes. I mean, you know, part of the problem
Speaker 1: is that when people have power, you know, they rarely
Speaker 1: want to give it away. So it's like, you know
Speaker 1: that that's right there is the core of this struggle
Speaker 1: is like how do we get people to understand that
Speaker 1: by being more inclusive, you're not actually giving your power away.
Speaker 1: You're actually strengthening your power because you're allowing for more
Speaker 1: diverse voices to be heard, which allows you to improve
Speaker 1: whatever it is that you're doing. Like, I think a
Speaker 1: lot of people just don't get that we have this
Speaker 1: idea that there's only a certain amount of the pie,
Speaker 1: and you know, if I have to share any of
Speaker 1: my pie with somebody else, that's going to be less
Speaker 1: for me. And I think that's a really shortsighted perspective
Speaker 1: to have.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean it's true, and it doesn't always feel
Speaker 3: good to talk about. It's like kind of heavy and grim,
Speaker 3: but I have to say, like reading your work, you
Speaker 3: actually strike me as somebody who is despite all of
Speaker 3: that dark stuff, is actually kind of like positive and
Speaker 3: hopeful when it comes to women and our place and
Speaker 3: in economics, bonus question, what does Taylor Swift tell us
Speaker 3: about women and our place.
Speaker 2: In the economy right now?
Speaker 3: I mean people can't see because this is a podcast,
Speaker 3: but you're I assume you're in your office and there's
Speaker 3: that Taylor Swift eras tour poster behind you. Yes, what
Speaker 3: is what is what is swift? What is swift Enomics
Speaker 3: and what does it tell us about where we are
Speaker 3: as women right now.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm so glad you asked this question.
Speaker 1: So you know, I lived the first portion of my life,
Speaker 1: like I said, feeling very frustrated that the struggle was
Speaker 1: real for women, and that it was you know, we
Speaker 1: had to think more, we had to process more in
Speaker 1: terms of like leadership and how we wanted to present
Speaker 1: ourselves because people would react to us different way. And
Speaker 1: I finally got to a point where I was just
Speaker 1: tired of being frustrated, and so I thought, you know,
Speaker 1: can we flip the storyline here. Men have enormous amounts
Speaker 1: of privilege in you know, our nation, but also across
Speaker 1: the globe, and they have a lot of men have
Speaker 1: something that I call care privilege, meaning that they have
Speaker 1: other people taking care of their care needs. I don't
Speaker 1: have anybody taking care of my care needs, okay, And
Speaker 1: I have two children in a spouse, you know, an
Speaker 1: aging mom, so you know, I am always having to
Speaker 1: give care and that means that the way that I
Speaker 1: present myself at my job and at work looks different.
Speaker 1: And I'm tired of feeling frustrated about that inequality, and
Speaker 1: so I just have decided that it's time to flip
Speaker 1: the script. And I'm tired of living in a man's
Speaker 1: world and I just want to live in my own
Speaker 1: and my own world looks different and represents itself differently,
Speaker 1: and you know, I can can't feel bad about that anymore.
Speaker 1: And you know, the Swifty Nomics, my book that's coming out,
Speaker 1: is really about celebrating the ways in which, even though
Speaker 1: adversity confronts all of us in different ways, it's really
Speaker 1: about thriving through that adversity. It's about celebrating reinvention. So
Speaker 1: we all know, you know, Taylor Swift is essentially my
Speaker 1: muse for the book because she is the queen of
Speaker 1: reinvention if you know anything about her story and how
Speaker 1: she survived. And so it's really I think we need
Speaker 1: to give ourselves more credit, and we need to create
Speaker 1: a space for ourselves, just mentally and emotionally where we
Speaker 1: can stop feeling like we need to fight the struggle
Speaker 1: and just start living the life that we want to
Speaker 1: live in whatever form that takes place. And yeah, calling
Speaker 1: people out on their bullshit, you know, never gonna stop
Speaker 1: doing that. But I just really want women to appreciate,
Speaker 1: even through all the difficulties, all the amazingness that we
Speaker 1: give out to the world and that we you know,
Speaker 1: all of our successes. I think we need to celebrate
Speaker 1: that more so.
Speaker 3: Ultimately, would you say it's a love story that's meant
Speaker 3: to be a Taylor Swift joke?
Speaker 2: I don't know. I was like, I got to.
Speaker 3: End on a Taylor Swich joke, but I was like
Speaker 3: that one might be too like I love it.
Speaker 4: I love it, Yes, one the love story.
Speaker 3: You're asking women to live their wildest dreams.
Speaker 4: That's right, You're so good.
Speaker 3: I'm actually looking at a list of Taylor Swift songs
Speaker 3: as we speak.
Speaker 4: So I love it.
Speaker 2: Missy. Thank you so much for being here.
Speaker 3: Is there anything that I did not ask that you
Speaker 3: want to make sure gets included in this conversation.
Speaker 1: No, I just want to say thank you for inviting me.
Speaker 1: This is such an important topic, and I really, I
Speaker 1: really hope that as we move forward, things get better
Speaker 1: and not worse in this space, and I hope that
Speaker 1: more people start calling out kind of the inequalities that
Speaker 1: we're seeing take place before our very eyes in a
Speaker 1: very juvenile fashion.
Speaker 3: Listeners, y'all heard it here. Your homework from this episode
Speaker 3: is call somebody out. On their bullshit today.
Speaker 4: That's great.
Speaker 3: Got a story about an interesting thing in tech, or
Speaker 3: just want to say hi? You can reach us at
Speaker 3: Hello at tangody dot com. You can also find transcripts
Speaker 3: for today's episode at tengody dot com. There Are No
Speaker 3: Girls on the Internet was created by me bridget Toad.
Speaker 3: It's a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed creative Jonathan Strickland
Speaker 3: as our executive producer. Tari Harrison is our producer and
Speaker 3: sound engineer. Michael Amado is our contributing producer. I'm your host,
Speaker 3: bridget Toad. If you want to help us grow, rate
Speaker 3: and review.
Speaker 2: Us on Apple Podcasts.
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Speaker 3: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1: It was moha USh