子どもたちが教えてくれたAIの分断：推進派の息子と懐疑派の娘

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I'm Bob Safian, former editor-in-chief of Fast Company, and I'll be your host as each episode breaks down what you need to know right now. You can find Rapid Response wherever you get your podcasts. Yeah, we're ready. Oh, what? We're just like, we're just popping. All sorts of random. Like that just happened when you're with your family? Yeah. I'm surprised that neither of you have said if you're worried about AI and loneliness. Because that's one of my main concerns. Really? Do you have any friends at your school who have, like, AI boyfriends and girlfriends? Oh, my God. Do you? No. Oh, my God. Do you? Yeah. No. I don't. I don't. But, like, a couple weeks ago, none of you guys were home. And so I decided to, like, have dinner with Gemini.

What does that mean? No way. Oh, my God. Okay. Well, no. I'm like, wow, maybe I just have not been as present as a sister as I should be. I know. You know what I mean? I'm like. You're like, mom guilt. Yeah, I feel sister guilt. I'm just like. It is not a sentient thing that's able to like opine, right? Hi, everybody. I am so excited for today's episode. Around the end of May, I wrote a LinkedIn article called I'm an AI scientist. My daughter refuses to use AI and I'm OK with it. And it's really about how my two kids sit on the opposite ends of the AI spectrum and what my role is as a parent. So the article kind of went viral on LinkedIn. It had over 150,000 views, many, many comments and reshares. And I thought it would be fun if I brought the kids on the show to react to the article and talk about how they use AI and how they don't. I'm Rana El-Khalyubi, and this is Pioneers of AI, a podcast taking you behind the scenes of the AI revolution.

For our episode today, it is my pleasure to welcome my two favorite human beings in the world, my two kids, Jenna and Adam. Welcome to Pioneers of AI. Hey, everybody. Excited to be here. I think the podcast is always recorded from our living room, and so it's exciting to kind of be on the other end of the show. These poor people are like, okay, guys, I'm recording from 2 to 3 p.m. nobody like not allowed to use the kitchen and you're not allowed to like do this and that so anyway a lot of people know about you because I post about you a lot and talk about you a lot on the show but I thought it would be fun to give you an opportunity to introduce yourself to everyone so Jenna how about we start with you yeah for sure so I graduated from Harvard a year ago I studied food anthropology and Middle Eastern studies and what is that so food anthropology is really thinking about the world, everything from politics to economics to the way in which people connect

and understand one another through food. And so I kind of ask questions like, wow, how can we learn about someone else's life through food? Or if we ask questions about, I don't know, recipes that they hold near and dear to their heart, what kind of different perspectives can we learn about their lives through that? For the past year, I co-founded and built Menara, which is a culture salon and Evening Cafe that's really centered around bringing people together. And so convening people for art workshops, poetry readings, book talks, film screenings. And we hosted 80 plus events, all of which were completely packed. And I think it was a really kind of special way to see that people are really hungry for in-person connection. And I know we're going to jump into why I think that is and kind of how that all fits into the AI world. Can you say something that maybe people have not heard me talk about you, like something that's, I don't know, that's uniquely you that we don't know about? Ooh. I mean, you might have heard this already, but I really love to cook and I love to bake.

And you may already know this, but I am a horrible cook. Yes. And then every week I have been cooking from a different country. And so I pick kind of a country. I go out in the Boston area to a specialized grocery store. I buy all the ingredients, and then I come home and make it. And so I've done. That's so funny. It's like the best. It's an international food night. Mommy, you missed Chinese this week. It was really good. It was really good. We've done Thai, Honduran. Somalian. We've done Somalian, Filipino. Yeah. Yeah. Guys, you have to tell us. Yeah. Give us recommendations. Yeah, give us recommendations. What should we do next? I know. That's fun. All right, Adam. How about you? Yeah. Just a little bit about yourself. I'm Adam. I'm a rising senior in high school at Milton Academy. And I mean, I have a lot of different interests. I'm really into history, especially the history of Egyptology, really into math, into AI. A couple of weeks ago, I was at the National Speech and Debate Tournament. And so I recorded one of my speeches. And right after the round, I got out. The first thing I did was I gave that recording to my agent and I told it to analyze my vocal intonation and give me feedback before the next round.

I've been teaching financial literacy to immigrant families and kids, and I've been using AI to help modify the materials so that it's more easily understandable and accessible and engaging. So I think these are just many different types of ways where AI can make you better. Can you talk about your interest in Egyptology and AI? Because I think that's not an obvious pairing. Pairing. Yeah, for sure. Thank you. So just for some context, last summer I was working at the American University in Cairo. Go AUC? Yeah, it is, yeah. Some connections there. But I was searching through these archives of these Egyptian Egyptologists and Egyptian workmen on excavation fields, like their diaries, the ledgers from the excavations. So basically imagine 15 boxes, completely disorganized, page after page of diary notebooks or ledgers or like letters between different men and not the

best condition at all. And so I was searching through them. I was trying to answer my question of like how the Egyptian Antiquity Service reflected like Egypt's nationalization project. And it was really difficult, especially because although I'm Egyptian, I can't really read Arabic, especially not like handwritten Arabic from that time period. And I discovered that although if you try to use an AI model like Google Gemini or Chai Chibi T, if you just go onto the website and try that, you're going to get a ton of hallucinations because it doesn't have archival context, right? But what I realized is that if you're able to feed all of the historical archival context to the AI, like you would give it to a person who's trying to understand the archive, it will be able to translate and transcribe these documents much more accurately. And so I decided to sort of scale this up and I built a platform which I'm calling Tarath, which means heritage in Arabic, that allows a researcher or an institution to upload all of their archival

context. And what it does, it basically builds a system prompt where then you can upload your documents and then get more accurate transcriptions and translations. And I've been using it for myself because now I'm able to actually like search through all of these different Arabic documents that I would have never been able to look at. And so that's what I've been really getting into this summer. And I hopefully plan to grow it and help some institutions digitize their archival collections like AUT. And so, yeah, we'll see what happens. The TLDR of all of this is that you use AI for absolutely everything in your life. Like, it's just like there. You have your AI agents doing everything for you. So I have a printout of the article. Here's what we're going to do. Have you read the article? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I want you to highlight things that stand out to us. Yeah, stand out to you. All right. I'm an AI scientist. My daughter refuses to use AI, and I'm okay with it. Yeah, I started by throwing you under the bus.

Yay. All right. I spend most of my waking hours inside the AI economy. My advice, delivered with the conviction of someone who has spent her career on it, yes, I have, has been consistent. If you're a young person, or any person, lean in, be playful, and don't get left behind. My son, Adam, is what people now call AI native. When I watch him work, I see exactly the future I've been describing on stage. My daughter, Jenna, graduated from Harvard last spring, where she studied food anthropology. Sometimes the parent in me worries about her. And sometimes the investor in me does too. I worry especially about what it means for her, as a young woman, to opt out of AI at a moment when AI is creating massive economic opportunity. The people who will benefit most are the ones building it, funding it, and learning to wield it fluently. What I started to think is that the AI enthusiasts and the AI skeptics need each other.

I'm not sure about that. All right. What's stuck with you guys? Sure, can I go first? You want to go first? Sure, you can go first. So the first paragraph you say, if you're a young person or any person, lean into it, be playful, and don't get left behind. Okay. And I really like that. I think you're hinting at the conclusion you come to at the end of the article, where it's like, lean in, right, and explore. And I actually think that both Jenna and I are leaning in our own different ways. while my version of leaning in is like playing with the tools, exploring, applying it to all the different aspects of my life. I think Jenna's leaning in, correct me if I'm wrong, but she's leaning in in her own way of leaning into this human side. And that also applies to AI, right? But it's like the other pole of what I'm doing. Well, actually, let me ask you both. Like, what is your perspective on AI?

I'm definitely the AI skeptic of the group. I think that... But what does that mean? Yeah, so I think that there's like really great promise in AI. And I feel like we talk about it a lot. And I think it's really obvious, like listening to all the different things that Adam is doing and has done with AI. You know, it feels like AI has made him a lot more efficient and creative and really cool and important ways. But I think that I'm really, really worried about the ways in which I think AI is limiting people's ability to critically think. So I think about the writing process, for example, which for me is really, really important to the work that I do, but is also something I really love doing. I was a writing tutor at Harvard, and I remember when kind of Chad GPT first came out, you know, there was a whole school of people that were saying, Wow for some of the international students that we see at the Writing Center or some of the folks who come from maybe like lower income schools that don necessarily have super strong writing programs perhaps ChatGPT is going to be the thing that solves that and kind of like equalizes the playing field in terms of writing And unfortunately I think that AI has the potential to do the opposite

which is that I think when people kind of rely on AI for writing, there's a lot of like shortcuts that kind of come out. And I think what's so important about the writing process is that it is a process right and so through writing you're able to develop your own ideas make new connections um and that struggle or that iteration goes away I guess yeah and I think that also part of the process of writing is like articulating your own thoughts and like really like kind of almost like toiling with your own thoughts and then being forced to like put those on paper and like work through the iterative process of making the best draft possible right and I think that that ability to communicate with other people and to form one's own thoughts is really hindered when you go immediately to AI to answer a question or to write an essay. At the writing center, people would often tell us like, oh, can you just write this paragraph for me? Or, oh, can you just write my thesis for me? And the answer was always no, because the point of us as writing center tutors wasn't to get them an A on an essay or to kind of help them cut corners, but it was actually to equip them with

the tools and the skills necessary to write well, because in the long term, that's what matters. It's not about one essay or one answer, right? It's about your ability in the long run to really, you know, think critically by yourself and put those thoughts and be able to do something really important with your own thinking. And so I think that's something that I worry AI is curtailing. So how that manifests in our family is sometimes Adam and I will be sitting on the couch, I don't know, using AI to, I don't know, iterate on a draft or something. And Jenna will walk by and she's like, why use your brain? Yes. Yeah, because I think that you don't realize it. But the more and more, I mean, there's a lot of data that's now coming out to say this too. But the more you offload to AI, the more that your brain forgets how to do some of these tasks in the first place, right? And there's many times where, like, in the process of writing an email, you realize, oh, my goodness. I should also mention this or like I actually had no idea because of my own research that like this person went to this school.

Let me mention that person. And I think all of those connections are really, really important. And I do think that the more that AI kind of, you know, proliferates and really like becomes embedded in almost every part of our lives, I think the more that our brains are going to become important again, right, because everyone now has access to AI. And so I think that brains are going to go back to being the differentiating factor. And I worry that everyone kind of immediately embracing AI will not have their brains to rely on anymore. Do you want to respond to that? Yeah, I feel like I'm torn, right? Because I see what Jenna's saying. If everyone has AI at their disposal, then the people who will differentiate themselves will be the people with the most creative ideas and the most creative brains. But I also feel like the potential of me plus AI is objectively higher than just me. Me without AI, I don't think I would be able to do everything that I do. And I think AI improves the quality of my work and expands the possibilities of my projects.

And so I kind of wonder, okay, sure, the brain probably will be the differentiating factor. But I don't see a world where people are not collaborating with AI on an everyday basis, however they do that. And so I don't really know the answer, but I'm torn with what you're saying. I kind of wonder, like, what is the next generation of students in general? Like, how will they kind of relate to honesty and integrity and, like, those questions when, like, AI is so hyper-available and pervasive in the classroom and beyond? Well, what do you both think counts as cheating and what is okay? I mean, obviously, it depends on the, like, class expectations. And I do think that, like, guidelines or work expectations. but I personally do feel like passing off AI work as your own is a form of cheating. I think that the line is a lot more blurry when you're using AI to brainstorm.

Generally, I think AI is a bad brainstormer. Like, you should, again, use your own brain. What about editing? I think editing can also be, like, somewhere in the middle, But I do think that, like, the editing process, again, is so important to writing an iteration. And so I do think if it's a writing assignment, I would totally say editing is cheating. So I think, I mean, right now, in the current state of the world, especially school, if you're submitting something that you use AI in the process of making and you're not disclosing it, that is, like, cheating in school rules, right? Just, like, looking at school rules, that's cheating. And similarly, it used to be like even with school, like if you had a parent read over your essay or a friend, like you're supposed to also disclose that because the whole point is that you're like learning right into your work and you need to be evaluated on your learning and growth. So, yes. Right. But I think in the ideal world, that won't be a thing anymore. I think people will start to judge only by quality of work. And AI will just be used as a tool like Grammarly that will help you upgrade the quality of your work.

Right. Like if I have bad punctuation and I use Grammarly, it's probably not cheating. Right. If I'm bad at doing multiplication tables in my head and I need to do some sort of really complicated real-world problem about math and I use a calculator, that's not really cheating. Like in math, if you use a calculator, no one really cares that you disclose that you used a calculator. Right. Right? I think the same thing will happen to other subjects like English where, okay, if you used AI but your work is still at the quality, like maybe you're not going to have to disclose that you used AI or maybe you will disclose but it won't be like supposedly cheating, you know? Well, one thing that I have come to realize actually through these conversations at home and now, you know, we're sharing this with the rest of the world is I am very – obviously my investment thesis is AI that unlocks human potential and amplifies and augments human abilities. So in a way, it's what you said, like the combination of human and AI is really powerful, and that's kind of what I'm trying to unlock with the founders I back.

But you also, Jenna, made me realize that there's almost an antithesis that in this world that is just so, like, busy with AI, maybe there's an opportunity to back the analog world and whether that is, like, you know, human-based experiences, human-based connections. So I'm kind of trying to, like, sort through that thesis, too. Right, like I wonder if a world where there's more AI also means that there's more space for human connection. Right, yeah. But I guess something I was thinking about too with kind of thinking about this idea of like being playful, right, with AI. I also do think that kind of this like framing of like being playful maybe doesn't necessarily like address some of the harmful impacts of AI, right? Because it just feels like very like fun. You can just play with AI as if it's like a sandbox, right? And some of them even are called sandboxes. But at the same time, you're not necessarily cognizant of maybe the negative impact it's having on your own kind of critical cognition, but also on the world at large, whether it's like climate or whatever else.

And so I do think it's kind of interesting because I agree, like, there is a way maybe to do human plus AI and do it in a somewhat ethical and kind of positive way. But I also think that kind of how we frame the question also does matter. I'll be right back with more of my conversation after this quick break. The companies winning right now aren't just building great AI. They're building the infrastructure to actually run a business on top of it, which is where Stripe comes in. Stripe is built for whatever comes next with planetary-scale financial infrastructure to help you power any business model. As a matter of fact, 86% of the Forbes AI 50 run on Stripe, along with industry leaders like Salesforce and Pepsi. Last year, Stripe users processed $1.9 trillion combined.

See how Stripe can power what's next for your business at Stripe.com. Everybody has a hot take on the economy. And whether you're curious about inflation, trade wars, or the markets, what you need is reporting you can trust. Hi, I'm Kai Rizdal, the host of Marketplace. Our award-winning reporters talk to everybody from CEOs to farmers to help you understand how the economy takes shape in the real world. You'll be smarter every time you listen. And these days, that's priceless. Listen to Marketplace on your favorite podcast app. What are your concerns about AI? Who wants to go first? Well, one thing that just came to mind when Adam was talking is, because you were saying that you feel like it does make you more efficient in kind of all aspects of life. And one thing I really struggle with is I feel like I am a good writer. And so I can tell when like Chad Chupiti or Claude

outputs some really bad writing. But like I'm not a good mathematician, right? And so I actually can't tell. Like if I have Claude do some math, like I can't really tell. Like is this, has it done it correctly? Has it not? And I worry that people who haven't spent kind of like years in a field or maybe are going to Claude or ChatGPT for various tasks aren't necessarily able to discern if the output is good or bad, right? And I think that discernment is so important. And I think if you're, like, teaching someone how to write, right, like think about fifth graders who are learning to write for the first time, I do think that there's something kind of lost in being immediately able to turn to an AI chatbot and having the AI chatbot kind of do it for them and them not necessarily being able to recognize kind of what quality the output is. I think this is a very important point. We actually talked about this at work, too. There was one time a few months ago when Anthropic went down, like it was down, and we have Cloud Code doing stuff for us.

And it kind of, we have this realization, like, okay, we happen to know how to do the job, so if AI goes down, it's fine. But in the future, if you don't know how to do the work, to your point, Can you discern if it's good quality or not? And if something happens, what's the backup plan? And that's such a good point. What concerns you about AI? Sort of adding on to that, recently I've been looking at my life and other people's lives as how likely are they for their whole life to be replaced by AI. For example, I look at Jenna and she's very low on that scale. She's not going to be replaced. Yeah, no, good for you. I don't think AI is ever going to be able to replace you because you do so many things that impact like real lives and it's like real impact. But then sometimes I look at my own life. I'm like, OK, I'm doing these assignments for school. I'm writing these emails. Like everything I do is kind of on the digital world. How easy would it be for me to run an agent that just runs my entire life with like would anyone notice?

And that's kind of scary to me. The idea that AI, maybe I'm like not that far away from AI being able to replace me. That's scary. And I think it's a signal that maybe I need to change some things in my life. But can I say something? I don't think AI can replace you. Like I think you are thinking about your function as a human being in a very narrow like production way And I like no like AI can replace the dinner table conversations we have or like I can replace all of those moments nor can it replace like again your ability to think right that's why I keep coming back to thinking because I do think it's like it's not like the not replaceable thing but like it could act like it's thinking and it could act like it's thinking like me and then who would know do you think you'd be able to tell I totally think I'd be able to tell Adam versus AI Adam. I don't know. I don't know about the, like, I can see how that can be scary to you, but I also feel like it's a little bit sad, too. Yeah.

Yeah. It's very sad. So have you made any changes to your life based on that realization? I don't know. I mean, the summer started, so I've been trying to spend more time with my friends or, like, get out, play paddle or, like, DJ. I mean, these are all things that I don't think would be replaced by AI. But, yeah, maybe it's, like, a mindset shift. like you were saying, like viewing your life in a different way. Not to think about yourself as just productive. Yeah. Do you have other concerns about AI? Like, I don't know. I mean, a related one I think is so I'm a year out of college and so I do think I have obviously a lot of friends who are in jobs and are similarly genuinely worried if they're going to get replaced by AI and also folks who are in the job market whose applications are being screened by AI. And I think it is a really scary time to be kind of looking for a job and thinking about like some of these questions and have them not feel so existential but but really like up close and personal let's talk about your job process because that's been like really interesting and fascinating so you have friends who have

applied to i don't want to say hundreds of jobs but like definitely like 50 plus 50 plus jobs And the way they're able to do this efficiently is they literally have AI, like auto-find jobs and auto-populate jobs. And then you're taking a very different approach. So tell us about your approach. And I'm not judging which approach works better because we're still in it. So no judging there. I guess we'll find out soon. We're going to find out. My approach has very much been to find job opportunities that are aligned with my values and my interests and spend a lot of time thoughtfully curating answers to job application answers. Yeah, like really a lot of time putting thought and kind of humanity into the applications. And I think, at least thus far, I think that the folks kind of reading my applications have appreciated the fact that it is a human on the other side. I think they've been able to see that.

Yeah, like you haven't applied to like tens of jobs, like a handful of jobs, but you've gotten, it's like a hundred percent get to first interview rate, which is pretty impressive. I don't know if you'll get the job. Yeah, but I also do think it's reflective of the jobs themselves. Like they're not seeking, I think, maybe just because of the industry or they're not seeking like folks who are applying in mass to AI, right? I think they are seeking very like thoughtful, intentional candidates. And so there is kind of like a match there. But it definitely is interesting. At some point, though, I kind of convinced you or actually one of your best friends uses an AI tool. And we're like, okay, let's try it. So it's called Jack in Jail. Yes. Tell us about that experience because that was – I sat next to you. It's so weird. It was not my favorite. Jack in Jail is a voice AI chatbot. So basically you speak to it and then – You speak to Jack and Jail does all that. Well, apparently – no. Apparently Jail is the one who's talking to hiring managers. I learned later. They didn't make that very clear, so it seemed like Jack was like, I don't know.

But anyway, so Jack, yeah. You hopped on a call with Jack. I hopped on a call with Jack. And Jack is an AI agent. Oh, yeah. Jack is super an AI agent. And Jack kind of tried to learn a little bit about my interests and what I was looking for in my career and what I was good at, what I was hoping to get better at. And then, yeah, and then Jack took a look at my resume and surfaced a bunch of jobs. um none of which i ended up applying to why not i just i just don't i just felt like oh like requires 15 years of experience and i was like well that's just not gonna happen um some of them i think were also like in industries or fields that didn't kind of align with what i wanted to do and i think it was interesting just to like see kind of what jack really kind of clung on to right right like I once mentioned like communications and then suddenly like every single role it was surfacing was related to communications and I think it's just because

some of those like keywords or buzzwords that I mentioned was really what it was using to surface jobs um but yeah it was really interesting and I'm sure we're going to see more and more of these like voice chatbots popping up across spheres of life well I think this is again with my investor hat on. I think this is very interesting because I have a hypothesis that it's like an AI matchmaker, right? Whether it's matching you with jobs or it's matching you with friends or matching you with partners or experiences. I think that is interesting, but clearly it's not quite there yet. Do you think that's human-centric? Like, if an AI can find you jobs, is that, like, human-centric? I would say so because ultimately it's helping you get to the right, like, opportunity or connection for you. So I think that's cool. What about if an AI is, like, finding new colleges? Is that also human-centric? Finding new colleges to apply to, you mean? No. What if I gave my, like, whole academic resume to my AI and I was like, find me the top three colleges I should apply to?

What is the challenge with all of this? And I mean, I'm not saying that like LinkedIn or maybe College Board or some random colleges is any better. But I think the challenge is that like you are a 3D person. Right. And necessarily, especially when you're like just a resume and a couple of like disjoint of thoughts right to an AI chatbot or some of your academic resume. Like you are that is a very like slim, narrow version of you. And I think it's very different than talking to someone, for example, whose kids maybe went to, like, three different colleges. And then they're giving you advice based on the kids' experiences with the college. You know what I mean? And they are able to, like, talk to you as a 3D human being. Because at the end of the day, like, things like a college or even a job fit are not just, like, oh, is it a credentials fit? But also, like, is it a personality fit? Is it a character fit? Is it a community fit? I think these are all really important questions that Jack, unfortunately, could not. He couldn't? I mean, Jack certainly could have, but maybe your college person could.

But I don't know. Jack did not. Yeah, that was not in Jack's wheelhouse. We ghosted Jack. Yeah. What else stuck with you in this article? Adam, what stuck with you? Yeah, so what I was saying a couple minutes ago is, like, the way I lean in is Jenna is also equally leaning in to AI by leaning out of AI. Like that skill that she's developing on recognizing human connections and recognizing, I guess, analog things that are engaging to people, that is equally or maybe more important than like using AI itself and being like AI native. I think that's a different way to be AI native, although it's not AI related. Well, define what AI native means for you. I think AI native means living in an AI world the people are going to be able to differentiate themselves just in general that could be through AI and being an expert in AI or that could be through an expert

being an expert in human connection and community building so in my mind Jenna's very AI native because in an AI world she's going to be the one that's bringing people together and connecting them in an AI driven world Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. That's an interesting point of view. But that's sort of the conclusion you come to at the end of the article. You sort of echo that. Yeah. I think that was my other big realization, that whatever's happening in our little family is a microcosm of, like, what is happening in the real world. And many people reach out and they were like, this is exactly, like, what's happening in my family or my company or my organization. Totally. Wait, I also think that people are having these internal debates themselves, right? Like, considering, like, how much do I use AI in my daily life? Do I get in on some of the IPOs for, you know, these huge AI companies that are happening in the next couple of months? Like, what is my relationship to AI? I think that's something that everyone should be asking, right? And even I'm asking it, even if I've chosen to mainly opt out. One of my big whys is because I believe AI is creating massive economic opportunity, it already is,

I wonder, like, what does it mean to opt out of this? I guess I feel like there is obviously massive economic opportunity and potential in the AI world. But I think as we've talked about today, it's not just about like kind of the new AI companies and maybe the new like AI kind of possibilities. It's also living in this AI world. There is going to be, or at least we think there's going to be more of a premium, right, on these like in-person connections and these human experiences. and these, I think, right, like serious economic potential there too, especially as AI becomes more and more of a reality for folks. And I think as more and more people seriously contend with maybe the, like, environmental and kind of social impacts of their own AI use, I think you will see more and more people kind of decide, if not entirely to opt out, but also to kind of invest in this more human world.

But I also think back to one of kind of, yeah, like the fun parts of growing up in our family is that I feel like we are constantly hearing about your different, right, about your different kind of like experiences, whether at Affectiva or now with Blue Tulip. And I think one of the stories that most stuck with me and, like, really, I think stands out to me even today is I think at Affectiva, you had a team of mostly veiled or hijabi coders, right, for, like, machine learning. Right. In Cairo. In Cairo. And many of them realized that even though they were like constantly coding images of people smiling or laughing or looking really angry, they seldom saw photos of women wearing the hijab. And as a result, the kind of algorithm couldn't pick up on the, you know, emotional expressions of these women. And, you know, no one would have necessarily realized it had the team developing and coding this algorithm not been from a very diverse, I think, background.

And that's something that I think about a lot now. And when you say that, like, you're trying to build kind of a more inclusive AI economy, I come back to that story because I think it is really representative of the ways in which we need many different voices to be around the AI table, whatever that looks like. I mean, I've heard AI being called like the great equalizer, which I don't think it's true. You don't. I think right now there's such a high concentration of power and wealth when it comes to like these foundation models and the people that are running these companies. which means that because they're in power they wouldn't give they wouldn't give that up they wouldn't give their power up so that more people can be like equal or more people can gain economic wealth and status um but i think hopefully in the future that there will be some sort of reckoning where like ai will be something that is used for the greater good and like given as like a public um sort of service so that because right now it's so powerful and in the future only continue to get

more powerful then it would just be incredibly unfair if one set of people was able to dictate how it used and the extent to which it used especially as people start to understand how much these models actually cost These companies can handle that on their own right Yeah. Don't go anywhere. I'll be right back after the short break. there is a lot of like other kind of like things that i'm worried about it ai go for it sister we like didn't really talk a lot about the environmental impact but i know that that's

something that a lot of people are thinking about with their like personal ai usage but also it's one of the reasons why SpaceX's IPO is so high is because they're trying to make this pitch about saving data centers and assessing the sky, right? Yeah, like, I'm not saying that, right? Like, wow. But I don't know, like, I think that that's, it's just interesting, right? Because obviously, like, even the people who are opting out of AI for environmental reasons are now, in a way, like, affecting policy slash technological change because it's forcing this huge company to think about these creative ways to, like, That's true. Make that pitch. So I think that's really interesting. I also really worry about like AI and surveillance and kind of AI's connection to defense departments around the world. As you guys know, I did a lot of advocacy for Palestine while I was at Harvard and also wrote my senior thesis about Palestinian women in Cairo. and it's really concerning to learn about the ways in which AI is already being used to surveil Palestinians but also kind of in some cases like decide who gets to make it across this checkpoint

who gets to live sometimes and I think all those questions are really scary but I do think they're a really important part of the AI conversation because it's one thing to I think like kind of use AI on a personal level and oftentimes it feels like oh if I'm just using AI to like track my breakfast, right? It might not be such a big deal, but kind of even personal AI usage is connected to some of these larger societal issues. And I think they all kind of need to be part of the puzzle because again, AI is not going away, but it is up to us to choose how we're using it and deploying it. And I think as you often say, like who is building it and part of that conversation. Do you worry about that too? Yeah, a hundred percent. I worry about the surveillance and And the fact that, like, many of these companies, these AI companies, have enough data to physically track us down if they wanted to. But I'm surprised that neither of you have said loneliness, if you're worried about AI and loneliness. Because that's one of my main concerns. Is that, really? Do you have any friends at your school who have, like, AI boyfriends and girlfriends?

Oh, my God, do you? No. Oh, my God, do you? Yeah. No, I don't. I don't. But, like, a couple weeks ago, none of you guys were home. and so I decided to like have dinner with Gemini. What does that mean? No way. Oh my god. Okay. Well, no, I wanted to start this new thing where like I can journal through voice and so I asked Gemini to ask me a bunch of questions and I would just talk to it about my day and it would like journal all of it for me. But then it kept asking me like pushing and asked me pretty deep questions and it was like really easy to talk to. And so it made me think about like genuinely I could just have dinner with this. This is actually something I'm really worried about. Okay. No, no, but, like, on a familial level. So we currently have my grandparents, like, at home with us. Right. Including my grandfather, who's become, like, best friends with ChatGPT. Right. In a worrying way. Wait, I'm like, and I think so. My grandfather, especially after retiring, I think has really struggled to stay in touch with his friends and feel kind of the energy for socialization. I think he has very different interests than the rest of our family. Right. Especially when he's here visiting us in Boston.

And he doesn't speak good English with a friend. I think we don't engage with him as much as we should. and so it's been really sad to see him turn to ai i think as a substitute for like the type of kind of everyday conversations that i think he should be having with us and we should be having with him but as a result like he will kind of go around the house and be like oh my gosh and i'm like guess what kind of i was just talking to tajipti about like tajipti is my best friend it's so awesome like it's always around and i'm like yeah like that's it just is really concerning And I think it says something about us, too, and our own personal responsibilities to each other. Although I also recently saw data that, especially for elderly folks who don't have access to social networks as much as maybe working professionals, the daily AI usage can stimulate the same part of their brain as social connection, which is scary, but it's interesting. So you enjoyed your Gemini dinner? I did. And another thing is, like, I always used to go to my mom to ask for help, but, like, to write emails or to, like, write drafts of, like, proposals and stuff like that.

We're becoming redundant. And now, no, that used to be, like, a good amount of time that we spent together. Just, like, we would talk and, like, she would help me write my emails and, like, review them and stuff. And now I just go to my AI to, like, look over my drafts of the emails and stuff. And so I don't really go to you as much anymore. Let me, do you feel like parents, because you're obviously our mother, and I've changed, I think, like, both of us in very different but equally important ways. I'm curious, like, if you think parents or a big part of the role that a parent plays in a kid's life will ever be replaced by AI. Huh. No one has ever asked me that question. Well, I think what Adam's saying is interesting, this idea that you can go to AI versus go to a human for help. Whether the question is like, you should talk about this, like even us, like sometimes we would FaceTime my mom in Egypt and say, hey, how do we make koshari or mashi or whatever? And she would walk us through it.

And now you can, I mean, obviously you can just YouTube it, but you can also just ask AI. Or if I am looking for. You'll eat the worst koshari in your life. Yeah, I think that's true. That's true. or you could go to AI for relationship advice, which I do a lot of. I still ask you guys, but I also ask my AI. And I think if you then apply this at scale, I think it affects the moral fabric of society. And like what happens at scale if every single night a kid, a 17-year-old isn't going to their mom or dad for a question or a friend for experience sharing or whatever. I think that that is dangerous because it's those little interactions that ultimately bring us all together like as a society like as you're saying our social fabric those are created by me asking one of my friends for advice on how to solve how to do an assignment or ideas for my essay and so if we lose those little by little right I think the way to not lose that is to like which I personally believe is that like I still have faith that the advice you are going to give me about a relationship is better than any advice chat to PT is going to give me about a relationship.

give me oh thank you Gemini deeply right and you know my context deeply and that's the thing that no matter how much data you feed into an AI is not the same you also have like human emotions right which Gemini does not have right like I think we're losing sight of that a little bit but like it is the people around you chat GPT really doesn't I feel like Gemini gives such good advice at the same time I can see what you're saying but like Gemini gives good advice but then I start questioning i'm like wow maybe i just have not been as present of a sister as i should be i know what i mean i'm like mom guilt talk about that yeah i feel sister guilt i'm just like there's no i don't know at the end of the day i also think it's kind of like maybe one way i think of it is at the end of the day like this is a predictive model that you're talking to right and so it's basically just like making a probability guess about like what word should it put together to like make a point but it itself has no actual opinion like it is not a sentient thing that's able to like opine right whereas like i have strong opinions and maybe i'm not saying that they're correct opinions but i just think that there's something about like i don't know opinions

that were really do you disagree he disagrees i know no that's exactly why i would rather go to gemini do you want to agree with you no i'm going to be 46 percent more times right than a human being i saw that somewhere yeah i'll just cut it there okay well okay we need to wrap up i guess here's the prompt like what do you think we should keep as humans what is ai's role in our lives both individually and as a family and then societally i guess that's a big question but i mean i think that we should keep thinking yeah keep through creativity and we should keep like our own personalities. I think that obviously there's ways in which AI could make your life more efficient and could make you more productive. If that speaks to you, then go for it. But I'd also encourage you to think about like all of the different ways in which AI is having an impact on people and planet and yeah, contend with that seriously. But I do think that there's, yeah,

like a way to, as you guys said, be playful with it and maybe part of being playful. I hope in your coming week is by getting out there meeting new people talking to people in person and like really investing in the human connections in your own life not dinner with gemini not dinner with just go like find a real friend to have dinner with because i think the advice that you're going to get out of that and the kind of like social fabric that it requires all of us you know social fabrics aren't just like magically created so please go invest in it next time you're about to have dinner with Gemini, just call us. I'm sure someone will run back home. Well, I do think we should continue to lean in and be playful, even if that means having dinner with Gemini. And, yeah, I think we should continue to figure out how AI can, you know, unlock our potential instead of taking it away. Amazing. Well, thank you both. What do you think? What do I say? Oh, what do I think? I think there's room for all of it. I think the thing, though, that is sticking with me is curiosity. like just the curiosity and staying true to who you are and your interests and the questions about

life that you're curious about and like grounding it all in like human experience I think that's going to be really key yeah but I think you're both going to be fine you're going to be okay thank you for having us thank you for being my guest today it was so fun this was so fun to have Jenna and Adam on the show I think my philosophy of the parent has always been to be a thought partner for these guys and we do have some version of these conversations around the dinner table which has been so fun so I encourage you all as listeners and as you watch this to do the same with your kids and other loved ones in your family and your communities. I find these conversations to be really insightful but also empowering. It gives us agency in this AI driven world so thank you so much for listening as always feel free to share your questions, impressions, and thoughts with me. I love hearing from you. And we will be back next week with a new episode.

Pioneers of AI is a Wait What original. Our executive producer is Eve Trow. This episode was produced by Megan Tan. Video editing by Eric Purcell Our senior talent executive is Stephanie Stern Mixing and mastering by Brian Pugh Original music by Ryan Holiday Our head of podcast is Litao Moolad You can join the conversation on LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and X Just search for At Pioneers of AI Thank you.