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At the edge of collapse—and creation—two unlikely co-conspirators invite you into a radically honest conversation about the future. This isn’t just another tech or self-help podcast. It’s a story-driven exploration of who we are, what we value, and how we might reimagine the world when the systems around us stop serving us. We blend personal storytelling, cultural critique, and deep inquiry into what it means to be human in an age of AI, uncertainty, and transformation. We’re asking better questions—together.
Because the world is changing fast, but maybe that’s precisely what we need.
Hosted by Beth Rudden and Katie Smith, two builders of systems and challengers of the status quo. Beth is CEO of Bast.AI and a globally recognized expert in trustworthy AI, with decades of experience leading data and ethics at IBM. Katie is the founder of Humma.AI, a strategist who drove innovation and revenue growth at major global brands before turning to human rights and technology for social good. Together, they make complex issues, such as AI and its impacts on everyday people, clear, personal, and impossible to ignore.
Beth Rudden is the CEO and Founder of Bast AI, a pioneering company building explainable, personalized AI for good. With over two decades of experience as a global executive and Distinguished Engineer at IBM, Beth blends anthropology, data science, and AI governance to create tools that amplify human dignity and intelligence—not replace it.
Her work spans healthcare, education, and workforce transformation, using ontological natural language understanding (NLU) to make AI transparent, accountable, and accessible. Through Bast AI, Beth is reimagining how organizations deploy AI that’s not only accurate but aligned with ethical values, cultural context, and cognitive well-being.
Beth is also the author of AI for the Rest of Us and a passionate advocate for AI literacy, epistemic diversity, and the right to understand the systems shaping our lives. She speaks globally on the future of AI, power, and social contracts—and believes we’re all stewards of the next intelligence.
Katie Smith is the CEO and Founder of Humma.AI, a privacy-first platform building community-powered, culturally competent AI. With over two decades of experience leading digital strategy and social innovation, Katie blends systems thinking, Responsible AI, and storytelling to create tools that serve dignity, not domination. Their work spans mental health, civic tech, and digital rights, using participatory AI to make systems safer, fairer, and more accountable. Through Humma.AI, Katie is reimagining how people and businesses engage AI that’s accurate, inclusive, and governed by consent and care. Katie is also the author of Zoe Bios: The Epigenetics of Terrorism, a provocative exploration of identity, trauma, and transformation. They speak globally on the future of technology, power, and justice—and believe human empathy is the intelligence that will define our time.
Subscribe to our Substack for bonus content: https://substack.com/@andwefeelfine
Katie Smith (00:40)
how you doing today, Beth?
Beth Rudden (00:42)
You know, I'm doing really good. have a pretty large keynote, about a thousand people at University of Toronto on Tuesday and being a CEO and doing the context switching of, you know, also doing keynotes and being a thought leader. It's, ⁓ it's a lot on my brain and I think I was better at it before GPT. And I'd love to dive into that, but how are you doing? I heard you had ⁓ a little bit of a sick puppy or recovering puppy.
Katie Smith (01:11)
Yeah,
I my little baby puppy is just six and a half months. And that's when you typically get a dog spayed. my gosh, getting spayed versus getting neutered. It's much harder on the girls. Let me just say that because it's a different type of surgery. And it was just like, we're to talk about this, the David Brooks podcast that you sent and something that he said about being broken open.
Beth Rudden (01:18)
Mm-hmm.
Mm.
Mm.
Katie Smith (01:37)
felt broken open by one having to make that decision and putting her through it, even though I know it's the right thing to do for society, for her, for us, for the family. ⁓ But yeah, seeing her in that type of pain, actually I had a trauma response. And you know, I'm sure we'll talk about this some other time, but you know, I'll be honest, because I think there's other people who go through things like this. My mom died tragically in a hospital and
Beth Rudden (01:52)
Mm-hmm.
Katie Smith (02:04)
for going in for a standard procedure. And what was remarkable to me is just being so aware of my own reaction and my feelings. like, oh, I am having a trauma response for my dog getting spayed right now. Anyways, so it's been an interesting few days, but I'm glad to be here with you as always
Beth Rudden (02:23)
I just want to validate the emotional intelligence and awareness that you've been able to put forth to note how you're feeling and why you're feeling triggered is the word that I typically use. And I think pain for us as women too, it's as biologically women, I think that it's something that I didn't have a lot of vocabulary for growing up.
And so the way that, you know, the endurance of pain. ⁓ I have to share this like one hilarious ⁓ like kind of like vignette and it's Winston Churchill's wife and she's walking past a street sweeper and the street sweeper is like talking to her and Winston Churchill says, who's that street sweeper? And Winston Churchill's wife says, ⁓ he was very in love with me before we met.
And Winston Churchill says, ⁓ so, you know, you could have been the wife of a street sweeper. And she goes, no, darling, that street sweeper would have been prime minister. And I just, I was like, I love that. Just, yes, I love that little vignette. And there's like a picture and everything else, but just women, endurance, you know, forbearance, you know, all of the, the bearing words. ⁓ yeah.
Katie Smith (03:50)
Yeah. And
along those lines, of course, she's now ready to jump all over the place and go for a hike. I'm like having to be like, no, darling, we are doing healing now. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So we're doing that. But hey, going back to that David Brooks interview. with Scott Galloway.
Beth Rudden (03:55)
course.
Awesome discipline, awesome discipline, I know.
Yeah, so ⁓ first of all, I've been a huge fan of David Brooks for a long time and I love really good writers and I appreciate this conservativism that wants to preserve life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. What makes us ⁓ a wonderful, horrendously challenging, messy country.
You know, the first thing that struck me was this idea of the separation of church and state. And what David Brooks is calling out, rightly so, is that we need to have a moral imagination and a moral center. And it's sort of the perfect storm where the party and the politics are completely disintegrating from what Republicans or the GOP really stood for. ⁓
in what I always loved, it's like sort of like Rooseveltian, you know, Republicans of preserving like the national forests. And Roosevelt also had the Civilian Services Corps, it's CCC, I can't remember the exact name, but he felt that every human being should have a conscripted service to their country so that we could have
you know, the farmer in Iowa with the New York banker, you know, that that like inner mix and that's so important. And, you know, back to this like tension between church and state, what, you know, what was said is that there is a friction and a natural kind of pushing against the the the moral teachings of the church.
and the capitalist tendencies. And that's what holds the capitalist tendencies in check is the moral teachings of the church to do good with your neighbor, to be part of a community, to be a good person, to have character. And I love talking about this because we don't have those institutions.
that are so widely adopted and spread where people, and I grew up in the South and the Bible Belt is very different as far as like what Christianity is. And it is not the Roman Catholic Church and Jesuit principles that I was raised in. It's very, very different. And I think that we as a country need to have that morality taught.
We need to be teaching virtues and values. And I think that that can be done through service and done in a non-denominational way. And it should be a ⁓ friction against money at all cost kind of capitalism so that you have the ability to put the money back into the community so that you can advance civilization.
advance the understanding of that when we borrow this world from our children, we're borrowing from the next generation. Do we want to leave them in debt? And how do we get back to the things that that really matter as human beings? Because in foxholes and on death beds, that's where people go back to praying and to having that that moral and spiritual center.
And not to digress too much, if you know, huge shout out, one of my favorite podcasts is On Being by Krista Tibbet. And she, every single conversation is about having a moral imagination, an imagination of what it would be like if people could live their values out loud in a way that
We are ⁓ grounded in our own spirituality and we have space for the differences of religion, which is what our country was founded upon.
Katie Smith (08:31)
Yeah, it's interesting. So I think you know this, but I'm agnostic, know, leaning atheists is my joke. I was lucky enough to, you know, my family, I grew up in a libertarian family, no religion. But my mom was like, you know, maybe there's God, go to any church you want, check it out, go with your friends. So I went to all the different churches with my friends, you know, and, you know, and
Beth Rudden (08:36)
He
You were on a kibbutz in Israel though too. Like, I mean, you have some really... ⁓ okay.
Katie Smith (09:00)
I didn't go to a kibbutz, but I did talk to people who were on a kibbutz, but I
did travel for months in Israel and in Egypt. so, yeah, no, I've, I've been in all the denominations in the Jewish culture and Muslim cultures and Christian cultures, you know, ⁓ I've had the benefit of that. And what I think came up for me in that experience as a child, and again, when I traveled is there is this common.
Beth Rudden (09:25)
Mm-hmm.
Katie Smith (09:29)
nominator of wanting to be good, that there's like, and there's, there's an acknowledgement that there's parts of us that can not be good. And that it that it's nice for us to have like these common rules or these common goals, right? ⁓ In the ways that we live. So, so it's just interesting, like, it's just common across all the different religions for the most part. ⁓
What I think I heard in that podcast was David saying that we lost the balance between capitalism and morality. And I definitely have seen that. part of what I felt very rebellious when I was a kid, because I was like, I don't need religion to be a good person. And I really had a bit of a chip on my shoulder about this. Like, no, I went after going to all these churches and these different experiences, I was like,
Beth Rudden (10:06)
Mm-hmm.
Right.
Katie Smith (10:26)
No, I do not believe this, but I do want to be a good person. So how do we show up as good people? And I will say that outside of church, it is hard to find groups of people who are also looking to do that. I think there's, you know, different meetups and different and people trying to do different things, but there obviously has been this lack of balance that capitalism has completely taken over.
and this idea of morality, even, you I don't think we need to teach it as much as we need to talk about it. I think that needs to be a discussion. And there seems to be a lack of discussion in schools, a lack of discussion in these common spaces. Like it's just not fun and sexy. It's not a meme that you can share and you get some, you know, social capital from. It's like, no, but this is what I do with my friends all day long. And this is what I've always done, but you know, I'm a nerd.
Beth Rudden (11:08)
Mm-hmm.
Katie Smith (11:24)
Hahaha!
Beth Rudden (11:27)
think, you know, what was said though, what I do think we need to teach and, I loved my father who is, you know, very aware of how to go and behave at a funeral, how to bring the families that need, you know, food or how to, you know, the protocols for helping somebody with deep grief, grief, the protocols for helping somebody who's sick.
the protocols for those rituals, I always found it so awkward or ⁓ births of babies. This is not just about bad things too. It's just like when we had, I had a role model who taught me how to say the right things, how to be there and make space and create support for people who are going through bad times or.
you know, make sure that the new mom is sleeping with the baby and you're taking care of the house or whatever. But like, you I knew how to do these things. So I actually think we do need to teach this or at least I know you've heard like there's language, there's symbols and then there's rituals. So it's not like we need to teach the language in relation to what are the doing parts of being part of the community. You know, what
Katie Smith (12:47)
Yeah.
Beth Rudden (12:48)
What do those consist of? How do you be a good leader and how do you show up in a way that is a vote for the person you want to become? You know, like how do you do that over and over and over again? How do you be a good person is it's almost counterintuitive because we know we do not live in a meritocracy. So being a good person doesn't have earthly benefits.
Katie Smith (12:58)
Yeah.
Beth Rudden (13:16)
Right? And being a good person for a lot of us who are recovering Catholic or agnostic, there's not a ⁓ non earthly benefit either. It's we're good people. Right? Because it feels good in our body. Right? Like it feels good. Yeah. But that, do you think that that is a connection that most Americans are making?
Katie Smith (13:28)
sounds good, I know. Well, yeah, yeah, I'm very aware.
not sure because one of the other things that resonated with me in listening to that podcast is there's a very big part of this country, United States of America, that when they see someone being immoral, they just don't either care or see it. And that is really concerning, right? So, you know, this podcast, our big theme is endings and beginnings. And I think we've hit
some level of rock bottom when it comes to this lack of care for each other. Like I'd like to think this is the worst of it. I'm hoping this is the worst of it. Like I would like for us to go some other direction. And so what could be the new beginning? And, you know, both of us are working in AI, you much longer than me. And as we see
this shift to AI taking over is like, this is a moment in time for us to actually reconnect with, with that moral self, right? And it's, and I hear you when it says it be taught, like my mom taught me to be a good person, you know, like, so I knew how to show up to dinner. remember when I was a little kid and, know, it was a very rebellious tomboy and like, nobody could get me to put on shoes or shirts, but.
I would go, when I would go to dinners at my friend's house, I remember vividly multiple times the parents saying, you're so polite. You know, like you're so, you know how to use your culture, or how do you pronounce that word? And like, ⁓ and so, yeah, I think there is something to being taught how to show up in different spaces and in different moments. ⁓
But morals means so much differently to us in different places. In my travels, you learn that, right? It just means different things to all of us. It's sort of like, what's the difference between ethical AI and responsible AI? Some people are like, when you say ethical AI, ethics according to whom? According to who said? And what are the parameters of that versus responsible AI sort of gives you more leeway to go, OK, responsible.
to do it in this particular, anyways, semantics. But this is a point, it's a discussion, right? We're now at this point where we have to have these discussions and we don't have to determine exactly what's right or wrong, but just showing up and having that discussion makes all the difference. Like asking the question why gets your brain, like you said, to start getting creative and it just creates this whole new dynamic. Whereas I just don't think we've been having that conversation.
Beth Rudden (16:30)
I agree. ⁓ mean, in many of the circles that I participate in, it's a discussion that a lot of people are having. And what I would say is that there are a lot of people listening, and there's a lot of people who want to try to find something that feels good in their body. And I...
I recently started weightlifting and really doing some resistance training. And it's one of those things that I enjoy it so much because there's such immediate feedback. I feel it in my body. I feel strong. And when I go out and I ⁓ do something that is part of the community, go volunteer at a homeless shelter or volunteer at the food bank, which my husband is doing a lot right now.
It's just like, feels like I have been able to take a little bit of the cognitive load, the tax that I have, that I feel all the time for everything from not recycling to what we're doing to the environment, to all of the things that we're now aware of. And one of the interesting kind of frames
from this podcast was that the progressives took over the educational institutions and they made education like this drug that created this artificial scarcity because all of the really high brow, Ivy league type institutions, it's how many people they reject is how good of a school they are. And that
is just devastating because the progressives should have thought about how do I distribute education freely? And everybody has a general right to education. All the way back to Martin Luther tacking up the grievances on the church door saying, hey, I don't need a priest in between me and my God.
Katie Smith (18:33)
Thank
Beth Rudden (18:49)
I can freely talk to my God. And that was part of the sentiment of the beginning of the American culture. And that's something that is very much part of who we are. I'm not a huge fan of organized religion is what I was always kind of done. But if you look at the school systems, those places are wonderful for the people who can get in.
And the exclusionary kind of nastiness with that is absolutely absurd. so the one the like mortgage and the 2008, 2009, like the mortgage mortgage backed securities and what the bankers were doing by taking the depositor money and like putting them into these mortgage backed securities to try to get more and more and more money without having to work very hard that
created a problem and then that created regulations or stress tests that took banks 10 years to meet. And those are good regulations when it takes a bank 10 years to put in all of the things so that that doesn't happen again and we don't create economic instability. And I think that what we're seeing now is the educational equivalent of that, where it's like the bottom is falling out, where we live in a world
right now where we can access any information and some of the best teachers in the world. And so how do we handle that? Because it completely created this organic competition to Harvard University and Yale and Northwestern and these beautiful ships that are just sitting in the harbor.
I think that elitism is a form of injustice that triggers me big time because I don't like it when somebody believes that they're better than somebody else because of a school that they went to. Yes, they might have had more connections, more network, and I'm sure they had exceptional experiences. I had exceptional experiences in university, but I had even more exceptional experiences like working in industry.
Katie Smith (21:08)
Alright.
Beth Rudden (21:08)
and
learning how to take a payday loan because I was too broke to own a credit card and too young to be able to rent a car without a credit card. And so I had to like put $500 down for this car that I needed in a city for my job. And you're like, my goodness, they do not teach that at college in any way, or form. And that's what I think is missing is like, how do we
How do we connect this distributed information and education and bring up the best teachers in the world to everyone to make it more accessible, not.
Katie Smith (21:47)
Yeah.
Yeah, that really resonates with me. I often say the school system completely failed me. And I often say I dropped out of first grade and it's because I was undiagnosed with a learning disability and, you know, had troubles reading and pronouncing. I still have problems pronouncing words. You're going to see that in this podcast. It's just like, it's something that I have and it doesn't go away.
but they're like, but Katie's really smart, so we just don't understand. you know, so the other thing I often say is I would not have been successful in almost any other time in the past because I was able to teach myself everything, not just from books. I devoured the encyclopedias in our house, you know, very slowly, but I got through it because I could just ask one question after another. My mom was just like, she got that for me because I had so many questions. She's like, just ask the book, you know, go to the books.
But I was able to go to the first, I think it was called MOOC or MOG, I forget what it but it was like the first time that Stanford University just completely opened up their university and anybody who had internet access anywhere around the world can join all of these courses. And so I was able to learn and I was able to...
Beth Rudden (22:58)
Hmm.
Katie Smith (23:10)
you know, Google and ask anything. And I basically started teaching myself like the internet became my encyclopedia. Now, I didn't go to one of the top 30 schools, but I ended up having a pretty good career. But I think about like, again, like I feel very fortunate and privileged in different ways. I had a lot of people that believed in me and gave me a shot. And I just had one chance after another that gave me a shot. And I took advantage of it and worked really hard. But
No, what was fascinating to me is like, I've said this before, I've had like two stages of my career. The first stage was like e-commerce and subscription. It was for profit. And I just out to make as much money for the companies and myself. And I did pretty well. And then my mom passed away and I decided to go into social justice. And I ended up working with some of biggest civil rights organizations in the world, not just the country. And I was shocked.
Beth Rudden (24:02)
Mm-hmm. Wow. Yeah.
Katie Smith (24:09)
when I got into these spaces because I was looking around me and like, all of these people went to these fancy schools and I didn't. to their credit, they hired me. And I think one of the reasons they hired me, irony is like Christy Hefner was one of my references and she was in the office that day that I was interviewing and Christy Hefner was like, yeah, Katie's great.
Beth Rudden (24:16)
Yep. Yep.
Katie Smith (24:32)
And I think it because it was internet related and digital related, they're like, okay, well, this person knows this better than anyone else who's gone to school because I had done it for so long. So I got really, really lucky again. But so many people around me had the fancy degrees and I felt so different. I felt completely out of place because they talk about their schools, they rally about their schools, the people in leadership.
If you didn't go to a fancy school, they would actually say, don't even mention your school in your bio. Like it was that level. One of the other organizations that I worked with after that actually called it pedigree. We have high pedigree in our leadership. I, what the heck? And like, I actually had more experience than some of these people and had really good experience on my belt, but I was, because I didn't have the pedigree, there was a glass ceiling.
Beth Rudden (25:14)
Like we're breeding people with high pedigree.
Katie Smith (25:29)
Not just because I was perceived as a woman, but because of my educational background. And the reason why I bring this up is because there are so many talented people, just like me, kids today, that are slipping through the cracks because our educational system has just completely failed them. Now, one other thing I'll just say very quickly about education, back to your point.
is that it's secular. What's gorgeous and beautiful and amazing about our public education system is that it is secular. It is a place that we come together, right? Now, unfortunately, it's very localized. So like the kid from Berkeley, you know, and Scott and David, Scott Galloway and David Brooks bring this up. The kid from Berkeley is not associating with the kid in Alabama. You get that, you know, it's very unlikely. But the more that we can do that, actually,
I think the better we are in understanding each other, but more than anything, just think that, our educational system is completely broken.
There's so much talent we're leaving on the table.
Beth Rudden (26:41)
I think it's also a trust in institutions. I went, I did gymnastics for three hours a day and was, you know, just a very, very hyperactive kid. You know, I was 44 when I was finally diagnosed with ADHD. And, you know, part of that neurodiversity was
my mother always just taught me how to use my body to make sure that I would run around the block or I would kind of get all the energy out and I could again, feel that immediate difference. And so it was like something that I've been taught at a young age and, know, to this day with my children, I'm like, what have you eaten? How much sleep does you
Did you have, how are your poops? Did you have bad poops? I'm like, this is part of the hygiene that I learned. And if you didn't know something, struggle, look it up, create friction. And the institutions that I went to summer camp for were like the, and daily was at the YMCA.
Katie Smith (27:30)
you
Beth Rudden (27:52)
And the YMCA was such a godsend in so many of these places because it was a place where men could have a place to stay. It was like a true, and I don't know as much, but there's tons of community development. We have community recreation centers that are very good for people who want to go work out or want to go swimming.
And then we have like, I went to all kinds of music camps, and that was very much of a privilege, but it was also part of me belonging to an orchestra and part of me belonging to something bigger. And then going to all the different churches and playing as a quartet or weddings and playing as a quartet.
and just having this exposure of how people behave in groups and how people behave as a part of institutions and that you are able to try them out. And that's something that I don't know that people know, but you can walk into any synagogue. You can walk into any Catholic church. You can walk into any Baptist church, you know, and you can experience.
you know, how people are thinking about religion and thinking about community. before I was diagnosed, I had this huge burden of like, what, well, what are people going to think of me? I don't know the protocol. I don't know the language. It was really hard for me to do that, but I had had enough experience as a child.
to be able to kind of throw myself into that situation, even in Italy, where I didn't know the language when I first got there and like, just sort of push myself into these different scenarios to kind of experience how these institutions, especially religious institutions, were part of giving back to the community. And, you
Katie Smith (29:59)
the
Beth Rudden (30:01)
I would love for you to talk about the queer community and what you found there and how you found your people, your family of choice.
Katie Smith (30:10)
actually, the story begins with it was hard to find people. So I was born in Los Angeles, but raised in Simi Valley, which is just right outside, basically it's greater Los Angeles. ⁓ It's where the Rodney King trial was. I put it in the context, there was like more cops per capita than almost any other city and lots of churches. And as much as I, you know,
Beth Rudden (30:26)
wow.
Katie Smith (30:36)
value everybody's beliefs. I felt very unsafe and not seen because I was queer, non-binary, neurodivergent, and just felt completely out of space in my own community. My safe place was my home, but I didn't have my community in see me. So I had my first job and I was 11 at a swap meet and then I had a paper route and then I worked at a pest control company and I was just...
constantly making money and saving money so I could buy a car. And so I bought my car when I was about 15 and a half. As soon as I got my license, the first thing I did was drive to Hollywood. Even in driving to Hollywood, I really didn't know where to go. So I just remember seeing this paper everywhere, the LA Weekly. And I pick up LA Weekly and I would read it. And then I found like, they're talking about queer people. I still get chills. Like, oh my God, there's like queer people. There's like, in this magazine.
And there was this great section in LA weekly back in the day where it was just recapping where all the fun parties were, where all the drag parties were, or the F &M parties, or God knows just, I mean, things I was just like, I don't even know what this is, but I'm gonna go. I'm just gonna go. And then there was ads in the back. And I've written about this, I think you know, I've talked about this, but there was ads in the back of the LA weekly for you to meet someone, you could place this ad. So I placed an ad.
Beth Rudden (31:46)
You
Mm-hmm.
Right, right.
Katie Smith (32:01)
And it was like bikini kill. If you know what this is, give me a call, which is like my favorite band back in the day, the whole riot girl scene. I was very much involved in that. And I got all these terrible messages because it's like it had to go to a voice mail and I got these terrible messages for so many terrible men. But finally, this one woman responded and our first date was at a Joan Jett concert. she introduced me to the queer scene because she grew up, she went to Hollywood High School and she was very cool.
Beth Rudden (32:27)
Yep.
Katie Smith (32:31)
Um, and, uh, we used to meet at this place called little Frida's, which unfortunately all the lesbian places throughout the country, but in LA are pretty much gone. Um, there's places that have popped up recently, recently actually, but we, we lost a really good place with little Frida, but I would just go there as soon as I could, you know, on the weekends or even at night, just randomly. I'm just drive there. It would take me 45 minutes just so that I could sit in a place and be in community.
Beth Rudden (32:37)
Mm-hmm.
Katie Smith (33:00)
And it was the first time in my whole life up to that time that I felt safe. I felt like truly in community, even if I wasn't like necessarily talking to folks, but no, it was really the LA weekly. And so it's funny, full circle. came actually ended up working at the LA weekly, you know, years after all of that, but Jesse and the right girl scene and the LA weekly and just being able to have a car and getting into the city. But I was lucky.
Beth Rudden (33:06)
Mm-hmm.
Katie Smith (33:29)
I had a car, could go into the city. I had my cute little Volkswagen bug and it took me to every punk rock and queer show and event that, but a lot of kids don't have that. my heart really goes out to kids who are in areas of this country that are, they're the escape goat right now. Trans kids in particular are just being attacked, is, it's like, speaking about morality.
Beth Rudden (33:31)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Katie Smith (34:00)
They're point zero something percent of all society and people who call themselves religious followers or believe in God and Jesus or whatever the case may be are attacking these very vulnerable people. It like blows my mind.
Beth Rudden (34:13)
It's.
It's, mean,
in I'm studying, you know, different social groups and social organizations, anyone who is different and, sort of the smaller the population, the better, because it's not somebody who is your neighbor. And so when these totalitarian regimes are created, they look for exactly the small, small percentages, because ⁓ I want to talk a little bit about AI for
a half second, but it totally relates. How human brains work and what humans are good at is intuition and emotional IQ and ⁓ being able to be very specific. What machines are good at is probabilities, vast amount of data and being very sensitive to patterns. so when ⁓ like any sort of social group is going to create a pariah,
Katie Smith (34:46)
Yeah, yeah, Yes.
Beth Rudden (35:14)
And this is intentional social engineering. They try to select like the trans community, which is 0.0001 % because it's not likely that you are next to somebody who ⁓ is a trans kid or who is ⁓ somebody who has gone through a transition.
gosh, super interesting. I could tell you all about Trinidad, Colorado, where the very first sex changes were happening and the doctor lived in Trinidad, Colorado. And so there's this massive, massive community there. And it's so fascinating because it's right up at Pueblo and lots of fascinating, interesting things. I digress. When human beings have a generalization, like they are taught
Trans people are like this. This is the stereotype. They're bad, whatever. Whatever they're taught, that's the one model. And that's sort of the generalization. But the minute a human being has a specific instance, it completely overrides that stereotype. And that bias or that stereotype that we have in our brain, it...
It's something that served us really well when we had to make quick decisions to run from the tiger or what have you. had little information to operate on. So we had to have these shortcuts in our brain to be like, oh my gosh, this person is bad. Don't know why, but run, you know, whatever. And so that is a, you know, it's a vestigial or something that like, you know, a vestigial thumb is what they call, you know, or tails.
you know, things that we don't need anymore, but we're there for a purpose and served us and kept us safe. And part of what I try to teach with AI is that AI can be really good at understanding and being sensitive to the patterns, but it really takes a human being to understand which specific pattern matters. And I love that because, you know, it's a way to start to understand
Katie Smith (37:19)
Right.
Beth Rudden (37:26)
And to all the queer people out there, please, please, please share your story and sing your song as loud as you possibly can because one person could be changed. Yes.
Katie Smith (37:37)
Yes,
yes, absolutely. Oh gosh. You know, this to me is a bit of the promise and why I think I'm really optimistic and the beginnings and the endings, like what needs to begin is us understanding the true promise of AI and harnessing that, you know, 100%. So, you know, we can
Beth Rudden (38:01)
Yes, 100%.
Katie Smith (38:07)
because it doesn't need to come with our biases, we can teach it not to have those biases, right? And we need to train it, of course. We need to put it in a place that it can do these things. You know, I was just watching a YouTube video, ⁓ the folks behind DeepMind, and I really appreciate that they're, you know, using AI to analyze all the proteins. They want to solve all the disease in the entire world. And it's like, okay, I love that. And even they are recognizing, like, look,
without human intervention, this could go very, very, very, wrong, right? ⁓
Beth Rudden (38:42)
Well,
it just perpetuates those stereotypes and that's what's codified because it's based on data and data is an artifact of human experience. Data is part of who we are and carries the signal of what we believe and what we think and even words, language carries all of that signal of who we are and if...
Katie Smith (39:11)
Yes.
Beth Rudden (39:11)
I entreat people all the time. I'm like, go look up etymology of words. It is a study in who has had the power to create the English language. ⁓
Katie Smith (39:19)
male history, all the bird names. It's like,
my gosh, when I started getting to birding and I was looking at, are you kidding me right now? They just named everything after themselves. ⁓
Beth Rudden (39:32)
I mean,
the ego was, know, and this is, you it's part of, it's part of history. But what I, it took me, it took me a long time to get this is history is written by people. And when people are writing history, they are often telling you more about what they believe.
than the culture or the civilization or the historical points that they're trying to make about other people.
Katie Smith (40:02)
Exactly. No, I love that point. I didn't really, there's so many reasons why every single time I, we talk, I'm like, and here's this other reason why I wanted to do humor, because the ability, what we're trying to do is create a platform for the abilities to sort of the rewrite history in a way for us to tell our truth, our story. And then that is not the internet we scraped. And then we tried to fix, you know, like all the foundational models scraped all the internet, all the biases, all it means.
Beth Rudden (40:04)
It's.
Katie Smith (40:32)
basically a white male dominant point of view that is just completely limited in so many different ways. It's like, what if we created a platform where we could just like create data, own data, have the dignity and control of our own data, our own story, and just rewrite the history? I mean, it's not the point of the company, but you know, I like to say like, what if we could just like weave the global story in a way that's never been told before and then own it?
So the big tech doesn't own it like we own it, you know, and then companies like yours could look at our data and go, okay, for high risk places like healthcare and other places, this is how we make it like really work for us. You know, anyways, I digress,
Beth Rudden (41:17)
always say,
yeah, so back to my sort of sensitivity versus specificity kind of comments here. I mean, I've been doing this for so long and the data that people scrape off the internet or the big data that they think they need because that's the myth that is perpetuated by people whom it serves. All of that is never the data that you
actually need to solve the problem. And so for instance, know, many people are like, hey, let's give judges a way to make easy decisions on how much time people spend in jail. That is not a good use of AI because that's just going to perpetuate the stereotypes and instead tell the judge that the AI has noticed that when the judge doesn't have lunch, the sentences are harsher.
So that's a pattern that the AI can be sensitive about. And then the judge can actually take an action or tell the surgeon that operating after six hours often causes some mistakes. So if they took a break or whatever, please don't, I'm not a surgeon nor a judge, but I'm trying to give examples of where.
AI can be sensitive to the patterns of what can augment a human so that the human can take those actions and choose to do something different because the AI has made them aware of the pattern. So there's a really sad but awesome story ⁓ in
In Spain, what happened is there was this company that built this model for police officers to grade the level of risk for domestic violence. And what happened is that because this was such a sensitive model, they asked for an audit. And there are many companies that can come in and audit your model. And we can...
tell you it's like sort of like a forensic audit. We look at the data, we look at the variance, we look at all of these things and we can tell you this is why the AI is making the decision. And as this model was being audited, 16 women were killed because the system rated them as low risk when in fact they were very high risk. And what we found and what the team that did this found, it's called Edikas, amazing company.
And what they found was that the model was simply perpetuating how the police officers treated the women's concerns in domestic violence situations. And so it just simply perpetuated that as the pattern, because the bias was in the training data that they got from the officers and how they dealt with cases. And so ⁓ another, a little bit more fun one is like,
You know, can you guess how what what features you need to have in order to become an exec at Apple?
Katie Smith (44:44)
relationship with somebody. I don't know. Not working.
Beth Rudden (44:48)
You're ⁓ a man between 35 and 40 or 42 maybe. You like to run, you live in Cupertino and likely your name is Steve. I'm not kidding. So if you look at all of the executives and this is how I need people to start thinking about AI. You don't need this big data at all. You need the specific instances that matter to you.
Katie Smith (45:09)
Yes.
Yeah.
Yes.
Those two stories, the first one in particular really, really resonates with me because that's my fear. And we see it happening already with AI. Yeah. So this idea that people are just like embracing these foundational models, not understanding some of this really terrifies me. And so like, we want to end this. It's like, we tried it, we did it.
Beth Rudden (45:25)
⁓ of course we do. Of course we do.
That's right.
Yeah,
but Katie, there's things you can do. We can do so we can teach people to ask how many people worked on this training model, this foundation model. Where were they from? How many women were in the room? How many men of color were in the room? How many women of color were in the room? How many young people? How many old people? What kind of data sets did you get this from? Was it a wide variance or was it just from Pornhub or just from Reddit?
Katie Smith (45:51)
Yeah.
Beth Rudden (46:14)
Or just from, you know, things that, did you scrape the Library of Congress? How about the entire FDA and ⁓ CDC and their websites about mental health language? Like, what did you choose? What were the choices that you as a human being made? And if we all start asking these questions, it becomes, it's like, it's giving people the specific example.
of what we can do right now. Ask the question, who does it serve?
Katie Smith (46:48)
Yeah. And so many, so many folks are thinking it does serve them, but I think in the long run, it's we're really at risk. And so it is an aha moment, you know, to ask the why, to ask these questions. And, know, these companies are not going to answer these questions. Let's be honest. They're not going to.
Beth Rudden (47:06)
⁓ but the engineers absolutely are aware of this. what a lot of people, these are messy, hard stories. But if you're an engineer and you're at these, and you're at Careless People, a book that we talked about a little bit, when you read through that,
And I actually had my mom read it and you know, something that she said I thought was really interesting. She goes, why didn't that woman stop working for Facebook, stop working for Metta? And I was like, mom, she couldn't. Like it's so addicting to be in those keeping up with the Joneses circle and getting a new Porsche every six months and your kids go to a certain school and you need the yacht and you need the summer house.
And you need to get the private jets and you're keeping up with the Joneses.
Katie Smith (48:04)
Yeah, yes and yes and look, I was a really high paid executive before I went into social justice. I mean, I made a really good chunk of money in the online adult space and drove a nice car and all the things, expensive count. And what I'm hoping is, you know, it took me losing my mom to make me go, my God, how did I end up here? Like, how, how did I go from
the non-GMO fair trade organic co-op that I worked at in my early 20s, my first marketing job to this. Like, how did this happen? And it is, I followed the money. I'm honest about that. I totally followed the money. I didn't have money when I was a kid. And all of a sudden I was making a ton of money. And I hope it doesn't take someone losing someone they love to rattle them enough to go like, what matters to me? But the truth is we have to leave those environments.
And if more of us did leave and did strike in protest of these companies that are not serving us, we actually have the power to change it. Now I got lucky. I, I again got very lucky. I went to New York city and I was running out of money and I got the dream job at this social justice organization that I still really love. Even despite some of the stories I was saying earlier.
No, you know, there's a part of it. So I didn't read the book. But I got the book. I didn't read the whole thing. I scanned it and I read some articles about it just to help me orient how people are taking the book. ⁓ Yeah, I wish she left. Honestly, I wish she left. I think she could have written a better book had she left. But anyways, I died.
Beth Rudden (49:52)
Well, okay, here's another part of this. Many, many engineers are working for these companies, not because of the cars and the lifestyle and the money, but because of healthcare.
Katie Smith (50:08)
Of course, yes.
Beth Rudden (50:09)
And
because they're, you
their wives are sick or their children are sick or the and this health care system that we have in the United States is so broken that when you are bound to a corporation for physical safety, you're not innovating. so the health care system being completely broken. And back to that podcast, I love what he said about like, you know, it can break you open.
or it can break you and then you are so hard that you have impenetrable like a crab or I can't remember the analogy, but like you have so much armor that you can't let anybody in and you can't be vulnerable. And that is true. I think that there are kind of two ways to go and people who have had to deal with ⁓ being a caregiver or having something incredibly tragic.
you know, happen within their lives. And the way that the world is right now is we don't have the community support to heal in a way that is natural. And so we have a lot of people who have armored up. And the unfortunate problem with that is, and I knew, I know people who they make so much money.
but that is not what matters in life. And that's why you need that moral system, those moral values, and you need to understand how that relates to your life and how to be a good person with good character, because no amount of money can buy that at all. They've tried many times.
Katie Smith (52:00)
in room.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I want to underscore what you just said, because I've seen it so many different times, even within the last full time job I had, people, even though they were not happy in that position, had the job because of health care. And it's ridiculous. And ⁓ another story that pops up for me is my grandpa on his deathbed in the VA was like, I could have been a richer man. He said that he was like, I could have been a richer man.
Beth Rudden (52:15)
Yeah, that's right.
Katie Smith (52:32)
And he did pretty well for himself. He was an entrepreneur. He's like, but I'm, I know that I did the right thing. And what he was referencing is like he owned apartment buildings and stuff like that. And sometimes he would just stop accepting rent when it was a single mom with little kids, because she would have been homeless. And people gave them a lot of heck for that. You know, like you're, you own this place, you know, you're supposed to be making money. He's like, so I'm supposed to put her in the street.
Beth Rudden (52:55)
Mm-hmm.
Katie Smith (53:00)
And it moves me to this day that on his deathbed, he's like, I know I could have been a richer man, but I also know I did the right thing. It moves me to no end.
Beth Rudden (53:02)
Yes.
It's
the difference between wealth and being rich, you know, and that's how I was always taught too. And my father did the same where, you know, many people told me, your dad's a horrible businessman. I was like, actually you have no idea how many families that we're supporting. And that's part of to staying in a place. Sometimes you really can make change from the inside as well. And
It's sort of like you are in that, and we have stories that tell us that we can, and it's one of the reasons that I absolutely stayed at IBM. I gave that my college try. I tried to change that battleship, and I threw myself against this massive, massive company. ⁓
really trying to change it, like inch it along. And then I'm like, screw this, I'm going to go create my own company. And if you guys want to buy me on, you know, how much I'm doing, I get to build now. But it's not for everyone. And I think like there was something about so when I graduated in, I had this pivotal moment where go get my PhD in my doctorate. had my I just graduated with my master's degree.
I was in a huge amount of debt for student loans and I was broke as a joke. So I was like, you know what? I am going to go get a job and sell out. And I didn't see it as selling out. I saw it as my next adventure of making money so that I could understand how to be a productive, taxpaying, community contributing citizen. And that was part of it. And it's like, I don't want anybody
to feel bad at these organizations, but I do want people to know that we're a safe place. There are people that we can, and there are ways that we can talk about this, where there are things that you can do from the inside. There are things that you can do in order to make sure that foundation models are infected with a huge amount of varied data. And I think it's almost like,
Katie Smith (55:06)
No.
Beth Rudden (55:32)
fascinating how the pendulum sort of switches back and forth between cause and cure. And I think we're at a place where, I mean, when I was a young programmer, do you know how many Easter eggs I hid in public websites?
I mean, there's there's rebellion everywhere. Do you? Do you know? OK, so there's this really great story about Steve Jobs and the very first makers of the Macintosh, and they put their names on the inside of the computer. They're etched in there. And the reason that I was always the story that I was taught is the reason that they're in there is because they knew they were there.
Katie Smith (55:54)
You look like everyone else every single time I look at Koda. I'm like, are you kidding me?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Beth Rudden (56:20)
And because they knew that they were there, they were going to create the highest quality output, the highest they were going to deliver the highest quality computer because their name was on.
Katie Smith (56:30)
Interesting. I want to go back to what you were just saying. there are certain people who do not have the luxury to leave their job for so many different reasons. And for safety, just, yeah, fundamentally safety. And there's some of us who can. And I think for the folks who can, I would just say go for it.
Beth Rudden (56:39)
for safety for many.
Katie Smith (56:55)
When I was in the online adult space, I was published and I was always fighting against those forces and I certainly I didn't win, but I was trying and I love your story because you were fighting within those forces. Even in social justice, was from my libertarian groups. I'm not a libertarian, but I have this different point of view. So I was always trying to push like the middle actually matters if we want to win. And for the longest time, people just thought like I was a traitor or something because I was like, no, the middle matters if we want to win.
We can't only care about the base. Yes, we need to build the base. Absolutely do. I'm part of the base. I care about the base. But if we don't care about the folks in the middle, we're never going to win. And so many times people push back on me. And you know, what I love now about being away from both of those places is like, I get to be here with you and we can say like, there's endings. There's something ending right now. We all feel it.
Beth Rudden (57:44)
Mm-hmm.
Okay.
Katie Smith (57:54)
The world that we knew is ending. And what can begin is something really beautiful, but we have to understand what is ending to understand what the new world could be. And this is what I love so much about this conversation, Beth, and your depth of expertise to what you bring to the table in these conversations. I appreciate you so
Beth Rudden (58:01)
That's right.
Back at you. I actually think, ⁓ are you saying that the more that we are able to communicate and discover this together, that the more we could actually build a community and build that middle and support that base? This has been lovely. Thank you so much, Katie.