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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 (00:15)
Hi, my name is Katie Smith and I'm the co-host of And We Feel Fine. Today's episode is a little bit of a recap. We've done seven episodes that have covered so many different topics. But we'll start with Beth, how are you feeling?
Beth Rudden (00:29)
I feel fine.
Katie Smith (00:30)
Good.
Are you excited about this recap? What do you think about these first seven episodes? It's been a journey to get here.
Beth Rudden (00:36)
I think it's a good journey and I think we're learning. I also think that, you know, as, as I'm constantly reminded, we have this technology in place, but what I really love having is these conversations and being able to really just chill, enjoy the conversation. And every Monday night now I'm like, woohoo, I get to record podcasts with Katie. She's very cool. They are very cool.
Katie Smith (00:39)
Yes.
Yeah.
I I
feel the same way. And so we talked about like having this launch party, right? And, the real reason like that was so rushed is because look, there was things that were happening in Los Angeles and we were responding in real time when that happened. And we wanted to get that episode out.
Beth Rudden (01:05)
Yeah.
Katie, the passion that you have for the community, I think is very important. And it is, for me, I'm like for posterity. We are going to get this out because it's something where we feel like our voices need to be heard. And if we could do things better, we would, but I think it's really important that we keep moving forward because
Katie Smith (01:41)
I'm doing
it.
Beth Rudden (01:41)
things are happening at a pace and scale that are unprecedented.
Katie Smith (01:46)
Absolutely. Yeah, beginnings and endings. It's really happening. This theme that we have for this podcast is super relevant right now. And yeah, do you want to get into it? I know you had some thoughts around that.
Beth Rudden (01:54)
Mm-hmm.
I was listening to one of my favorite episode or one of my favorite podcasts, which is on being with Krista Tibbet. And she has this juicy, delicious, amazing viewpoint on moral imagination and how, you know, we can live in times.
where it really just makes sense that what we're doing is what feels good in our body, what is helping our people, what is helping our community, what is making the world a better place, leaving something better than when you got there. All of these things are so, so important and they are seeming to be after effects. And the podcast that she did is she did...
one where she went into her archives and found a conversation that she had with a religious leader and was really talking about how we have as humanity lived in times that are unprecedented before. And, all the way back to the Hebrew Bible of like some of the very first writing that we have and understanding that
the words of the prophets and we tend to look at Jesus as the only prophet from a Christian point of view, but there have been many different prophets and the prophets are typically like Desmond Tutu, some people who are still alive and our wonderful friend Desmond, I think has some prophetic things to be saying as well.
I mean, Katie, it's hard because prophets are some of those people that we look back on and say they were prophetic, but typically after they're dead in memoriam. And what the endings and beginning connection for me was we are living in a time where everything is.
Katie Smith (03:38)
Mm-hmm.
Beth Rudden (03:48)
I always call it like the center part of the spiral. if we kind of big spiral, we're just sort of like in that center part of the spiral when things feel like they're happening at such speed and at such rate and the pace of change. The rate of change is something that we can really feel because I grew up in a generation where we had these really archaic things that we took to banks and we inserted them and we put in digits and then
we could look up balances and then we could get cash money to go buy things. And like, that is not there. I was talking to somebody and they were talking about like headphones and their daughter's like, why did they call it headphones? And the mom was like, well, have you ever seen like, one of those phones like with the receiver? Like, it's just on top of your ears.
And I just, think that there are so many things that we can see that we are like, wait a second, this is, this is changing so fast and the world as we knew it is gone, is going to be gone. And what I want to do is I really want to study how are people changing as they're interacting with artificial intelligence and
Katie Smith (04:57)
Mm-hmm.
Beth Rudden (04:58)
is it becoming something where they're more curious about morality and, mercy and things that we are, are, should be thinking about in ways to be able to provide a different point of view so that we can make this world better than when we found it and make it better in, this lifetime that is very short.
Katie Smith (05:20)
Mm-hmm.
Beth Rudden (05:20)
And
how do we kind of calm down about the wanting to keep up and the FOMO and maybe.
This definitely is a lot of the work that I do, but I really want people to understand where their inputs, like when you eat a bunch of bad food, you don't feel good. When you consume a bunch of stuff that is inciting your violence or inciting these feelings in you, what are your inputs? And can you do a review of those inputs and say, maybe I don't need this one.
Katie Smith (05:45)
Mm-hmm.
Well, now you are talking about epigenetics to some degree, right? I've been thinking about beginnings and endings, in the context of this podcast, but just like in the context of like macro and micro, right? So from a macro point of view, the geopolitical landscape is completely changing. As we've known it, it's been like a slowly moving train towards like a new way of looking at the maps and new way of looking at
power is shifting power, it's not necessarily true that you the United States will be the superpower of the world anymore. That said, I think there are the powers that be that are trying to utilize AI to maintain superpower status here in America. So it's almost like the levers of power in the way are becoming like AI, which is fascinating, because how much is AI used in Warfare today?
think about like what's happening right now in the Middle East. It's very interesting. so, so that's like the big changes. And then on the micro level, we just have billions of people now who are on chat, GBT asking for help with their relationships. And, into your point that, that, interaction is literally changing us. it's similar to,
Beth Rudden (06:58)
you
Katie Smith (07:02)
Grammarly, for example, a lot of people have been using Grammarly. I've been using Grammarly for a really long time. I was a very early user. I'm a power user. love my getting my, whoever does Grammarly and does the Grammarly stats. Love you. So fun. but it makes it so we're not thinking about spelling anymore. And so we're now training the next generation to not have to care about spelling and punctuation. And like, we knew that was already happening with texts, but with AI, it's just going to get
Beth Rudden (07:09)
Mm-hmm.
Katie Smith (07:27)
much worse. And then it's going into critical thinking. And so I like this observation that you've been making and other people have been making in that like even just the use of AI is fundamentally changing us, biologically changing us.
Beth Rudden (07:44)
Have you seen the Imitation Game with Redmond? It's the story of some of the very first computing work in World War II in breaking the encryption. ⁓
Katie Smith (07:55)
Mm-hmm.
yes, yes, yes, yes. Great movie.
Beth Rudden (07:58)
And
well, it's, it's an even better story. idea of passing the Turing, it's the story of Alan Turing, passing the Turing test in when you read Turing's papers.
Katie Smith (08:06)
Mm-hmm.
Beth Rudden (08:10)
And when you read what that test was supposed to be about, it's when a human can no longer distinguish whether they are interacting with a human or a machine. But that doesn't mean necessarily that the human is not to be changing in order to understand whether they're acting, in other words, when they're interacting with a machine.
And that's the side of the equation, the human side of the equation that I've always been really fascinated with because Alan Turing never said that the human couldn't change to place themselves in this willing suspension of disbelief to interact with technology in order to pass the Turing test. The human is the one that is more changed always than the especially with the current gen AI systems that don't
afford you the ability to change things. And those of us who build our own are like, that is way, it's just criminal because people are having these conversations with something that is instigating their anthropomorphism and instigating their biological need to personify. By the way, the reason why we personify,
and why it's a biological need, it's like sort of written into our own biology, is a conversation is about creating mutual understanding. And the reason that we have evolved or many of the theories on why we have evolved to read or reading as a cultural adaptation is to create a shared view of reality. Are you seeing this? I'm seeing this,
Katie Smith (09:31)
Mm.
Mm.
Beth Rudden (09:52)
And that to me is right. Yes, yes. Or, know, the I'm so proud of my children who know how to debate because they have been going to debate camp and they take debate in school and they know how to argue both sides of a both sides of an issue. And even though they might believe something very differently to argue persuasively.
Katie Smith (09:53)
You see it this way, right? Cool. I see it that way too. Yeah.
Beth Rudden (10:18)
you have to be able to at least understand and respect and agree that that other person has the at least the same reality that you're living in to be able to create that argument that might be different than yours, but in a way that creates mutual shared understanding, shared experience, shared reality. So when a human being is having a conversation with an AI,
Katie Smith (10:22)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Beth Rudden (10:44)
That AI is not understanding. There's no mutual understanding being created. And that's part of what I want to change because we can have systems that can start to draw out the context of what you're saying and then ground that in a way that is explicit so that you can have something to understand against. So you need that friction for understanding to occur.
Katie Smith (10:50)
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Beth Rudden (11:10)
The world that we have trusted is vanishing. And so this idea of trust and trust in the reality of the world as we see it, that was the name of the episode by the Christa Tibbitt episode of On Being. And we've been here before as humans. And that's when...
religion comes up. That's when, nature of pores, a vacuum kind of thing, or leadership of pores, a vacuum, or like, there's, there's all these, these sayings that get us to the point of we know things are ending. And I think why we wanted to do this podcast is we wanted to fill what we think should begin out of it. And I think that what I know and what I hear from you all the time is
Katie Smith (11:51)
Thank you.
Beth Rudden (11:58)
mutual respect of other people's positions and points of view so that we're not just hearing what the algorithms have been taught to amplify in order to outrage us to engage. There's just such a different way. There's such a different world out there that we could be exploring.
Katie Smith (12:18)
Absolutely. A couple of things came up for me while you were sharing all that. It reminded me of the effective altruism conversation, because, and I don't know if there's a perfect connection here, but it there's a group of people who are trying to make decisions for others, right? Right now.
instead of being in that collective, instead of being in those conversations, those messy conversations. And I love that you bring up your kids so often and you're so proud of them and that they know debate and that really good debaters, but really good diplomacy. Really good diplomacy means that you understand both sides, that you can meet that person where they're at, not like, it's a futile effort to tell them they're wrong, right?
but you can listen and say, okay, so here's our gap. Here's where we're here's where we're not on the same page, but where's the commonalities? I think when we talked to Dr. Desmond Patton, like that really came up to like, how do we find these commonalities between us, and I think that's what we're trying to do. And maybe that is a new beginning, because there, please let it be a new beginning, because in the past, well, for way too long, more than a decade,
we have been polarized and separated and all we have seen is like the differences, you know? And so I think there's an opportunity to reimagine how we find those common bonds. you know, I appreciate that you bring up religion and we've talked about shared spaces and I know you had some thoughts around that as well.
Beth Rudden (13:47)
I think one of the episodes you really pointed out you're like humanism needs some spaces let's go take over the catholic churches and it and of course. but.
Katie Smith (13:55)
It's to me to put up a radical idea. But what? Sometimes
my radical ideas come true, everyone. There's proof now.
Beth Rudden (14:02)
Well,
and of course, the historian and me is like, yes, absolutely. That's where the power is. Like you should have the human factors that relate to where the power is. the Catholic churches or at least the Roman Catholic churches built on top of the Roman forums and the Roman forums built on top of like where the Coptic religions were practiced and the cults had their data. And that data was always like,
who owned the land, who married who, like very, very, I don't know. I think we look back and we're like, that's a simpler time, but I don't think it was. And that's why I love what we're doing here with like the endings and the beginnings. So do you wanna do some review of some episodes and talk about?
Katie Smith (14:44)
Yeah.
Yeah,
Beth Rudden (14:48)
I think having our first guest on and having our guest feel so aware of what we were doing in a way that related to their work. And I think that that's one thing that the amalgam of your life and my life is very different. Like we have very different circles. But what comes through is this shared
desire for respect and a moral imagination and having dignified life. I think where we talked about dignity, like living a dignified life of in pursuit of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. All of those words are really, really good.
Katie Smith (15:22)
Thank you.
Yeah, I feel like the social contract is also like a theme between everything and, look, the social contract that we thought we had is pretty much over. We get to reimagine it because the political structures have, we've shaken them enough. that and some particular actors have found loopholes.
Beth Rudden (15:35)
Yes. ⁓
Yeah.
Katie Smith (15:50)
that now unfortunately it's reshaping things, but it doesn't have to reshape things in their worldview. It could still be our choice how we're going to reimagine the social contract. So I love that we talked about caregiving and belonging. and yes, what Dr. Desmond is doing with JoyNet, think is so important right now. Like, I've left Metta because it was just so toxic.
And, I fundamentally just, disagree with their business model. However, I think what Dr. Desmond's doing with the safe lab at UPenn and with JoyNet is exactly what we need right now. It's basically an algorithm, focused on joy and, and built with very much an intentional approach with community, which again, I think is very
different, this effective altruism sort of approach. And so again, there's like an opportunity for us to not just reimagine,
Beth Rudden (16:47)
who are we reimagining for? Do you remember when we talked about the terrible ideas of the future of like having to go to Mars because we've ruined this planet? These ideas about what other people have about the future and those other people are in leadership positions and the ability to imagine
the future of running away from a planet that we've harvested all of the natural non-renewable resources from. And I remember thinking that was part of that social contract that I kept asking you. I'm like, what changed? And I think that there's a disconnect of people who want to live for the
for the betterment of future generations and people who want to amass as much possible wealth as they possibly can in this lifetime. And then I think we had this other kind of conversation where we broke down wealth, right? Like that, there's a difference between health wealth and, your bank account, your bank balance wealth. And that health wealth is going to is going to kill you every single time. that's that's that's the hard part.
Katie Smith (18:03)
That's the real valuable one. That's the true value. Without health, what do you have really at the end of the day?
one of the other topics that came up in our first episode, which I think is very relevant to, to, some recent events is, you know, Bast your company, Palantir may not be a direct competitor, but is doing similar things except for, I think, if you investigate Palantir, you will see that they're very tied with
surveillance and other activities that some of us, if we knew a little bit more about may not agree with. Whereas Bast, I think, takes that really powerful technology and wants to apply it for good, I'll say. I really appreciated that that was one of our first conversations. And then when we watched the big military parade, they were being promoted. And I just thought, man, yeah, this is it. This is the choice of like, do we want that or do we want that?
Beth Rudden (18:55)
Yeah.
Katie Smith (18:56)
And I was like, no, I want best.
Beth Rudden (18:59)
The use of ontologies or graph models to ground information. It's not a novel concept. It dates back to the beginning of the semantic web or the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee. And the standards that have been created out of that, there are people who contribute to standards and there are people who don't. There are people who use standards. But the company as
Palantir is one of the only other companies that I am aware of that are using ontological systems in order to be able to increase the understanding as well as the real time inference that you can get in with neuro symbolic AI and a lot of big words, but I would say that all people really need to know how to do is go to Amnesty International and look up Palantir.
humans, and we did talk about this, I'm always a big fan of let's really understand the humans that are creating the companies, the humans that are making the choices for the algorithms, like what are their incentives? Are they working for the company because they need an H1B visa? Or are they working for a company that they really believe in because they want to
advance the industry on what we can do with artificial intelligence. So I love this age of transparency. I think what's ending is the opacity. Like, because there was like a false veneer where people could, I think it was really short lived, but like this, like, hey, I'm gonna do my
Katie Smith (20:23)
Mm-hmm.
Beth Rudden (20:33)
D E and I parade and signal that I'm all into diversity equity and inclusion but I'm gonna be an all white male board with an all white male or an All black female board or an all black female company I mean, I think that if you're going to signal to the world that you're Really really into diversity. You can easily now see that that company is
maybe not walking the talk and, and, being the, being the candidate for diversity
And in most situations, competition breeds short-term gains and long-term losses, whereas collaboration breeds both short-term gains and long-term sustainable growth because you're not
Katie Smith (21:15)
Yep.
Compounded, Yes.
Beth Rudden (21:27)
Very quick total geek story. I apologize but one of the best machine learning programs that we ever put in is we needed to reduce the cost of the data center and data center electricity costs a lot of money. We had to build a power plant in order to be able to fund the electricity for data centers and then offset that with acres and acres and acres of all of the solar panels and solar
powered panels. But what we were doing is what we saw is we saw that the temperature was fluctuating. And it wasn't fluctuating a lot, but it was fluctuating by enough where the air conditioner had to kick on and then it would go off and kick on and go off, kick on and go off. And so what we did is we used a machine learning algorithm to be able to measure the temperature by watching
the actual vent and we put something in the vent that we could see. It's just the same concept of, in wind, you put a kite, like a wind kite to see that. Instead of popping the air conditioner on and off and on and off and on and off, it was going like this. What we did is we used machine learning to say, get to a flat.
Katie Smith (22:23)
Mm-hmm.
Okay.
Yeah.
Beth Rudden (22:45)
And
like, that's something we can control with consumerism. We can control with our economies. We can control with this unabashed, ridiculous growth without actual revenue still blows my brains. Like, I mean, when you are looking at, and I had a long conversation about this,
Katie Smith (22:49)
Mm-hmm.
Beth Rudden (23:09)
the total cost of ownership. Do people do TCO anymore or is that like a TQM thing from like the 90s?
Katie Smith (23:16)
Our company
just went through it this morning on some technology. yeah, it's interesting though, because I mean, obviously there's an AI race, everyone's talking about it. they're framing it in terms of, security, national security.
Beth Rudden (23:31)
I'm like, there is this assumption that everybody watches the news and
Katie Smith (23:32)
yeah yeah.
They're
making it up. They're creating it. I'm absolutely sure that AI is used in warfare in ways that we cannot imagine. Absolutely. I'm sure that's absolutely true. But this race is made up. This is manufactured just like the crisis in Los Angeles is manufactured. There is no crisis, everyone. There was a quota that needed to be met. And in the AI race, yeah, there's a quota that needs to be met.
because a lot of people invested billions of dollars. That said, because these billions of dollars are being invested, these products are good, bad and different, gonna take over. And so this idea that the machines are gonna do not just the blue collar jobs, but white collar jobs, people are talking about that. I think I was just watching Bill Maher recently, and it's interesting to see him.
the longest running, late night talk show host, it's, fun to see his trajectory over time, but like he was talking about it, everyone's talking about it. People are scared. And the topic came up of universal basic income. And, we haven't gotten into that yet, but I think, some of the themes that we have been discussing are not going anywhere anytime soon. So what's ending is.
the social contract as we understood it. What's beginning is a new conversation because if this is true, if this is true that the machines are going to take over, not just blue collar jobs, but white collar jobs, we are going to need a way for people to get paid and to pay their bills and to function in a completely new way in society. And I have some ideas around that and I know you do too, but that is definitely going to be an ongoing theme on this podcast.
Beth Rudden (25:20)
And I'm gonna stick on something. Let's talk a minute. I don't believe that the machines are gonna take over. I do not. I think that the human beings who have control of the systems that are spending so much money that it dwarfs every other investment in AI. And...
Katie Smith (25:27)
Okay.
Beth Rudden (25:39)
Look at all the charts that you see they're all split up by industry but the one industry you don't see on any chart with other industries is media and entertainment because the money that is being spent by what five people five six people who are spending the money for creating and cultivating and maintaining this reality that we need big data and big compute.
in order to feed the machines more data and more compute. And the word is harvested, by the way. the exhaust that humans are being engaged on these platforms are made to engage on these platforms in order to harvest the data. None of that, is the machine's intent.
Katie Smith (26:14)
appropriate.
Beth Rudden (26:28)
at all. The machines are not going to take over the human beings who are using the machines to harvest the data to feed their models that require large data. That's who is that's that's who is in charge now because that's where the money is going. And I'm like, I'm like, no way there is no animus.
Katie Smith (26:47)
Yeah, I appreciate you excavating that. Thank you.
Beth Rudden (26:55)
There is no like, there is no key. is no where there is no there there in the machine. There's no ghost in the machine. And it's so dangerous because so many humans are not able to reconcile the fact that they are putting their disbelief in willing suspension, right? They're not
Katie Smith (27:01)
Yeah. Right.
Yeah.
Beth Rudden (27:19)
The way that the interactions are occurring today, many people are trying and we who are really trying to show that there is a transparent way to interact. And there's also this whole new natural language experience or an NLX. There's this whole new field that is being created so that
We human beings can understand that this is a calculating machine. It does not have feelings, does not have emotions, it does not have embodied activated hormones or anything that can actually have what we would call a feeling that is an emotion that you feel in your body.
Katie Smith (27:45)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, as you're saying all that, my dog is asleep and doing little sleepy sounds. Oh my God, it's so cute. Yeah, it's adorable. uh, but I totally heard everything you said. So, it, to me that just, again, is a social contract conversation because what you're describing is an alternative to what is happening right now. That is
Beth Rudden (28:16)
Yes.
haha
Katie Smith (28:23)
Although the field, think, like you said, the natural language experience so people can really understand where that output came from so that they can understand if that really is a useful output for them, whatever the case may be. Look, of course that's needed and it's important. I think there's a ton of people who are using chat ChatGBT now who just don't even think about this at all. And they already have billions of users.
And so there is a movement and Dr. Desmond talked about this too, right? Like there is a movement right now. It's small. And part of this podcast is that you can join us. You can join this movement. We're going to be having guests on nonstop who you're going to hear from that are looking at this from various different points of view. And we need to grow this movement that you were just talking about. And
Beth Rudden (29:11)
Yeah.
Katie Smith (29:13)
The number one thing that where we have the most power and I've said it before and I'll say it again, is like money and time. So we need to put our money and our time in products and experiences that are aligned with the social contract of the future.
Beth Rudden (29:29)
So what's ending is the world that we've all trusted is vanishing. And what's scary is we don't always know the shape of the next one, which is why the prophets and some of the poetry and things that express emotion beyond words have such resonance right now, just like it has been before whenever a prophet has showed up in our human history.
Katie Smith (29:33)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Beth Rudden (29:54)
whether you believe or ascribe to a particular religion, it doesn't matter as much as your voice to be able to make that shape of the future and your imagination, hopefully your moral imagination on what that on what that future looks like. Katie, why isn't that bigger than money and power and wealth?
Katie Smith (30:10)
We're here.
think purpose and meaning is bigger. think especially younger generations are seeking it out. The quiet quitting that is happening in corporate America has so much to do with a lack of purpose and meaning in these roles. And so if AI can get rid of those jobs so that people can focus on purpose and meaning, I think they would end up wanting to work at Bast. I think they would end up wanting to work at Humma
I was in corporate America for more than 10 years in the entertainment space. So I know machine learning and AI, like porn in particular, is always the first to utilize these technologies, right? Like, come on, cutting edge. But in my last, 10 years of my career, I've been in the social justice space and people want...
meaning and purpose and people see so many opportunities to find that in so many different ways. But I even left that space because for me, I can see the shift happening. And I was like, we need a third way. We need a third way. And so for me personally, I was like, okay, I'm going to try to be a part of the solution. I want to be a part of this small movement.
that is trying to create AI that is made by and for community, right? That actually creates better outcomes for us and businesses too. I'm really excited to have that ongoing conversation as well.
Beth Rudden (31:38)
I love what you are doing with Humma and the team that you have put around you and the way to think about a social network organization. draw the, paint the dots for me. I said moral imagination and creating the shape of that future because that's what's scary is we don't quite know the shape. And I think you and I are sitting here
Katie Smith (31:44)
The team is fantastic.
Mm.
I
Hmm.
Beth Rudden (32:04)
but we can make it what it is. How do you get from, right, that's right. We're entitled. Anyone, any human being that knows how to human is entitled to make their own future and to make their own choices. And that is liberty and freedom. But how did you get from there to purpose and value? Like how did you get to purpose? Yeah.
Katie Smith (32:06)
We're gonna move it.
and
moral imagination to purpose.
When I think about moral imagination, I think about this opportunity for us to pause and reflect on like what it means to be a good human, what it means to live a good life. That for me, that's the simplicity that comes up. And then I instantly go to, well, the most fundamental thing that provides meaning and...
purpose in our life is love and family and our friends and our community. And so I get to that to, well, one of the ways that we can show up is, in person, but also being a provider, I always bring it back to finances. I think it's because I was raised by a mom that was made less than $30,000 a year raising two little people. And I just think,
in that Maslow triangle, purpose and meaning is at the top, but you need to have like this foundation of security, right? And so, I don't know, I linked that to work. And so I'm just like, we're going to, is there a way to like connect the top of the triangle to the bottom of the triangle? Like in this new future where AI has the potential to do some of the drudgery.
Could we create the way that we provide for each other? Can that actually have more meaning than ever before? And so I think that with Humma like we're just building the foundation of an ecosystem that will make that possible well beyond social media. which I think will create both...
an opportunity for people to provide for themselves and their family and their loved ones, but also in a very meaningful way.
Beth Rudden (34:11)
It's beautiful. think that, wanting to set that foundation up based on, the, what I heard from you is like the ethic of working and the ethic of valuing the money that you work for. And both of us have talked about this in the past where we've, when you make a lot of money,
it's really easy to lose the value of a dollar is how I've always learned to talk about it is like, to, to, to learn the value of what a dollar can buy you and how much you need to work in order to be able to pay for that sweater or whatever it is. And making sure that you have that, that understanding of the exchange kind of goes away when you
don't when you are making so much money that you don't know what your gardener in one of your 17 houses needs at that time in order to help their family. There's a lot there or you could know that because you've chosen to put that as a part of your own imagination. But I think that requires curiosity and curiosity
is or that that ability to imagine or ask differently like why does the entire world believe that you need big data and large compute in order to run AI systems? do we know that that's really true or is that just what people want us to think? And if so, why do they want us to think that?
Katie Smith (35:39)
Yeah, why do they want us to think that? I feel like the race is just like, well, we can, and this is the methods we know now, so we're just gonna run with it, right? Like there wasn't this, I mean, we'll never know, or maybe we will in our lifetime, but it doesn't feel like that there was some moral imagination for these people who are running this AI race. Like, I don't think they're thinking about it that way. I think they're.
Beth Rudden (36:00)
No. No.
Katie Smith (36:05)
I think they're coming up with excuses around national security. So I think the other thing is, because of how I was raised and who raised me, third generation Italian and Swedish, I was basically raised by people who were immigrants. And I, I'm really sensitive to the, the everyday person.
And so when I think about the moral imagination of what does it look like to live in the future, and when you think about universal basic income or how you provide for your family, like there's so much dignity in how you provide for your family. It is so important for all of us to show up in a particular way that you can't get from universal basic income. And so I'm really keen to
Beth Rudden (36:31)
Mm-hmm.
Katie Smith (36:51)
to do some moral imagination of how we ensure that jobs of the future not only provide meaning and purpose, that give us that sense of dignity of actually providing for our families. Because talk about DNA memory, what my book was about, it is ingrained in us to do a job and to provide. If we don't.
have a job, like some of these effective altruists and other people who are talking about the AI right now are just like, well, man, you get to reimagine what you're going to do. You're going to have the luxury of the do nothing or the luxury to, whatever the case may be. And I'm like, I think you're discounting how important it is for people to have a dignified job and to actually feel like they provided for their family. It's what we have done for thousands and thousands of years.
and then all of a sudden it's just gonna be gone in a matter of five to 10 years and we think we're gonna be okay with that as a human race, I just, again, fundamentally flawed and a lack of moral imagination.
Beth Rudden (37:52)
I think there is a whole episode that we need to do on the ethics or the ethos of working and providing. And it isn't something that most of the people in power have done for the last 2000 years at all. In fact, it's all about how the people who are in power have some
Katie Smith (38:06)
That's right. Right.
Beth Rudden (38:16)
special something that requires them not to toil or labor or work. I use that word labor over and over and over again, because labor is the effort that you're putting in in order to have understanding. It's not an act, it's a labor. And so you have to give forth.
your understanding and bring forth your understanding. I do think too that if we look at like the demographics and where you have the different speaking about America who has been the leader in the
let's say it, the moral superiority of having the capitalist economy that has the largest military complex in the entire world and largest military spending than anybody else. What does that say about who we are as Americans today? And what does that change in how we want to begin again? And, that just reminded me.
Katie Smith (39:19)
Yeah.
Beth Rudden (39:20)
One of my favorite, favorite things that I have learned in meditation is this idea of beginning again. We are all human. We are all flawed. We all make mistakes. That is how we learn. That is why we labor. That is why we toil. Like that. That is, that is our, our ability to understand our vocation or our calling. And I do believe that people have callings. I really do. I believe that people are called.
Katie Smith (39:32)
This is how we learn.
Beth Rudden (39:47)
to do things and to think things and to want to be part of something that is bigger than they are. I have a harder time connecting that to the fiscal or the financial in general, other than to make sure that you have an awareness of what the rules are, who follows them, who doesn't, and why do rich people
Katie Smith (40:08)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Doesn't.
Beth Rudden (40:14)
Pay less taxes if they're supposed to be creating more jobs. Like where are those jobs? Could we draw a direct line between this company is making more jobs so therefore they should pay less taxes like that whole thing goes away and I think I asked you this but who's working on reversing this corporate personhood where you have this.
I was having another conversation, think about where some of these ideas started that a corporation could vote because they are a corporate personhood according to the laws that were created in order to make them a corporate personhood. To me, this is what I want to, in order to heal,
I think we have to acknowledge the incredible colonial basis for every single aspect of business that we have. And if we can acknowledge that we have this ingrained potentially epigenetic viewpoint of some people are special and don't work bourgeoisie, some people are not, therefore they're the proletariat, they do work. I don't think that that
will ever be solved because there are too many people who have things like a calling to heal people and to help people. And those people are so burdened. My favorite episode is when I went through and I listed out all of the degrees that social workers and teachers and nurses and physical therapists and occupational therapists, all the women's work.
You have to have all of these degrees and follow all these rules and have all of these certifications. And yet you are going to earn the least amount of money than ever before. I want our new social contract. I want the new shape of our future to value the human beings that have teaching, healing, caring, have the calling to
Katie Smith (42:06)
Yeah.
Absolutely. Yeah.
Beth Rudden (42:22)
help other humans be human.
Katie Smith (42:24)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm. I absolutely agree with that. Absolutely agree with that. Yeah, I'm starting to think that with this new imagination that AI could actually lead to these sort of outcomes. It really could. But it requires that this movement gets bigger, which is why we need people
we're gonna have a conversation. We welcome others, You wanna be a guest and have a conversation, reach out to us. We would love to talk to you.
Beth Rudden (42:53)
Absolutely, yeah.
have a different point of view. I think that's super important. I also think that if people...
Katie Smith (42:58)
Absolutely.
Beth Rudden (43:05)
To me, this is not new, but I have the habit of like, hey, I heard that like, five days ago, therefore it's in the past. In my brain, things are moving on timelines that I'm not always strictly aware of. But I do want everybody to ask themselves, what is the future they want for their children? In the long term, what is the future that they want right now? What is the present that they want for their children?
And the world that I grew up in was Sesame Street and, gosh, the, won't you be my neighbor, the Mr. Rogers. We had the largest middle class demographically in America than anywhere else in the world. And it was the blissful understanding that everybody had
an acknowledgement that they could be a little bit better than their neighbor or they could keep up with their neighbor if they just bought that newer Chevy or that latest model. But it wasn't like, know, some of their neighbors would never live in the slums because they have 17 houses that they don't ever go to. It's like that disparity between rich and poor.
I think that's part of it, but you and I talked about the distribution of work. And that's why I don't think that universal basic income, branded and marketed as universal basic income, is ever going to work, or is ever going to function well for humanity.
Katie Smith (44:36)
It would
have to be supplemented with other things. It couldn't work on its own, I don't think.
Beth Rudden (44:39)
Well,
right, but what if you said that this is this is where your tax dollars go. So invert the invert them like inverted. So if you are working and you're contributing, that your tax dollars help to build that school or that your tax dollars help to fund that teacher to go for their next degree so that they can.
teach the geriatric division that needs to come back to the school or that you are supplying fruits and vegetables that are part of a prescription plan from a physician that lives in your community. Like, I mean, I think that there's just so many different things that you can think about if you kind of take off these chains.
of the existing paradigm. And that is something that AI is a mirror of what our own biases are. But it's also something that with our infusion of our data and our imagination, we can ask questions. Like when I want to grow up,
Katie Smith (45:30)
Yes.
Beth Rudden (45:53)
with my family, I want my family to have jobs that feel connected to who they are.
Katie Smith (46:00)
Hmm. Well,
I think we're sort of seeing the end game of capitalism in a way, right? Like it and what I'm hoping is ending is capitalism as we understand it and that a new beginning requires like a new structure. Humma is a California benefit corporation. And what's interesting about a California benefit corporation different than a B Corp is that, we get to sort of imagine what what
what it looks like, know, so we have, we legally are responsible to care about people, planet and profits. Yes, profits, because we talked about this in previous episodes where that sort of freedom that is just innate in all of us, like we wanna innovate, we wanna be entrepreneurs. So many people do, like the small businesses in America, small business is the backbone of America, is the backbone of the middle class. People want to control their own destiny.
So we, so corporations are important, but the way that they're structured now, it's clearly not serving us. If you're part of like that investment class, perhaps, but most of us are not in these equities. And so this idea that we can reimagine capitalism, I think is fundamental to the work that I'm doing and our team is doing.
And that is also the conversation that I want to have with folks. Again, where we put our time, where we put our money is so important. And we can't keep supporting these businesses. Bless you to my dog. We can't keep supporting these companies. That it's like a zero sum game.
Beth Rudden (47:32)
I do know that many people want it to be the end of capitalism, I think that capitalism, yeah, I think that, I like that, that's a better way, because like, I do think that there are a lot in our economic and structures of capital that, can be changed easily within the same
Katie Smith (47:40)
Evolution. doesn't need to be an end. It's an evolution.
Beth Rudden (47:58)
within the same processes. And I think a lot of people are like, well, we've got to throw the baby in the bathwater out. And I'm like, actually, you can kind of keep that bathwater, recycle it, and then, you can do a lot more things with that. So clean it up, why are you throwing the baby out?
Katie Smith (48:11)
clean it up, use it again.
Yeah. No, no. What I'm saying
is when you think about the extraction that is happening from the top companies in the world, you really follow the money. It is not creating a strong middle class, especially as you see how they're laying people off, right? We're just now starting to see the beginning of the layoffs. The layoffs are going to get worse. that's an easy prediction. It's sad. The layoffs are going to get worse.
And so it's serving the top class and the people who are invested in those companies. It is not serving the middle class. And so an evolution of capitalism where we can ensure that the everyday people that contributed to this, which is very many, including the consumer, is benefited in some way, which is not happening with the AI companies of today. It's benefiting the companies. It's benefiting those stakeholders.
It's not benefiting the users. It's short-term benefiting those users because pretty shiny object and it's really interesting. You can do lots of things with it. I play with it. It's great. But it's not like going to serve us in the long-term. If we're supporting these companies who really don't have our best interests at heart, they're literally thinking about national security right now, which they think is good for all of us. But this is why I keep thinking about effective altruism.
This is again, rich, powerful people saying, this is what's best for all of us. It's like, we did not elect you. We did not elect you to make that decision. No. And please God, next time, let's elect someone better.
Beth Rudden (49:47)
So much there.
One of the things that I do and I have, I think I'm going to get back to is when I was a kid, my parents read me this book and I loved it. It's called Richard Scarry's What Do People Do All Day? It's this huge book and it talks about how the plumber and the farmer and the grocer and the eye doctor and the optometrist or the
and the gynecologist and the physician and like all of the lawyers and the banker and the baker and it just has all of the different things that people do all day and the construction worker and these these in in the book itself hold on yes show and tell I would like to read people this book
on our podcast. But love, look at this. Look at how it talks about all of the different jobs and all the different things people do all day. Yes, others travel some place to place. What does your daddy do? What does your mommy do? And what do you do? Are you a good helper? All of the dated kind of language, but it's an understanding that when you're a kid, that's what you want to know.
Katie Smith (50:35)
Okay, let's do it.
feel like I have seen that before.
Beth Rudden (51:00)
What do people do all day? Not what is your title? What is your net worth? How big is your network? How many followers do you have? What do you do all day? And does what you do all day, does that bring you joy? And does that bring you meaning? And is that something you value? And I do think that there are like, there's kind of an in-group and an out-group to that question.
Katie Smith (51:22)
I think that's entirely true. Yeah. So this is why it's a small movement right now, but we are growing.
Beth Rudden (51:24)
and
I think it's much,
it's much bigger than I think that it is it is something that we've seen over and over and over again, when you have such disparity between rich and poor, you instigate or you are do a workers or a spiritual revolution. Either way, it's to to kind of go back into this cycle. And what I want is I want
out of the cycle. It's like aces or like adverse childhood experiences. It's a cycle. You can break the cycle. And whether that's reinventing capitalism or
different ways of being a part of the community. The thing that we have to do, I think, Katie, is we have to reduce the friction between the understanding of what people put in and what they get out. And we have to have systems that are a hell of a more reciprocal. Where does all of the money, and when I was making a ton of money, I was paying,
Katie Smith (52:20)
Yes.
Beth Rudden (52:26)
so much in taxes. I mean, well over all of the salaries that I had ever even thought to make in my life. Where did all of that money go? What did I contribute it to? Like, how do we use AI to help people feel connected to the money that they're putting in as far as taxes to what they're getting out from their community? In the local...
Katie Smith (52:43)
Hmm.
Yeah, a real feedback mechanism on that. think that's really smart.
Beth Rudden (52:52)
Remember when we were talking about like some of the misunderstanding between federal and state and local, your ability to vote for your local sheriffs and your local judges where those judges are the ones that they can't, they are so powerful and they are the protectors of your liberty and your rights in your local community.
Katie Smith (53:15)
Mm hmm. Absolutely. Well, there's so much to talk about. We could do this podcast forever.
Beth Rudden (53:21)
Yes, I will see how far we go. Forever is a long time. But how about until next Monday? And we tackle UBI. Let's talk about universal basic income and I'll tell you my stories of Italy and Ireland and what I found there.
Katie Smith (53:28)
Fair enough, sounds.
Yeah.
Okay, sounds good. I have some research I can bring to the table as well. All right, till next time. Subscribe, follow, smash the like button wherever you're listening to this, read that, we don't know, all the things this podcast is syndicated in places we're not even sure about.
Beth Rudden (53:47)
Like.
restack.
it engage with us. We would actually love and value a conversation.
Katie Smith (54:03)
Yeah. My name is Katie Smith and I'm the co-host of And We Feel Fine.
Beth Rudden (54:06)
My name is Beth Rudden and I am the co-host for And We Feel Fine. And thank you for joining us today.
Katie Smith (54:12)
See you next time.