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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 (00:39)
Hi Beth, how's it going?
Beth Rudden (00:42)
I feel fine. We do.
Katie Smith (00:43)
We feel fine. It might
be one of those weeks where the ebb and flow is real.
Beth Rudden (00:51)
Yeah. And I heard ⁓ while I was doing my workout today, so ⁓ it was Jess Sims on Peloton, who is just lovely human. And she said, you know what? You can't have bad days. You can have bad moments in the day and they can all add up and it can feel like a bad day. But don't judge it by like the, you know, you don't say I had a bad day. You had a bad month, right? Judge it by the moments. So I'm like, I've had a couple difficult struggling moments.
Katie Smith (01:15)
I love
Yeah, as founders do, as caretakers do. So you really brought up a really beautiful theme and I appreciated it. It's something I actually have been talking about with people just in general, this idea of being a caretaker in community. But where did that come up for you?
Beth Rudden (01:22)
Yes.
So about 2017, 2018, my sister had a really massive traumatic brain injury. And at the time we had some rental properties in Florida that we were doing as a business. And she had to wear really dark sunglasses and she was like really light sensitive. But what we didn't realize then that we know now is that it sort of started this really long.
series of undiagnosed autoimmune. And it really could, you know, compounded into 2022. So that's like five years, six years of being, you know, not, not being healthy and not knowing how to do the things that she's, she used to be able to do. In 2022, we ended up in Mayo Clinic in an emergency situation and I almost lost her, you know, several times and
The very, very frustrating part about all of this is being a caregiver. And ⁓ I've been in incredibly stressful situations. My husband has done three deployments. The second deployment, he was shot down and I've gotten phone calls. And I will tell you that dealing with being a caregiver, even for three or four days, I've never been more exhausted in my life.
emotionally exhausted, physically exhausted, and she lives with her husband and her son that are just incredible caretakers. And I really started learning about how to show up and be a caretaker. And there's a book that truly changed my life. And I read everything. I try to read as much as possible. That's what my mother taught me to do. When you don't know about something, you read about it. So I'm reading about the invisible kingdom and all of these like,
all of these tragic stories of all these undiagnosed autoimmune kind of problems and you don't get better. You don't get, you know, a little bit better every day or sometimes you do and like the progress is not linear and, you know, take it one hour at a time, one minute at a time. Again, that small, small understanding of what can be good in this moment. And we started meditating every day together.
Katie Smith (04:04)
Hmm.
Beth Rudden (04:05)
And I live in Colorado, she's in Wisconsin, and we get on the phone to this day every single day, and I just decided, one solstice, I was like, we're gonna talk every day, we're gonna meditate every day, we're gonna read each other passages from books that we like. We have all kinds of different, yeah, like simple abundance. It's like every day there's a new thing or recipes or anything, and then just
Katie Smith (04:26)
I love that.
Beth Rudden (04:36)
being there, being present, it was this one book. So it's called How to Be Sick, a Buddhist ⁓ Guide. And it's really about how to truly be compassionate for yourself because until you learn self-compassion, it's very difficult to, these are all things that I can't even represent well with words. These are things that you learn in your heart and your soul. So.
I am not a full-time physical caretaker, but I feel like sister and I, have a mental connection that even, you know, we will invite her on and I would love for her to tell her part of the story. But it's just been this amazing relationship and getting to know a sibling who is sick and really started me into this more spiritual journey.
in understanding everybody gets sick, everybody dies. Everybody has somebody who gets sick and everybody has somebody who dies. This affects all of humanity and we don't have the protocols. We don't understand. There were so many times where I would just respond to family members on group text, no, she is not coming out for the celebration or no, she can't do this right now. Or, I mean,
Katie Smith (05:41)
You
Beth Rudden (05:59)
There were just, there's a lot that I now understand so much better because just having, having another person around who can be your voice and be a part of it is just, I don't know how people do what they do. And it is such a devastating thing to be a caretaker and not know you have to take care of yourself first. You have to put your own oxygen mask on first.
so that you can show up to help take care of the human being who needs you to show up and needs to lean on you at that time.
Katie Smith (06:38)
Yeah, I love that analogy. You know, and I say it so often to staff too. It's like you have to put on that oxygen mask first. You have to take care of yourself first. Cause if you don't, you're no help to all those other people. And even when you're an EMT, like your job is to protect you and your partner before you go into that situation. Because if you get electrocuted, cause you forgot, you weren't looking for downed power lines or whatever the case may be. I'm thinking of a particular car accident. Then, ⁓
Beth Rudden (06:46)
Yep.
That's right.
Katie Smith (07:08)
You're not helping anybody, right? If you're the one who gets hurt or if you're the one who gets exhausted or whatever the case may be.
Beth Rudden (07:16)
How did
you come by caregiving? Will you tell your story?
Katie Smith (07:21)
So caregiving, gosh, well, I mean, the honest answer is my mom after divorce. She was absolutely devastated, know, 17 years of marriage, thought she was gonna spend the rest of her life with this guy, of course, and then he turned into an alcoholic. And just watching her just in a complete depression was something of like what I learned too early is like, how do you take care of a
Beth Rudden (07:28)
Yeah, that's a lot.
Katie Smith (07:49)
parents, right? So I learned maybe a little too young, what it's like to take care of a parent. And I think our salve was laughter. So the good news is, is we would just show up and we would just find whatever ridiculous thing to laugh about, you know, and she was pretty good about that, that would get her out of a funk sometimes.
Beth Rudden (07:58)
Mm-hmm.
Katie Smith (08:07)
know, I think in some ways I'm missing out on the privilege to be a caretaker, even though I know it's, it's something that I think more than 70 % of us I think I saw some staff.
Beth Rudden (08:22)
It's,
it's gonna go up to we have at this moment, a demographic where we have the old, the oldest population on earth. And it, you know, it goes back to the, the last podcast that we did, where David Bornstein was talking about, we need more practice in knowing
how to go to funerals. We need more practice in knowing how to just make tea and sit with someone. We need more practice to just be present and make space for other people. We need practice to teach us that, yes, there is pain, but there doesn't have to be suffering by forward thinking and catastrophizing what this might mean. so it's so important.
This is not being taught anywhere. And I think that disconnect with religion is a problem because that's where I learned and watched my father do it through a religious ⁓ vernier. And I think we need to go back to humanism and being human and learning how to human. And there's a lot there that I have
Katie Smith (09:21)
now.
Beth Rudden (09:47)
but like I have the knowledge of just because of my training and what I read. And I think that we have so many of these stories. ⁓ I wanna share one that I heard recently and this comes from Greg Epstein's book, Good Without God, which I think is just phenomenal. ⁓ And, you know, he talks about a son who watches his mother go through Alzheimer's.
Katie Smith (10:05)
fan.
Beth Rudden (10:15)
and watches his mother struggle to know herself every day and to remember herself every day. And that son uses that struggle because he's like, can see that she is struggling to know who she is and to have that relationship with self that is so, so, important. And then he uses that to not be afraid of his own battle because he knows he will have Alzheimer's too.
And instead of running away from it, understanding how generations can do that generational wealth transfer between people who are genetically similar enough to have the propensity to have Alzheimer's or other mental illness diseases and to be in communities who know how to talk about this and know how to be with someone and make space.
why can't we do this more often? And this is why I wanted to talk about this on a podcast, is I want people to know that there are the right words. There are the right things you can do. There are the right ways to show up when somebody is not feeling well, if somebody is sick or somebody is dying or somebody has cancer. And we're not tapping into the social connections.
that give humanity such wealth and rich and meaningful lives.
Katie Smith (11:48)
Yeah, you know, this brings me back to AI. you know, one of the things I meant by I feel sort of jipped as you know, I lost my mom, we just had Mother's Day. So this is like one of those times where I I'm reminded of like, I didn't get the chance to get exhausted and feel all the things and do all the things my you know, my sister and I were preparing for that. And then it just, you know, it was taken from us. Yeah, it was sudden. So part of the reason why
Beth Rudden (12:10)
sudden.
Katie Smith (12:15)
we designed the business model the way we did with for humor was because we wanted to be able to show up for people in a way that could have prevented what happened to my mom. I'll just put it that way. so, you know, stay at home care, preventative care, you know, like really thinking through how do we keep people healthier, longer, and not in a convalescent home or.
you know, not making a decision that could potentially have, you know, the opposite outcome of what they would, they originally wanted. And so, you know, AI and healthcare has, it's one of the big things that we all think like could actually be something that AI is good at, you know, but we haven't all figured that out yet. And I think, you know, what you're doing with VAST is extraordinary. in a way I want, I'm sort of like,
using AI as my way of saying like, okay, I didn't get to take care of my mom, you know, but what if I could help create an outcome that takes care of other people's moms, and so that they again have these better outcomes, but
Beth Rudden (13:25)
think that's profound.
I think that, you know, the ability to channel loss and grief into something that can help another human being who is a member of our community. I really do feel like we forget sometimes that we're all part of the human race. Same community.
same, know, put the pants on one foot at a time. Like, you know, it is so interesting that, you know, that, that we really just don't have these rituals for these rituals, protocols, what would you call them? Like how to, how to be there for people. Morals, values. Yeah. I don't know.
Katie Smith (14:07)
principles. don't know. It's just, yeah, exactly. The value
system that we're, know, ⁓ because I do think, okay, so that my answer wasn't entirely correct. So yes, my mother going through a divorce that was like me as a young child doing caretaking. That was my first experience. But my first witnessing of that was actually my mom taking care of her.
mom and dad, and she got to until they were in their late eighties. And so the whole family had to rally together, right? The whole family had to, we took schedules, like who's going to show up to grandma and grandpa, you know, and all this different seasons of the end of their life. And I remember that it was like pure joy. Like it never felt like an obligation because I got to hear their great stories and I liked just like hanging out with them, especially my grandpa, cause he was a pretty good storyteller. And
You know, but that took a toll on my mom because single mom, raising two little people, then, you know, working a low income job and then having to drive and do all these things. It actually, I saw her get more and more tired. So it wasn't just the divorce. It was that she was taking care of her family. And I know we've all witnessed this and Greg Epstein talks about it in his book, but Alzheimer's in particular is just devastating families.
all over the world. Talk about we're all humans. It's devastating all of us and it's really hitting families hard here in the United States. I can only speak to what I witnessed. mean, practically putting people into bankruptcy. People that I know, I know it's actually happened to people. So this idea of caretaking and could we do it better? Could we help the people who are the caregivers? And I'm curious.
Are you thinking about those sort of things with Bast?
Beth Rudden (16:04)
So absolutely and you know through my own. So one of the things that I study is dialectical behavioral therapy and dialectical behavioral skills that really start with like radical acceptance and also have threads of nonviolent communication and positive psychology with Siegelman and I did a you
I take classes in psychology because I want to understand how I can show up better. And it really all does go back to that book, How to Be Sick, because we don't know how to be sick and we don't know how to take care of other people who are sick. listen to me, a human being, reading about how to do this, not learning how to do this from a family member.
and reading how to do this and struggling to understand and making my own shit up and like trying my best to just show up in a way that I want to show up. And it's really interesting because I think we did a disservice, at least in the United States with this, like, I sometimes see these like little boxes where, you know, people are just sitting alone suffering. And that, that,
Suffering is like growth. Like it's not something you should do alone. It's something you should do together. And that's how we were made. I think though, like what I'm doing with Bast is in everything that I'm evolving Bast to be is to really be, an understanding, a grounded understanding of how a human being might like to receive information.
Katie Smith (17:44)
Yeah.
Beth Rudden (18:03)
And so if you are a caregiver and you know, through my own experience of just being exasperated and having horrible thoughts, like she's faking it, she just likes the attention, she just, you know, all of those horrible, horrible thoughts, knowing that you're not alone, that that's normal, that it's just a thought. And you are not the thoughts in your head. That's not who you are. And you know, how do you talk to yourself in your head?
Like, you know how, like all of these things that I think people, I wish people knew more about because it's such a long journey to understand and have and do the work to understand. so with AI, I want people to go and say, you know, something like, I don't know how to get my kid to accept help.
for instance, and the AI would say, well, what have you tried so far? Can you tell me the scenario? And then give you some scenarios or give you some ways to approach the situation. It doesn't do the work for you. It just makes you aware that what you're struggling with is normal and the more space that you can put in between stimulus and response.
the better off you're able to control how you respond and make it a response, not just a reaction. And so you're kind of taking your own emotions, processing them, and then being able to show up in a way that you can kind of try to do something a little bit every day. And instead of thinking about healing as being fixed.
or being cured, you think about healing as becoming whole, as accepting who you are and accepting what the situation is. yes, it's a shitty thing. And it's really, really hard. And the whole patience, I see my sister struggle every day because she hits a wall.
Katie Smith (20:03)
Mm.
acceptance.
Beth Rudden (20:27)
And she actually, what we've learned is the way that her body processes exercise, for instance, it doesn't actually give her more energy and build up and become stronger because the autoimmune disease actually gives her the opposite effects and she like pushes it too far. She can't do that the next day.
So her strength and her courage is to only do what she can do every day. And there's this idea, it's called spoon theory. And you only get like 15 spoons a day, what are you gonna use it for? And so I'll sit there with her and I'm like, sister, you use 15 spoons yesterday, you're out today. Sorry, Nada, can't do it, why are we on this screen?
Katie Smith (21:11)
Yeah.
Beth Rudden (21:21)
shut it down, I'll give you a call. Because just to remind people that this thing that we have that we take for granted as a healthy body, it's finite. And you could be in an unfortunate accident and take away something that you have. I would not know how deep in...
Katie Smith (21:33)
Yeah, yes it is.
Beth Rudden (21:50)
beautiful and heartbreaking and amazing life is if I had not gone chosen to go on this journey. And that is where I think I feel like we're cutting off a piece of our humanity by not understanding how we can go for what we can give and what we can bring to the table. And sometimes that's just a conversation. It's just a, you know,
flowers or, you know, like drop by your local hospice and have take somebody's story and understand that or just be there with them. And I think we, I want more community in that way. And I really, I really like that humanist view of making ourselves understand who we are and who we are as human beings and what makes us human.
Katie Smith (22:29)
Yeah.
Beth Rudden (22:48)
And that's a very long, long journey. And that's why I'm like, everybody should start now. Everybody should start now.
Katie Smith (22:55)
Everyone should start now. Everyone
should be using Bast. So, well, the reason why I like, well, you come from such a thoughtful, caring place. But I, when I think about what Bast is doing, and then I'm thinking about like, there's so many other AI bots that have turned into therapists. And, you know, the powers that be have recognized that people are now actually going to these bots.
Beth Rudden (22:59)
you
Katie Smith (23:21)
quite a lot for emotional support.
Beth Rudden (23:24)
The first bot, Eliza, in the 60s was a therapist bot.
Katie Smith (23:30)
Because this is like everyone just needs a therapist. Everybody needs somebody to talk to. But it's this phenomenon that's happening right now with the AI chat bots, right? And starting with chat, GBT to Claude to all the things, know, ⁓ Pi is one of them, right? Like there's ⁓ replica, like people use character AI, like people have been using these things. And the problem goes back to something that you've said in a previous podcast, which is like, this is just words and inference.
and not an actual therapist that you are talking to. And so it worries me a little bit that people are, of course, gravitating to these platforms to get this emotional support that everyone needs right now. Like everyone's going through hard times, well, unless you're the 1%, but you get the point.
Beth Rudden (24:17)
Thanks, buddy.
Even
the 1%, let me tell you, just because you have money doesn't mean you've self-actualized. And self-actualization is not really all what it... So you just gave me an idea. So you know how when Google came out and everybody was like, Google docking, they go to Google, how many people were cured from Google?
Katie Smith (24:32)
But you get the point.
You will never know.
Beth Rudden (24:47)
Right? Okay. So how many people do you think will be cured from chat GPT? Maybe it's just a way to get mental health language out there. ⁓ but there's a, there's a depth to understanding that there's no shortcut. There's no easy button. There's no, there's no path to that except for work. Understanding is a labor.
It's not an act. And what we do at Bast and why I love what we do that's so, so, different, we used, we use viable sources from credible institutions. And then this is, this is, this is the secret sauce. We show the human how we use those sources and how we get to the answers that the AI is giving them.
Katie Smith (25:17)
Yeah.
Beth Rudden (25:43)
And so that they can learn how to get there themselves. And this is not about doing the work for a human being and providing the right answer because there is no right answer. When you are a caregiver and somebody is dying, there's no right answer. There are definitely right things that you can say at that moment. That's very different than giving the right answer, but you still have to say them. You still have to understand why you need to say them at that moment.
Katie Smith (26:11)
There's definitely wrong answers, right? Like Jonathan Haidt was just showing, I think this was on our Slack channel, right? Like how a young person was talking to its bot about its fight with its father, and it just gave completely inappropriate advice. So you can't say the wrong thing, not just to kids, right?
Beth Rudden (26:17)
Mm.
I'm in.
⁓ I think that's, mean, but I, with any new technology, mean, you know, for all of the people who have ever learned Latin, do you know how much sex and smut is in Latin? It is like, was, it is like, it is like, it is, it will make only fans blush. Like, I mean, it is some serious,
Katie Smith (26:50)
Yeah, not surprised.
Beth Rudden (27:00)
I'm sorry, you will have to learn Latin to figure this out. I think that what Jonathan Haidt is bringing attention to, and there's actually some amazing lawyers, which I will look it up, ⁓ that are fighting on behalf of children's rights. And there is no simple solution for this because this is
Katie Smith (27:04)
Okay,
Beth Rudden (27:28)
technology just like books, like radio, just like television, just like Google. People are going to put things out there and there will be human beings that will be hurt and will die because of this technology. And it is all our responsibility because we have not done a good job in holding the people accountable who are responsible and who are making money.
So the people who are making money off of this, including the platforms that host these things, should have some level of accountability. And until that time comes, the best thing we can do is create the best regulation in the world, which is critically thinking human beings. So critical thinking human beings can be created everywhere you go.
It is something we all can do. If you're listening to this podcast right now, you hopefully are getting some ideas of how to be a critical thinking human being. And you are the best regulation, the best way to make sure that we live in a country that we want to live in, that we want to belong to.
Katie Smith (28:43)
Critical thinking and vote everyone, please. ⁓
Beth Rudden (28:47)
Your personal, your public service announcement. Yes.
Katie Smith (28:50)
PSA for the moment.
I going back to just care taking, it's what does the future of care taking
Beth Rudden (29:01)
So I've always been an optimist, but I bet on humans. Like that's what I do. That's what I study. That's how I think. I also, I mean, I watch my sufficiently advanced technology every single day. My magical human beings like completely blow my mind with how they think. I think...
If you one of the one of the leaders that I like to refer to is Kaifu Lee. And he wrote a book called AI Superpowers. And he also has a TED talk out there. And he talks about this care economy when he is really coming into a place of understanding his own limitations as a human being. And he goes through and on the other side. But then he's like looking at this economy and he's like, OK,
We have all of these things that now AI can do for us. And all of these things that we sort of invented. I try to remind people, was like, so now we have email and physical mail. One did not replace the other. We still have all of these tasks that we have to do. There is no real automation that, yes, there are augmentations, but true automation of the tasks.
that things, you yes, some of the tasks can be done. Anyway, I digress. So if you kind of play that out and choose to believe in humans, you get to this point where people who can take care of other people, they might be the highest paid human beings in the economy. The people who can teach and tell stories and be able to give freely of their knowledge and wisdom for people to listen to because
They've gone through it. You know, the people who can give you incredible advice in five minutes and don't charge you for it. this, that, that is going to become what I think the care economy. And I think it's going to be truly an economy that is based on taste and people who are tasteful and how they do what they do and how they deliver what they deliver. And all of it goes back.
to in order to understand something, you have to do the work. It has to be meaningful. In order for it to be meaningful, you either have to really study something or live through it or really understand and do the work to understand vicariously maybe how not to create a totalitarian dictatorship, for instance.
Katie Smith (31:48)
So I love our theme of endings and beginnings. And so what's ending, I hope, when it comes to caretaking is, well, first of all, just the complete financial impact that it's having on people. Because that financial impact is, it impacts everything else. know, finances is like the number one thing that's like, I think we're all dying over like stress of finance, especially
now maybe in more now than recent history and people are just really struggling. So it's like, could we somehow through AI deliver better care and have it be cheaper? There's got to be a way and not supplanting humans actually creating better humans to your point. Like we're going to help you be better at caretaking. We're going to help you be better at some part of that supply chain so that
Beth Rudden (32:31)
Yeah, that's it. Absolutely.
Katie Smith (32:47)
by the time the thing happens, it doesn't take your house to pay for it. Like I feel like that has to be number one.
Beth Rudden (32:56)
I think it's a distribution problem. And we've all known it's a distribution problem. And what COVID did is everybody damn well knows who frontline workers are. Prior to COVID, they were invisible. So give economy a little bit of time. But like, you know, I predict really wealthy people whose children and everybody has abandoned them will give all of their money to nurses who do take care of them.
Katie Smith (33:08)
Mm-hmm.
Beth Rudden (33:22)
I predict that many people who are sort of at the end will start to look at their lives, right? What author hasn't written about this? Where they look back at their lives and the people who took care of them and the people who significantly changed how their quality of life changed? Those are the people who are valued. I think that the economy will just catch up.
to that.
Katie Smith (33:53)
I think we're going to need a little nudge. I think we're going to
need a little nudge. know, because I think about like, you know, one of the scenarios we have in our demo is sort of like, imagine today, if you're, you know, a woman of color who needs to go into this into a hospital for a standard procedure, you're going to get like five, maybe 10 minutes with your doctor, they're going to hand you some pamphlets, you're going to have to figure out what to do with these pamphlets, right? And so the cost of care is like, they had to put information into these pamphlets.
They obviously, they're investing in the doctor, they're investing in this space, and yet the cost of care is so high, because actually I feel like the decision that's being made is not very efficient, right? So even just our ability to convey the information, know, before you get to that point, of course, that's the at home and preventative care, but even at that point,
Beth Rudden (34:42)
and yes.
Katie Smith (34:49)
To be able to be a better caretaker in that moment, I think could actually reduce costs.
Beth Rudden (34:55)
Well, anyone who has ever been sick or been a caretaker who has been sick, and when you go to the hospital and you know that that doctor only has 15 minutes, you get very good at telling your entire story very quickly. And you get very good at making that physician ⁓ advocate. And then if you have that advocacy and you can spark that physician's curiosity, one of the things, one of the first things that I did for sister is I put up her entire
Katie Smith (35:05)
Yeah.
Beth Rudden (35:23)
medical history on a mural board and all it was is a timeline but it's beautiful, huge and lengthy because it has all these different colors of when she was in the hospital or when she had this treatment or when she had the surgery or what drugs she would take and I would show it to the nurses and the doctors and their very first thing they told me is they're like I need this for all my patients now because it gives people the visual learners, the people who are not
They did not go into medicine to sit in front of computers. That is not their zone of genius. So it's going to change because we do have tools. And so what I want to do is I want to get the providers to be having patients that tell them beautiful stories that spark their understanding of how they can apply their zone of genius to help this patient.
Imagine if we did that and then the doctors like, wow, seeing patients is awesome. Why aren't we taking care of the people who are taking care of us and doing it in a way by educating the patients and the caregivers to know what the hell is going on that the doctors, it's not like the doctors are out there like sitting on the Scrooge McDuck pile of money, right?
Katie Smith (36:33)
Yeah.
Beth Rudden (36:51)
Doctors in our world want, they have a calling. Many people want to go into medicine so that they can help people. And so I believe that if we can give patients and their caregivers an understanding of how to communicate better with a doctor, that can be a game changer for the entire system of healthcare. One of the things that I,
One of the stories that I think I can tell, ⁓ my daughter needed to have a physical in order to go into a sports thing at the school. And anybody who's a parent knows that it's total CYA all the way down because the poor coaches have to collect all of these forms that says that they have all of the immunizations and all of the physical health thing and they have to be signed up on the doctor.
And so the night before my daughter goes to practice, she can't practice until she has the form, she tells me this. So I'm like, day late dollar short, what are you gonna do? No sport for you. And she and I get together and we communicate better and I get her an appointment the next morning for Doc Inbox. And...
I'm mad at her at this point because she has to miss a little bit of school. We have to go to a doc in a box, which is a crude way of saying all the doctors who are there all the time that you can go and get a physical for. I make her fill out the form and I'm like, okay, get back there. get into the... My child is under 18, so I'm in there with her and the doctor is looking at the form and says,
my God, you have ⁓ anxiety and your knee is broken. Are you okay? And I'm like, what did you put on this form? And she's like, well, I have anxiety generally and my knee hurts from ice skating. And so it just reminded me that there's this translation of the data that's put onto forms, the data that gets put into systems.
the data that the doctor hears, how that data is communicated, how that person, I mean, there's just so, it's so fallible and it's so flawed and it's so, and data, it's a flow. It's not an event. It changes.
Katie Smith (39:16)
It's so flawed. It really is.
Yes, yes, yes. I appreciate that. I really like how you're really thinking about it. Like, how do we create this relationship better between the patient and the provider, but really thinking through how to support the provider specifically in that relationship. And from humor, we're thinking about it sort of differently. We're like, how do we create an advocate that speaks the cultural competency of the patient?
Beth Rudden (39:41)
Right.
Katie Smith (39:54)
So that becomes an advocate that is helpful for the doctor. So it's like, it's good to have it go both ways, right? ⁓ Imagine that in the future. my gosh, the efficiencies from both sides right there. There's, we have to reduce the costs. I, so many friends of mine have, are just staying in jobs because of healthcare.
Beth Rudden (39:56)
That's right.
No.
Yeah.
Yep.
Katie Smith (40:18)
You
know, we talked about this a little bit before. And so it's funny. I love how our podcasts are, we go into our themes. Like there's definitely a thread, you know.
Beth Rudden (40:26)
Well,
and I mean, I so appreciate that because, you know, the problem, you know, the problem with communication is, you know, the fact that you don't even know if it's happened. And we exist in this world where it's just okay to broadcast things without really seeing how people want to receive it. And I think that, you know, what you're doing with humor to be able to have
the cultural competency to know that somebody who might not have a past like an eighth grade education and might not speak English as a first language, there is assistance that we need to give to people on all kinds of various levels. I'll take it the other way, a really like an 80-year-old white man
who just lost his wife and has no idea about how to take care of himself. There are all kinds of people in all kinds of different situations. And instead of thinking about how can I apply this technology to the masses, how can this human being in this place at this time use this technology to better communicate what they need? ⁓
Katie Smith (41:51)
Yes. And I really appreciate that analogy because like we're not thinking about it just for marginalized groups, although that's like the first thing everybody thinks of because yes, these are the groups that have the least amount of voice and so, and are not represented in healthcare in particular very well. We're getting better at it, but we have a lot of work to do. But it's really for everyone because all of us are individuals that have our own personalized needs, communication styles.
or whatever the case may be, right? Like that could be me that doesn't know how to take care of myself. I mean, not really, but you know, could be. So, you know, Tom was my ⁓ doggy. Yeah. I'm really raising her so she could take care of me. ⁓ No, it's so I'm, I'm really thinking about, well, we're in this just moment, you know, beginnings and endings, like DEI is like ending, right?
Beth Rudden (42:22)
Yeah.
Poor Tomlin has her weird cut out for her. How do we end?
Katie Smith (42:47)
But not really. It's not me. It's like the co- somebody is taking away the words. Nobody's taking away the actions. Like we're still-
Beth Rudden (42:48)
Wha-
You
know what's ending is politically correct. That is what's ending. ⁓
Katie Smith (42:57)
Yeah. Yeah.
Yes, and you know, like I've been trying to figure out like how to talk about this because I remember vividly and this was like during the pandemic, you know, somebody in my family saying like, you just you drink the Kool-Aid, you know, because I was working at a justice organization and I and I was talking about the data. I'm like, No, if you look at the data, it is very, very clear. This is not me reading into it. This is peer reviewed, academically reviewed, you know, data that suggests
that the black community, the Latinx community, and these indigenous communities, you know, if you disaggregate Asian communities, they, these communities are by far getting the raw end of the stick from education to healthcare, to criminal justice, to housing, to literally everything. It's absolutely true. However, however, and I've said this from the beginning, I think it really has.
even more to do with socioeconomics than it does about race. But race, understanding race, the social conflict of race and how it's been applied to people matters because there are disparate outcomes. But at the end of the day, but what, if you talk to anybody at their kitchen table, what they actually care about is the money that's in the bank, the money that's not in the bank, right? And
Beth Rudden (44:09)
Perhaps.
Absolutely.
Katie Smith (44:30)
healthcare and these things that just cost a lot of money. If you really sit down with people and you ask them, hey, what's impacting your quality of life? It's money. It's always.
Beth Rudden (44:39)
money.
Well, it's
access to a good financial planner that tells them or like a good accountant that tells them, you know, do you have a series C for your LLC that you use to drive your Uber? Like I use every Uber and Lyft driver that would pick me up. I'd be like, do you have a schedule C? Do you know how to do that? Because like that's something
gosh, it's built power, so power, power build systems that reinforce power. So if you don't have the power, you don't even know about the systems that are built for you, like tax accountants that can help you fill out a schedule C. And that's something that I think is being disrupted quite a bit with AI because an AI now has access to
all the people who put the data on the internet who did know how to fill out a schedule C predominantly. ⁓ But I don't know. think there's lots and lots of things there that we could kind of, you know, untwine, but we could also just kind of chalk it up to the fact that when people don't have physical safety and people don't have psychological safety and they don't have that, I've always said that
I don't like belonging in the Maslovian triangle. ⁓ I don't like belonging as like a thin thing. I like belonging as like a thread that goes through everything. And that is a really, really good way that I think of it because like if you belong to the cult, you don't really care about your physical and psychological safety. And that's something that happens to everyone.
Katie Smith (46:14)
Hmm.
Beth Rudden (46:40)
think it's that sense of belonging. Like you are creating your own tribe, your own pack, right? And you want, it's also the ability to give to other people.
I am this week, I am heading to St. Louis for a board meeting. Um, and, uh, I'm doing another little, like a keynote because I love to talk to the faculty and the students. And anytime I'm there, I love to be a participating board member. Oh, Toronto was fabulous. I got a initiative. Um, this is a little, uh, it's shaped like a man or a woman, you know,
Katie Smith (47:13)
How did Toronto go?
Yeah. Yeah.
Well, we can look at it different ways. Yeah.
Beth Rudden (47:26)
We had it, but a human being. it's, Toronto's so cool. The Canadians are so great. ⁓ They are very, so, ⁓ an amazing specific culture. And I learned a lot ⁓ in a very short amount of time. And what I did with this keynote that I was, have a lot going on in my life.
personal and work. And so doing this keynote, was like, I have no time to be nervous. I have no time to be preparing the night before. This thing's got to be baked. I got to deliver this thing. And so I used AI a lot and AI increased the amount of work that I did on this keynote, like exponentially increased it because I was able to deliver a keynote.
that had been rehearsed a number of times with a recorded version of the rehearsal, with a blog, with the bibliography, the experience much richer. And so I used AI to make ⁓ a higher quality output faster than humanly possible. I would never have been able to do it in such a time. I mean, I would have had to start preparing months and months and months before, and I'm just never gonna be that person.
So it's like, this is something that I do think is really interesting because the purpose of AI is to create higher quality outputs faster than humanly possible. And I know this and I still, because what happens is when you use AI and it gives you all these beautiful words, you're like, okay, I'm done with that for today. I'll do a little bit more tomorrow. But then when you go back and read the words, they're not very meaningful.
Katie Smith (49:21)
I think you brought this up. in some ways it creates more work because of the editing. You're like, wait, I lost my voice. Like I would have wrote this if I had done it organically, it would have been written better with more umph, more humanness. ⁓
Beth Rudden (49:38)
Yes,
yes. And it ⁓ is a very slippery slope I've found for me personally. And there are definitely things where I'm like, ooh, reply to a bank email, let me use chat GPT for that. But if it's something that's meaningful, like ⁓ an apology, I sincerely screwed up. That's in my handwriting. That has like,
like all of the things on it, because like if it's really, really meaningful, it needs to come from me. Like there's no, ⁓ my daughter for Mother's Day gave me this incredible card and in the card ⁓ there are seeds for thyme, T-H-Y-M-E. And in the card she goes, mom, it's about time that I spend time with you in the garden.
Katie Smith (50:34)
⁓
Beth Rudden (50:35)
It's like, an AI may be able to generate that idea. No way would it put together something like that for a gift. So I think that there's such a richer, more meaningful life to be had when you're using AI to automate the parts of you that are repetitive or things that you shouldn't be spending a lot of time on and you end up doing anyway.
I've learned over time that I tend to deliver way too much information. And so I'm trying to always edit myself or cut down what I say because people forget what you say, 70 % of what you say three seconds after you say it or something like that, right? So I try really hard to have the concepts come out.
Katie Smith (51:29)
me.
Beth Rudden (51:33)
in the stories that I can just stand and deliver and tell because they're part of me and they're part of who I am. And that's why I love doing this podcast, because it's nice to practice.
Katie Smith (51:46)
Yeah, no, it's great. Even just, yeah, sort of get out the thoughts and like, but it is organic. It is just us. We're like, this is not AI, everyone. ⁓ I really love writing. It's funny because it's something I've done since, since the beginning. You know, a lot of us did that. Like you just, you wrote poetry or I wrote showed stories and like, I love writing, but it's painstaking like, cause writing is editing, right? So it's just painstaking process, which is great. And I hope
Beth Rudden (51:52)
Mm-hmm.
Moon.
Katie Smith (52:15)
to my retirement, I want to just write a book. I just want to write books. That's like, all I want to do is like actually write books. But so I've noticed that I just haven't been writing since chat GBT has gone on the scene. And I go between like Claude and perplexity and chat GBT. And I like to play them off each other and I see what I like best and then whatever. But it's great for board agendas. It is good for like a pro forma email that you have to send out.
But ⁓ yeah, but I have noticed for those moments where I was like, ⁓ maybe I should have written that actually. I'm starting to have these AI moments, these thoughts that I never had even like three, four years ago where I'm like, ⁓ that's not an AI task. I need to this one myself.
Beth Rudden (52:52)
Yeah.
It's the labor, you know, it's the work that you put into it in order to have the connection and the understanding and there is no easy button. There's no shortcut. There's no magical, you know, system to do that for you. I really think we all have to do that ourselves and and in ways that matches our taste. And I'm I'm such a fan. There's there's this really cool.
very interesting prompt that is out there right now that ⁓ allows you to kind of different personalities and then use that different personality at different times in order to really recreate what your what your voice is. And me being me, I'm like, I don't like those people. I want my people. So I took a picture of like the spines of my book on my bookshelf and I uploaded it.
And then I said, hey, rewrite this prompt using my references for my taste in books. And that was interesting, but there's a lot to be understood about how AI actually functions. It sucks at like actually doing things that are what we think are really obvious, like
try to code a chat GPT assistant to greet you in a way that you want to greet other people. Like have it like, hi Katie, how you doing today? Like have it come out with that all the time. And then have it like encode, know, adios, nos vemos, like, you know, like, have it code how you would say goodbye, like exits. It sucks at.
Katie Smith (54:39)
Yeah.
Beth Rudden (54:56)
entering at beginnings and endings. And it really doesn't know how to do that because it doesn't fucking understand the meaning of the words. And so it doesn't know when it's appropriate to, to like, you know, somebody like goes to your new assistant, you have to give it like, you have to give the human being, you have to train the human being on how to engage with it. ⁓
Katie Smith (55:22)
The eye is
like a snow globe. You can shake it and it's all still gonna, it's gonna fall to the bottom at some point, right? But every time you shake it, it's gonna look a little bit different. You know what I mean? That's what I have in my mind right now, a little snow globe. Anyways, so we're still, we're all still living in snow globes and it's fun to shake them and to see what happens. Like I love that idea of like, you know, look at my bookshelf and just
Beth Rudden (55:25)
B
It's just, yes.
Katie Smith (55:52)
just the scramble of what it would come up with is so still fresh and new and exciting to us. Even when it's wrong, we just have to remember.
Beth Rudden (56:01)
I know,
but like it's so disappointing because it doesn't really understand, know, Hannah Arendt or that I have that particular book in my bookshelf because somebody gave it to me that I no longer like, but I keep it there for a reason, you know. So interesting, like it doesn't get our taste exactly. And that's what I think, I think that's what's gonna be discerning is like, you're gonna be able to discern people's tastes.
So it's going to be easier for people who have done the work and have gone to your genetic homeland over 18 months and traveled and been able to write amazing books. I think that you're just going to know whether this is done through an AI or whether it isn't. And I think humans are going to get more subtle and more, I don't know, witty.
Katie Smith (57:00)
You've been bringing up this idea of taste and like it's hitting me now. At first, when you said, was like, that's such an interesting reference. And then I've actually coming up in the zeitgeist. And I think you've caught onto this, like you struck the cord early because you're right. That the one thing AI is going to be, it's going to be extraordinarily difficult for AI to get is taste. Right.
Beth Rudden (57:22)
Yep.
Katie Smith (57:27)
All of us
have different tastes when it comes to caregiving too. My grandma wanted to be taken care of very differently than my grandpa did. You know, and that was taste.
Beth Rudden (57:30)
⁓ you have to.
It's dignity and the understanding of how to live a dignified life. And that I don't think you can do without understanding the meaning of what you're doing. it's really, I wrote an article ⁓ June 2024, actually probably even earlier, it's called Tasteful AI.
And, you know, it's all about like what I find tasteful, like, you know, using, you know, tapping the power of limits and only using the resources that you need to use and understanding the full cost of something when you do use something and, know, understanding how it should adapt because data is a flow, not an event. And we build all these stupid fucking models against all of this static data that
is not stat, it's water. Like, I mean, this is so stupid to be spending so many of the Earth's resources on it. And I think we have an opportunity right now to break that kind of like socioeconomic thrill joy that was like running through those that were enabled with power in this world to come down to people with really good taste are gonna be the ones that
are able to, I hope, you know, really be able to be the ones that we want to be like, you know, we want to revere people who have good taste. mean, hell yes. Like, do you ever walk into somebody's house and you're like, like their taste. Right. Yes. Like, yeah. I mean, I've walked into people's houses too, where I'm just like,
Katie Smith (59:24)
Yes.
Beth Rudden (59:30)
I don't like your taste, but it definitely makes me feel something. It's weird. It's that curation. I think we've almost had it a little bit with YouTube influencers for a tiny, tiny bit. And now we have the machine that built up around it that just made everybody average.
Katie Smith (59:55)
Yeah, really, it's just regurgitating the same thing over and again, or the same process of the same product or the same thing. Yeah, you know, and I think that's happening with thought leadership right now. Everyone's sort of like, you know, just talking about the same thing. And I don't think we're doing that. And I really appreciate these conversations because I feel like we go all over the place, but there is that thread, you know, the theme of beginnings and endings is
Beth Rudden (59:55)
Yeah.
yeah.
Katie Smith (1:00:23)
It's interesting in the context of taste because I do think people want a new flavor.
Beth Rudden (1:00:31)
I want well and it's part of my my own curation of my inputs like I refuse don't have to I have the privilege to not listen to the news in any way shape or what what what we used to consider the news that is not news I mean and
I want to read you something just because I opened this up and I think this is a beautiful way to kind of come around. In the more Maori data sovereignty and digital colonization, they thought that it was a customary belief that when you shared knowledge with people, that person who you are sharing information with then acquires a spiritual part of you.
From a Western perspective, if you imagine a thought of a person in your mind, you have no control of that thought existing. No one else can see it, but you know it's in your brain and part of you. Therefore, in a customary Maori perspective, that Maori data contains Wairu, Maori, which becomes a form of genealogy and therefore becomes sacred or tapu. And I'm like, yes, this, this. I mean, and that was like,
I remember I wrote that like two or three years ago. And every time I read it, I get chills because it is the right idea about when we share information and share knowledge, something of me becomes part of you and something of you becomes part of me. its data is something given. What are you receiving in return?
Katie Smith (1:02:12)
Such a gift. Yeah.
I love that. I think we can end it there.