UNDISTRACTED: May 21, 2026

Girl, AI Is Not Unstoppable

Please note: This transcript has been automatically generated.

Bridget Todd: I don’t necessarily feel like we need to frame it as a feminist win to get women involved in AI. Mm. Reese Witherspoon, not just a few years earlier, she was literally tweeting, “Oh, women need to get involved in crypto and NFTs or they will be left behind. Crypto and NFTs are the future.” Yeah. Well, we see how that played out.

I don’t actually know that that was the case.

Brittany Packnett Cunningham: Hey, y’all. I know you’re like, “Another room?” Yes, another room, another studio, another city. Uh, but this time- With a Webby. I wish I had the physical Webby here. I could just slide it on into the shot, and it would’ve been perfect, but they have to mail those to us.

Still, Cindi Leive, my co-EP, and I went to the Webby Awards last Monday, and we were so thrilled to accept the Webby for Best Belonging and Inclusion Podcast because of all of you. So I’m just feeling so deeply grateful. I’m thankful to all of you who share the podcast, who wrote reviews, who’ve been down with us for four seasons now.

And even though we didn’t win the People’s Vote Award, the people who voted for us, we are grateful to you because, listen, we need all kinds of energy at the ballot box right now I don’t know if you were there in Montgomery and Selma on Saturday. I wasn’t, ’cause my homeboy got married. Shout out to Michael and Joya.

Congratulations on your nuptials. But listen, I was in the background in these tech streets and on these social streets, trying to make sure that myself, alongside so many other creators, organizers, activists, leaders, electeds, were amplifying the call of the people, not only to let our voices be heard, as this attack on the Voting Rights Act has been so swift and so deep, but most importantly, to help people understand we are coming for our freedom.

We are getting all of our things, baby. We are not hesitating to make sure that you understand everything you took from us is coming back to us and then some. And we’re not just going to accept the world as it was. No, no, no, no, no, baby. LaTosha Brown keeps reminding us, we are the new architects. We are the founders of a new nation, and it’s time for us to start acting like it.

So now is the time for us to recognize that Freedom Summer, yeah, it’s just getting started. This is Undistracted.

On the show today, we’re switching things up a little bit and doing a full episode on the new conversations happening around AI, from the ways it’s improved social issues to the ways it threatens society, and we’re highlighting some of the women who’ve been fighting back. All right, y’all. I have been waiting for this episode, because when it comes to the ways AI is rapidly transforming and, in a whole lot of cases, threatening our world, there is simply so much to talk about, and I couldn’t be more glad to have this conversation with our guests today.

Bridget Todd is a writer, technologist, and fellow at Harvard University’s Berkman Klein Center, who hosts the incredibly informative and important podcast, There Are No Girls on the Internet. Of course, there are. She is one. I am one. That’s why we’re having this conversation today. Her work explores how women and people of color have shaped the internet and how the online world shapes us right back.

And y’all already know our other guest, our group chat bestie, our regular, Dr. David Johns. He’s an advocate and policy expert who has spent his entire career centering the humanity and liberation of all Black people, especially Black children. And I know David has some questions of his own for Bridget, so let’s just get into it, ’cause we got a whole lot of questions about AI.

Welcome to Undistracted, Bridget.

Bridget Todd: I’m so excited to be here. Talking about AI is one of my favorite things, so really excited.

Brittany Packnett Cunningham: Well, let’s do it. We start every conversation the same way, so I’m asking both of y’all, how are you doing today in three words? Bridget, what, what are your three words?

Bridget Todd: I might have to go, I am tired, I am frazzled, but you know what?

I’m here. Ooh,

Brittany Packnett Cunningham: okay. Shout out to Color Purple. Word to Fantasia. I’m here. That’s okay.

Dr. David Johns: Bye

Brittany Packnett Cunningham: bye . My God, I’m here, okay? Um, David, how about you?

Dr. David Johns: I am fired up and frisky. The latter part, so people are clear, is because I saw, uh, Cats, uh, the Jellicle Ball, and it was amazing. Oh. So I’m still carrying that with me, so that’s the frisky reference.

Brittany Packnett Cunningham: You said frisky. I was like, friend, it’s not that kind of podcast. That’s between you and Brad. I don’t know what’s going on. And I’m glad that we’re all feeling fired up, because there are a whole lot of reasons why we should be feeling fired up. But before we get into the, like, harder, darker questions about AI, ’cause it can get kinda dark, I want us to know that, like, is AI purely the villain in the story?

I mean, I don’t wanna just start off bashing the whole thing, ’cause I know it’s genuinely useful to some people, Bridget, especially people who are underserved by our current systems and need access to certain things. So, like, is there a positive benefit to come out of the AI revolution?

Bridget Todd: Ooh, what a good question, and even the way that you framed that, it’s sort of an intersection that I sit at a lot in the conversations that I have in my writing and on the podcast, right?

I… Technology is all built by humans. I think that we have this idea that technology like AI is hyper-aware computer brains, things like that. No, it’s built by humans. I would say that the technology itself is not good nor bad. However, it’s about who designs it, for what, to what end- Yeah … how does it get used, the impact.

And so I would say that when it comes to AI, we’re sort of stuck in this cycle where the, the dominant conversations that we’re having are either hype, where, like, AI is going to change everything in a good way. You’re never gonna have- Yeah … to work again, all of that, uh, mostly driven by people who are poised to make money from AI and, like, are invested in you believing that.

Mm-hmm. Or you have this opposite, right, where AI is going to be the death of humanity, all of that. I really see those things as sort of rooted in, on the, as two sides of the same coin. And so I think what we really need is reasonable, honest conversations about AI- Yeah … where this technology comes from, how it can be used, that are not grounded in hype or extreme doomerism.

So I would say, to answer your question, probably the best thing to come out of the AI era that we’re in right now is that people are locked in and asking questions, right? Mm-hmm. People are asking questions about who designed this technology, and to what end? How is it being used? Is it going to harm marginalized communities?

I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a time where more folks felt more engaged in conversations about technology, so that’s been great.

Brittany Packnett Cunningham: You’re right. That is absolutely positive. David, are there any flowers you would give AI?

Dr. David Johns: Yeah, I, um… Yes, I will. You said, “I’m finding it.” I was like, I was like, I’m thinking about it.

So, uh, I will give it flowers for time. Uh, that’s the gift. Okay. Right? As someone who’s deeply committed to the work, I wake up thinking about it, I go to sleep thinking about it, and for a long time, the cost of that commitment was everything else. Yeah. Um, not just rest, but presence, right? Um, time with Andre, time with Baldwin, time with my godbabies, um, time to be a person who is not always in crisis mode or worried about somebody else’s crisis.

And so, what I think about and what I appreciate is that, uh, AI tools have given me, uh, and I wanna be clear, I’m thinking about automation. The mundane stuff that used to eat hours is now I’ve gotten somewhere around like 10% of my time back. Yeah. Which sounds small, until you do the math. You think about what you can do with 10% of your time back.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Like, it can become significant. And so, I’m working smarter as a result of AI tools, and it also means that I have something left when the work is done. And it- it’s important while, while giving flowers and thinking about time to also name that not everybody benefits from this in the same way, right?

Yeah. So, I’m thinking about people who need time but don’t necessarily get it back, right? Mm. Single moms juggling jobs and responsibilities. I’m thinking about my mom, who is aging and is juggling a lot of responsibilities. Mm. The, the very folks who need the, to benefit from these technologies often are not.

Yeah. And so, uh, appreciating, uh, Bridget naming that technology is something that is generated by humans. Mm-hmm. Um, I want us to appreciate that often those who are benefiting from the flowers are already standing in the garden. Mm. And we need to have disruption to ensure that all of us can benefit, um, from these tools.

Ooh,

Brittany Packnett Cunningham: that’s a bar. A lot of the people who are getting the flowers are already standing in the garden. And yet I’m also thinking about times that I’ve taken my young children into the doctor and needed to know what to ask for, what testing to ask for, how to look, how to make sure that, um, the kind of insurance we had wasn’t weaponized against us, or people moving too fast wasn’t weaponized against us.

So, like, I’m gonna admit, I have asked the internet, knowing full well that AI was giving me an answer, like, “How do I care for my baby?” I’m thinking about disabled people who might be able to navigate daily tasks more independently. Um, I’m thinking about first generation college students, right, who have had questions, and they don’t have somebody in their family to ask.

They might be asking Claude. I don’t wanna deny that to you all’s point, there have been some benefits, and there are people who, as we so often do when we stand at the intersections, are both dealing with the worst of it and trying to use it, um, to gain access, right? And how do we balance those positives and negatives?

Bridget, how are you thinking about the contrast of those things?

Bridget Todd: When it comes to AI, the thing that I get asked the most is, “How can I start?” Like, what… Like, “If I have never used AI before, what should I be thinking about?” Mm-hmm. And the thing that I would say is- Come up with your own internal benchmark of- Mm-hmm

what are the things that make sense to be thinking about AI as a use case for, and what are things that you would never use AI for, right? Okay. ‘Cause like, as a creative person, like- Yeah … I, there, there are parts of my work that, like, AI will never touch, right? Where the whole point of this is that I am giving an authen- like, this is my authentic human, you know, take.

But then again, like, there are things that I cannot do as a human, right? A great example is transcripts for my podcast. When you have- Mm … podcast transcripts, it makes it a lot more accessible, uh, for folks who have disabilities. Yeah. There, I, I simply cannot, by hand, write transcripts for every podcast that I do.

That’s a great use case for AI. And so I wanna be clear that I’m not the person that’s saying AI has no place in anyone’s life- Mm-hmm … ever, because that’s not true. Yeah. However, I think, like, getting clear individually, like, what are the things that it makes sense for you to be outsourcing to AI, and what are the things that you’re saying, “This is sacred.

I would never want AI to be, you know, making my podcast,” whatever, whatever. Yes.

Brittany Packnett Cunningham: Okay, so let’s keep talking about those things that are sacred, right? Because there are some things that, in my opinion, AI should never be doing, like creating entire people, right? I mean, we’re dealing with AI-generated images, but entire identities are being created.

Bridget, there was a story you covered that had a whole lot of people online absolutely seething. I was one of them. Two white women and a Nigerian man created a fake Black woman founder to be the face of a book app called Handbook. They literally fabricated a Black identity to gain credibility on BookTok.

Why? Because Black n- women make the world go ’round, and they were like, “If we’re gonna use the culture to our benefit, we can just use AI to make up the whole thing.” They couldn’t pull the wool over our eyes for very long, and I’m appreciative of that, ’cause people like you and so many others called it out.

They did their Googles, they did their research, and they said, “Wait a minute, this Black woman literally does not exist.” It was pure digital blackface. Bridget, h- is this happening, like, all the time? ‘Cause I saw it and I was like, “Y’all can’t be this stupid,” and then I saw plenty more of examples, and I was like, “Maybe y’all are this stupid.”

Bridget Todd: It’s happening so much. That story was a weird one because to this day I’m still not sure what exactly happened. A woman who claimed to be the actual person, she said, “Oh, I’m very shy. That’s why I used AI.” I, I don’t know. She, she had a whole generated, very sympathetic fake st- backstory where she had worked at Random House and had gotten sick of Black stories not being treated with respect, which is why she created this, this thing.

My whole thing was, once you start out using AI to mislead about who you are, I can ne- I can no longer trust anything that you say. And- Same … I think that we’re just in this era where- It is easy, fast, and cheap to create AI personas like this, and the fact that we’re seeing a particularly Black AI personas.

If you ever are on TikTok and you see someone saying- Mm-hmm … “Oh, I make these handcrafted purses, and I’m, I’m, I-” I just saw that one today. Yeah, did you? Oh, gosh. Do you know what I’m talking about? Like- Yes. They’re like- … they’re

Brittany Packnett Cunningham: everywhere … my son is crying because people keep making fun of his blankets or his crochet purses or the horse sculptures he makes, and it’s all AI, like, pity marketing.

Bridget Todd: Exactly. And the reason, just like you said, I think the reason why they’re targeting Black communities especially is because they know that we ride for each other. We lift each other up. Like, so I- I feel, I feel so bad, but when you look at the comments, so many of the comments are us being like, “Oh my God, I wanna support.

I’m gonna buy your item. I’m gonna buy this.” Like, we gotta lift each other up, and then- And I’m like, “Girl,

Brittany Packnett Cunningham: that

Bridget Todd: blanket came from Temu.” Yes. It, it is. It is a, it is- Literally … they’re not handmade. They’re just junk made from China that they’re drop shipping, right? And so, when… If, if you were to order this purse, it’s gonna take three months to get here.

It’s not handmade, and it’s gonna be junk. Yeah. And they know that it works because they’re, like, exploiting the things that make our community what it is.

Brittany Packnett Cunningham: Yeah. Yeah. David, I’m really concerned because obviously this AI fakery, this fugazi if you will, is absolutely everywhere, including on the feeds of our government officials, right?

I mean, it’s one thing for me to be hopping on Facebook and have to tell my auntie, “Girl, I know that that picture of that, um, girl being rescued by that dog really made you emotional, but it’s not real.” But it’s another thing to look at people who are running the government, who are intentionally promoting problematic AI images, who are making AI images to make themselves look or sound or say whatever, um, or to, um, use fake video and images to try to justify harming people, and especially when we’re having our identity stolen in the midst of all of that.

Like, I- I’ve watched white writers, authors, s- you know, screenwriters, you know, cosplay at Blackness before and try to write Black characters and had no idea what they were talking about, but this just feels like- a whole new level, DJJ

Dr. David Johns: Absolutely. Um, one thing I wanna push on, and then I’ll come to the, the government of it all, um, is something that you both talked about, which is the, uh, the stealing of a Black woman’s identity because of the credibility that Black women carry.

Yeah. Uh, uh, th- that, that bothers me. Mm-hmm. It, it, it should bother all of us, right? Yeah. Um, um, it’s extraction. Actually, we wanna name it what it is, and it’s the same logic that is always taken from Black people. Our labor, our cultures, our architects, and they profit from it while we continue to suffer, only because we’re not benefiting from our own labor.

And to the government of it all- Mm … the thing that I, I worry most about is the normalization of the misuse of technology in this regard, and in a world where we’re not teaching children media literacy. There aren’t courses on it. We’re not having those conversations at most public schools. Mm-hmm. I worry about our babies’ ability to discern how people are, are, are attempting to, uh, pimp and profit from them.

Mm-hmm.

Brittany Packnett Cunningham: Pimp, profit, and persecute, right? Because if we add that other P, we have to talk about how AI is being used to facilitate violence. There’s a really deeply disturbing story in the courts right now about a woman who’s suing OpenAI after ChatGPT was used by her stalker as a tool to terrorize her.

Apparently, he was feeding the AI information about her, and then using it to strategize about, like, how to escalate the harassment. So ChatGPT was like, “Let me help you be a better stalker,” essentially. Um, uh, Bridget, tell us about what happened there. Like, what do we know about this, and, and is it really common?

‘Cause that story was terrifying, and I was like, how many people are doing this every day?

Bridget Todd: Yeah. I’m sorry to say that it is not as uncommon as we might like to think. There are a whole spate of lawsuits against companies like OpenAI, who create, who, uh, the maker of ChatGPT, for the technology being used to, you know, wage and acts of violence, whether it’s stalking a romantic partner or, in the case of a, of a Florida school, um, allegedly a m- a shooter used ChatGPT- Yeah

to research and plan an attack. And so I do think we should be having these conversations about the way that these tools can be used to harm. I think in the story of the woman who was being stalked, the most disturbing detail to me was that she says that she contacted ChatGPT, that she reached out to ChatGPT and she said, “This is going on.

I am being stalked.” Yeah. “He has used ChatGPT to, to create these kind of authentic-looking, you know, psychological reports on me that are fake, and then sent them to my friends, family, and employer. I need your help.” And that she, according to her lawsuit, OpenAI said This is very disturbing, we’re gonna look into this, and then never followed up.

And so- Oh, my God … I think, you know, beyond it being a conversation about the technology, it’s also a conversation about what humans with power chose to do nothing when somebody spoke up about how their technology was being- Yes … misused.

Brittany Packnett Cunningham: Yes, that is the entire point, and in a world in which the guns aren’t regulated, I don’t trust these people to regulate the open AI and the, the internet either.

Whether it was intentional or accidental, the fact that she couldn’t get the kind of help that she needed, the fact that he could do this in the first place, is absolutely terrifying. I mean, David, you worked in the federal government for a long time. I’m assuming that, like me, you don’t have… You don’t feel any reason to trust these folks either.

Dr. David Johns: No, and let’s be clear, one of the last pieces of legislation I worked on when I was in a senate on the health committee, health, education, labor, and pensions, was VAWA, the Violence Against Women Act. Yeah. Um, and, and, uh, Bridget, I am, uh, I’m glad you asked the question early, Brittany, about our three words, ’cause if I had to do it now, it’d be angry, uh, pissed off, and agitated.

This tells me everything about the gap between who is building these tools and who the tools are actually built for. Yeah. And I want everybody to be clear that tech accountability is gender justice. Mm-hmm. Um, we need to have more of these conversations. We should, uh, assume that if there’s one story there we’re reading, that there are at least 50 others that we are not reading for lots of, of reasons.

Yeah. Um, and we need to ensure that all of our elected leaders are having conversations about equitable, um, a just-centered, um, technology policy. Um, uh, this should not happen to a single person.

Brittany Packnett Cunningham: And, you know, while we’re talking about this case, I’m also thinking about a group of teenage girls and their mothers who banded together to sue Elon Musk’s AB- AI chatbot Grok after it generated non-consensual pornographic images of them.

So, you can, like, put a picture in Grok and say, “Grok, remove, you know, the trees from this post,” or remove whatever, and now people are asking to remove people’s clothes. from the photograph. So, the suit is essentially accusing the chatbot of, of facilitating that, and essentially of creating child pornography.

I mean, this kind of stuff, stuff is happening over and over again. This is gender violence, and then it spreads like wildfire within seconds.

Bridget Todd: I mean, that’s exactly what happened with Grok being used in this way. I first just wanna shout out these women and girls for- Yes … for, you know, trying to get accountability.

But I guess my big thing is that it’s bittersweet because high school students shouldn’t have to do this. High school students should be enjoying their prom, learning to drive- Yeah … hanging out with their friends. Yeah. They should not be having to sue the richest man in, in the world because this, because his technology was used to, to create this, these unlawful images of them, images that if you or I had on our computer, we would probably be arrested, right?

And so I, I, I’m grateful that they’re doing this, but I just wanna name that they shouldn’t have to. And in a well society- That’s right … they wouldn’t have to, you know? In a well

Brittany Packnett Cunningham: society they wouldn’t have to. This is entirely the point, and when I think about young people and AI, I am concerned about the fact that we are not a well society, right?

Children have access to AI. There are real questions about what it means to, to grow up with AI as a constant presence, right? Not just what it can be done to you, but what it’s trying to teach you, what it’s trying to tell you, how it’s trying to command your behavior, your mindsets, your thoughts. Um, you know, it’s a tutor, it’s a playmate, it’s a, a collaborator creatively.

It can even be a source of emotional support. I mean, we hear pe- we hear full-grown adults talk about how ChatGPT has become their counselor. What is happening when a young person is using ChatGPT as their therapist, right? Lego is actually working on an AI tool based on the idea that AI should amplify a child’s creativity instead of replace it.

Do you feel like that could be a positive use, or really just how are you thinking about the way AI is impacting child development? ‘Cause as somebody who’s raising Gen Alpha, I am terrified. Like, would y’all even let your nieces or nephews use AI? That’s a good question. So

Bridget Todd: I’ve done a lot of looking into harm against youth when it comes to technology, and what I see time and time again is that the best, the best, uh, dynamic that challenges the kinds of harm that, you know, we know that youth are at risk of when it comes to technology is having good relationships with mom and dad at home, having- Mm-hmm

people they can talk to, grownups they can talk to. Mm-hmm. People that they trust, living in a high-trust household. Mm-hmm. And so I, I don’t have kids myself. Would I let my… I, I would say- I, most of the young people in my life, I am lucky and blessed to know that they live in high trust- Yeah … households where, where- Yeah

there is an adult in their home that they can be candid to, with. Mm-hmm. That they can come to with questions, that is guiding them through what it means to be a young person and, and being taken into adulthood. I am… However, I am also aware that not everybody lives in households like that, right? Like, my, the, the young people in my life are very lucky that that is the case.

And so, yeah, it’s, I, I think it really has to sort of be a, a case by case situation of evaluating. Like, well, are you giving your kid technology and there’s not a grown-up in their life that they trust- Yeah … that can help them make sense of it, or if it goes awry that they can speak to, you know? Yeah. I don’t know.

I’m curious, as parents, what, what you all think.

Brittany Packnett Cunningham: I mean, listen, Dave has got a whole lot of young people in his life. He’s gonna be like, “I’m not a parent.” But he a godparent, he a uncle, and you spend your days thinking about what is happening with our babies. Like, I, I’m curious, are you, would you let your, the young people in your life use AI?

And if so, how?

Dr. David Johns: Yes, with, with the same asterisk that B- uh, Bridget, um, uh, talked about. So what I appreciate about what Lego is trying to do is that they name the thing that we should all be naming, which is amplify, not replace. Yeah. Yeah. That’s the frame, right? Because there’s a version of AI that says, “I’ll do it for you,” and then there’s another version that says, “Let me help you do more of what you already know to do.”

This is when we shouldn’t get caught up in AI as artificial intelligence, the tech bro version of it- Yeah … but African, uh, ancestral intelligence, and leveraging tools to unlock or expand upon, uh, things that are already innate in our babies. I’m thinking of this moment, uh, Brittany and Bridget, that I was in New Orleans, uh, with Dr.,

uh, uh, Ruha, uh, Benjamin- Mm. Mm … uh, two weeks ago. Yeah. And she reminded us of the importance of play, which is something that as a kindergarten and third grade teacher- Yeah … um, I know, I, I know matters. And she shared that there’s a study, um, that NASA did where they gave children, uh, around kindergarten the same, uh, test that they give to astronauts around their ability to imagine, uh, to, to take creative approaches to problem solving.

And what they found is that almost 95% of the children in kindergarten aced that test in the same way that NASA astronauts do. Oh, wow. Then when they tested those kids when they, as they matriculated, as they got to, uh, sixth grade, it dropped by 50%. Mm. And when they got to high school, it was l- something like maybe 10% of them had the ability to do the kind of imaginative thinking that was already embedded in them.

And so, what we know is that often that creativity gets schooled out, and I want us to understand that if we are not- Mm … cautious about how technology is used, then it will only be used to further exacerbate that happening. That’s right. And so, the asterisk is, yes, I would use it with support, with guardrails- Yeah

with frameworks that protect, um, that child’s ability to, to, to show up and manifest all that they know and have learned- Yeah … uh, without maturing.

Brittany Packnett Cunningham: I mean, as I think about- M and M, my four and one-year-old. Thankfully, we’re not all the way there, and yet we’re s- we’re, we are, because I’m, I… Asking the question this way is almost a fallacy, right?

Like, will I let you use something that is, you are going to use anyway? Mm-hmm. Right? Like, it is going to be on your phone, your computers. I wanna make sure, especially as young Black children, that you understand how the system operates and that you can function fully in it instead of be worked over by it, right?

If you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu, and I’m not finna have you be on AI’s menu. Like, you need to know how to master this thing. And I need you to be critical thinkers. I need you to know how to do research outside of just asking a question to a chatbot. I think there are so many s- so many analog things, if you will, that are being lost in life that I want to make sure my children have.

I want them to be able to make text-to-world and text-to-self and text-to-text connections without the aid of the internet. I wanna make sure that they can write in cursive and know how to read, um, foundational documents of this country if the internet ever goes down and you need to read an original version of the Constitution, right?

Like, those are the things I wanna make sure still happen. And these boys are smart, so they gonna figure out a whole lot of ways. And the truth of the matter is, all the questions I’m asking now are not all the questions that will need to be asked because they will figure out ways to think about and use and leverage AI that we haven’t even constructed yet, and I’m just trying to make sure that I’m prepared and open enough.

All right, we gotta wrap up soon, but we’ve talked about the young people and AI. We done talked about, um, uh, AI and Black women. I need to talk about AI and feminism, because there’s this girlboss thing happening again, okay? And our homegirl Tressie McMillan Cottom wrote about it just the other day, right?

People are, like, trying to girlboss us into AI, and there are some celebrities who shall remain nameless, but y’all know who they are. Well, Reese Witherspoon, she got a lot of flack for getting on social and saying, like, women should lean into AI so they don’t get left out. And generally, I understand the sentiment of a train moving and not wanting to get run over by it.

And people are like, “Is there a feminist case for adopting AI because Tressie says there is no feminist case for scaring people into AI, and that is a direct quote. What would you, uh, what do you think about that, Bridget? Is it, is it like a, you know, is, is if the AI is pink, are we good with it?

Bridget Todd: Yes. Uh, this girlbossification of AI is wild right now.

I, I guess I sort of agree with Tressie. Listen, I am n- I wanna be clear, I’m not even necessarily saying that women should not get involved with AI, women shouldn’t learn AI. Yeah. Like, I, like I’m not, I have no problem with that. I don’t necessarily feel like we need to frame it as a feminist win to get women- Mm-hmm

involved in AI. Mm. Reese Witherspoon, not just a few years earlier, she was literally tweeting, “Oh, women need to get involved in crypto and NFTs or they will be left behind. Crypto and NFTs are the future.” Yeah, exactly. Well, we see how that played out. I don’t actually know that that was the case. And so, I guess for me, I would say if you wanna, you know, set up trainings for women in AI, if you wanna do, you know, work like, like if you think this is important- Yeah

cool, fine. You don’t have to tell me that you’re Angela Davis in doing this. You don’t have to, you don’t have to like sell me on the fact that this is some sort of a feminist crusade. There’s power to the data centers. You know? Yes.

Brittany Packnett Cunningham: Yeah. And we, we can just, we can call it what it is, right? Understanding technology as it advances.

We don’t have to, uh, pinkwash it or, you know, greenwash it or whatever. David, I mean, especially in the work around queer justice that you do, lots of people have tried to rainbow wash everything, right? And suddenly, like, you know, you are, um, you know, a supporter of queer people if you buy a certain car or you buy a certain handbag brand that’s totally out of pace and touch for people, right?

Like, I’m curious how you’re thinking about this because we do see the culture get adopted to sell product.

Dr. David Johns: Most definitely. Uh, the, the term that I like to use is called pride pimping. You don’t have to look at a calendar to know when it’s June because everybody will roll out their rainbow goods. Hello.

Brittany Packnett Cunningham: All of a sudden, it’s yes, boots down. That’s exactly right. That’s exactly right. Uh-huh. Da, da, da, da, come to Hardee’s. What?

Dr. David Johns: Just like in February, McDonald’s is gonna roll out the commercial to let you know it’s Black History Month. Okay. So, we, we should be mindful of the way that things work. And one of the…

I, I, there’s a part of me that understands the impulse, the Reese Witherspoon impulse, uh, but there’s danger in her essentially suggesting that, um, AI, uh, as Bridget mentioned, is inevitable, um, because it suggests that it is natural and immutable, and those two things are, are not the case. Mm-hmm. Ooh. As we talked about, they are built by people.

They are fueled by people. Um, they are products that people build often for a profit. And so, for me in this moment, I think the thing that is most important, I named it a little bit earlier, but I just wrote it down to come back to it, is responsible and equitable. We need to be having conversations with lawmakers at every level about ensuring that people have responsible and equitable- platforms and tools that they can use to diminish the ways in which we then perform what otherwise should be baked into the process.

If we’re gonna take a, a, a feminist approach to anything, let’s take a Black feminist approach, which says that we need to center Black women are those who are- Yeah … most marginalized in the design of- Yeah … the product. Not on the back end, where you’re saying how you’re gonna use it, but in the design- And how you can sell it, yeah

of the product. So a part of me wants, uh, folks like, uh, Reese, um, who I believe has a book club, uh, to do a little bit more reading about Black feminist, uh, teachings, and for us to apply that not only to frameworks as these products are developed, but to advocate for policies that are, again, responsible and equitable.

Brittany Packnett Cunningham: Yeah, and I like Reese Witherspoon too, so I was like, “Girl, what are we doing?” But you’re right. Maybe we just, maybe we just need to read a little bit more, come back and say, “You know, I thought one thing and then I learned more, and now I think a different thing.” And this is how we use our platforms responsibly, and we show people that not only is evolution a good thing, that it’s a necessary thing, that it’s a very adult thing to do, that it’s something that we should all be aspiring to do.

But I think that your point as we wrap, David, is so important about inevitability, ’cause I keep talking about the train being out of the station and not wanting to get run over by it, and I think that that is true and valid and right, and people built the train. People built the station. People set the timetable and said, “This is when the train is going to leave the station.”

There is no reason why we can’t put that thing back. There’s no reason why we can’t stop the train on its tracks and say, “Actually, you’re gonna have to pause if you, at the very least, if you wanna go any further, and we’re going to decide if you go further how you’re going to go further,” right?

Inevitability often feels like this, um, marketing tool used to create false momentum, so people buy into something because they believe that there’s no world without it, right? But there was a world without it. There was a world before all of this stuff. There was a world before we were able to talk on Zoom or on Riverside like this, right?

There was a world where in order to hear people talking into a microphone, you had to get in a car or buy a piece of equipment and tune two different dials to make sure that the antenna lined up correctly. There is nothing inevitable about the things people create. We have the power to decide if, how, when, where, and why they function, for whom they function, um, and, and, and how to do that in a way that is equitable and responsible.

Bridget, before we go, what do you want technologists like yourself to really be leading the conversation on when it comes to AI? What should people be listening to that they’ve been plugging their ears to and need to go ahead and finally say, “All right, I’m tuned in”?

Bridget Todd: Oh, I would echo David’s point earlier.

Listening to Black women, listening to the women who work on AI, AI researchers, many of whom have been intentionally silenced, marginalized, or otherwise pushed out of some of the rooms where this technology is made. Mm-hmm. Those are absolutely the voices that we should be looking to and centering and following right now, and not the Let’s just face it, mostly white men who are poised- Right

to be i- personally enriched by conversations around this technology. I think we really gotta flip that dynamic.

Brittany Packnett Cunningham: Yeah. I, my daddy always raised me to ask who benefits from this conversation and the way it’s being had? Who benefits when we’re all told that this thing is inevitable and that it can’t be changed or regulated?

‘Cause it certainly is not us. So, we got work to do. In the meantime, I’m not saying don’t order your Instacart, you know, through, through your chatbot, but I am saying be thoughtful about the ways in which this all interacts with all of us. Bridget, Dr. David, as always, thank you. Bridget, thanks. You can come back to the group chat anytime, okay?

‘Cause this was juicy, fruitful, frisky maybe. I don’t know, David. Um, and we’re always glad to have you. Thanks for the work that you do, and thanks for chatting with us here on Undistracted. Thanks so much

Bridget Todd: for having me. I started by saying I was tired, but I’m ending by feeling fired up. So, thank you. Let’s do it.

Okay, that’s three fired ups. Let’s

Brittany Packnett Cunningham: go. I said it in the group chat, and I’m gonna say it again. Nothing is inevitable. Everything takes people power, ingenuity, creativity. Every end had a beginning, and there’s no reason why we just have to accept things the way that they are. I don’t care how many billions they got.

I don’t care how many politicians they have in their pockets. I don’t care how many ways they think they’re going to design a world for them and not for us. We are not taking this lying down. I told y’all Freedom Summer just started, and it’s not just about voting. The attack on voting rights may have brought us to the table, but freedom, freedom is gonna have to be what keeps us here.

Thanks for listening, thanks for being, and always, thanks for doing.
I’m Brittany Packnett Cunningham. Let’s go get free.

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Thanks for listening, thanks for being, and thanks for doing.

I’m Brittany Packnett Cunningham. Let’s go get free.