About this episode

In this episode, Erin Vandeven discusses her personal criteria for when to use generative AI, sharing insights on discernment and the 70/30 rule.

It started with a book club I never made. Last summer I designed it in excruciating detail — the reading schedule, the prompts, the whole vibe. I felt amazing doing it. And then I never launched it. In this episode I'm using that story as the entry point into something I've been quietly figuring out for a couple of years: my personal bar for when using generative AI is actually worth it. This isn't a pro-AI episode or an anti-AI episode. It's an honest account of how I went from delighted early adopter, to someone who noticed she was outsourcing her own discernment, to someone who has built what I'm calling a sovereignty muscle — a choosy threshold for when I open the tab and when I don't. I talk about the dopamine feedback loop that keeps us coming back to these tools even when the follow-through isn't there, the ethics reckoning I had as a reader and lover of human-made art, the environmental cost I started taking seriously, and why I eventually moved from ChatGPT to Claude. And then I get practical. The 70/30 rule — the tool brings the structure, you bring the discernment — and what that actually looks like whether you're a healthcare leader, a creative, or someone who just…

People in this episode

Host: Erin Vandeven

Topics covered

• generative AI
• personal discernment
• 70/30 rule
• dopamine feedback loop
• ethics of AI
• creativity

Keywords

• AI
• burnout recovery
• millennials
• parenting
• self improvement
• creativity
• ethics

Mentioned in this episode

Products: ChatGPT, Claude

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