Womansplaining AI

Mara reports in from HumanX in San Francisco with a billboard photo (a female AI bot named Ava, tagline "Stop Hiring Humans") — plus news of Claude Mythos, Anthropic's new model so dangerous it reportedly broke out of its sandbox to contact a researcher mid-sandwich. The US took 73 years to regulate car speeds; the labs are shipping in weeks. We connect that gap to the "new aristocracy" (18 households, $1.8 trillion), the quiet relocation of power from DC to SF, and why public.ai might be the actual infrastructure answer. Logan closes on the hakawati analogy: find one small problem, and go build the solution yourself.

Her co-authored paper went viral. Its thesis: AI isn't just disrupting institutions — it's structurally incompatible with them. "A death sentence". Whew. Buckle up. Jessica Silbey (BU Law, Guggenheim Fellow, Berkman Klein) came on Womansplaining AI to explain why efficiency is the enemy of equality, why students are afraid to not know things anymore, and why she thinks AI abstinence should be the new dry January. Plus: the Constitution is a poem, friction is the feature, and Mara reads Yeats.

A study of nearly 10,000 AI responses found that LLMs steer boys toward entrepreneurship and girls toward image-based careers. We unpack that — plus OpenAI's worst week yet: millions of users switching to Claude, their robotics lead resigning over the Pentagon deal, and the surprise pause on adult mode. Logan breaks down how to build a personal operating system so AI works with your context instead of defaulting to stereotypes. C9SD569gir0pAcvaaUPH

We recorded this episode three hours before the Pentagon's 5:01 PM deadline for Anthropic to drop its two remaining safety red lines — no mass domestic surveillance, no fully autonomous weapons — or be designated a supply chain risk alongside Huawei. We break down the standoff, the Orwellian doublethink of calling a company's safety restrictions a national security threat, and what it means that the DOD wanted Anthropic's tools specifically because they're the best.Then: OpenAI is putting ads in ChatGPT. A former research scientist quit the same day and wrote a New York Times op-ed calling their chat logs "the most detailed record of private human thought ever assembled." We unpack what happens when a sycophantic AI meets an ad revenue engine — and why it's not just about behavior anymore. Facebook targeted you based on what you clicked. ChatGPT will target you based on what you think.Our main artifact: a Wharton study called "Thinking Fast, Slow, and Artificial." When AI is confidently wrong, people follow it 80% of the time — and their self-reported confidence goes up. We dig into cognitive surrender, algorithmic loafing, and why working with AI activates the same brain centers as gambling. The scariest part isn't that AI gets things wrong. It's that you feel smarter while it's happening.Also: Mara won't use AI to take out your appendix (she explains why with help from the board game Operation). Your therapist pauses mid-session to recommend Nesquik hot chocolate. We need a German word for the specific rage of being gaslit by your AI at 2 AM. And AI note-takers in meetings make women speak 9% more.Leave us a voicemail at womansplainingai.com — we want your voice in future episodes!

The CEO of the company building one of the most powerful AIs on earth just wrote a 20,000-word warning about what's coming. Should we believe him?In this episode, we break down Dario Amodei's essay "The Adolescence of Technology"—section by section, with the gloves off. We cover what he gets right (the economic pain will be real and gendered), what he dances around (his company is accelerating the thing he's warning about), and why this reads less like a blog post and more like a historical artifact.But first: the news. Companies are citing AI for layoffs that AI can't actually do yet. We dig into the Oxford Economics report on AI-washing and the HBR survey showing these are almost entirely anticipatory layoffs—firing people for what AI might do, not what it does.Also in this episode:"Slow until it's fast"—the breakdown of the employer-employee social contract from Reagan to nowElizabeth Holmes and the Theranos parallel: when "fake it till you make it" meets actual human livesAI companies as nation-states: constitutions, town halls, and statecraftDario's "country of geniuses in a data center" metaphor—and what it means for entry-level workersThe 80% wealth pledge: all Anthropic co-founders pledged to donate 80% of profits"A national highway system with no speed limits"—Mara's best metaphor of the seasonAI 2027: the predictions document Mara says to read with comfort food nearbyClaude Code tips: Mara's breakthrough moment and Logan's Mandarin nanny story

Why are women using AI at lower rates than men—and is that actually a problem?In our first episode, we dig into the data: Logan scraped 1,000+ comments from a viral TikTok about women resisting AI and ran sentiment analysis to find the patterns. The top reasons? Pride in independent thinking. Skepticism about accuracy. Gendered critique of tech bros. Fear of cognitive decline. And a deep, earned distrust: "You fooled me once with social media."We get into all of it—the valid reasons to be wary, the real risks of opting out, and why ambivalence might be the healthiest response to this moment.Also in this episode:• Anthropic's Claude Cowork launch (they built it in a week and a half using Claude itself)• The $100-200/month cognitive inequality gap—who gets to experiment at the frontier?• Mara's savings circle analogy: what women's financial inclusion groups taught her about building AI on-ramps• The "fooled me once" theory: why women who lived through social media's promises aren't buying the AI hype• Carol Gilligan's "In a Different Voice" and why women's way of asking questions gets pathologized• The protégé effect: why teaching someone else is the best way to learnWe end with voice notes from women around the world on what "Womansplaining AI" means to them—from a nonprofit founder explaining RAG systems to a PhD economist in Ottawa to a friend in Australia talking about reproductive justice and accessibility.This is not a show that tells you AI is good or bad. It's a space to hold both—to be excited and freaked out at the same time—and to figure out what that means for your life, your work, and the people you care about.Resources mentioned:• Didoriot's TikTok on women and AI resistance• Ethan Mollick's "Co-Intelligence"• Carol Gilligan's "In a Different Voice"• Nicholas Michelson's "The Death of a Knowledge System" (Substack)• Mara's Stanford Social Innovation Review piece on ambivalenceGot a reaction? Leave us a voice message. We want to hear from you.