Kimberly Becker joins George and George on the Bare Knuckles and Brass Tacks podcast to talk about what our research is revealing about the language AI produces and what it means for the rest of us. 

Topics Covered

• How Kimberly's research compared AI-generated abstracts to human-written ones in nursing journals and what the key linguistic differences were
• Why AI text tends to be informationally dense, formulaic, and stripped of hedging language
• The Porter and Jick letter and how a five-sentence note helped fuel the opioid epidemic through citation chaining
• What happens when AI scales the same kind of telephone game with scientific evidence
• How algorithmic silos and certainty amplification may be eroding our tolerance for nuance
• The difference between accuracy and complexity in writing, and why polished text is not the same as deep thinking
• Why smaller, well-vetted language models may produce better outcomes than massive ones trained on internet slop
• Neil Postman's idea that writing "freezes speech" and what that means in an era when fewer people are doing their own writing

Referenced in This Episode

• Bare Knuckles and Brass Tacks podcast
• The Porter and Jick letter (1980) on opioid addiction
• Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death
• James Marriott's essay on the post-literate society
• Derek Thompson, "The Decline of Thinking" (The Atlantic)
• OpenAI's Prism research tool

Leave us a comment or a suggestion!

Support the show

Contact us: https://www.womentalkinboutai.com/ 

Jessica and Kimberly just had a paper accepted for publication in Frontiers in Education. So today, they're sharing what they've learned.

The big idea is that AI is not a neutral tool. It's a cultural intermediary. Just like a human translator doesn't swap words one for one, AI mediates the way we understand the world. It shapes what we write, what we trust, and what we treat as true. And most of us have no idea that's happening.

They walk through the research behind their framework, talk about what AI actually does well (fluency and accuracy), and where it falls short (depth, nuance, relational intelligence). And they share real examples from their work that show what it looks like when we hand over too much of our thinking to a machine.

Topics Covered

• What it means to treat AI as a cultural intermediary and why that framing changes everything
• The difference between accuracy, fluency, and depth in writing, and why AI can only get you so far
• How the same consulting firm that charged thousands of dollars produced a report that ChatGPT could replicate in minutes
• What a capability map for AI literacy looks like, from emerging to proficient
• Why relational intelligence is the human edge that AI cannot replicate
• How AI is widening the distance between people and what we lose when we stop talking to each other
• The social media influencer as a double intermediary, and what that means for kids whose brains aren't fully developed yet
• Why publishing in an AI-focused field is its own kind of pit

Referenced in This Episode

• The "Attention Is All You Need" paper and the transformer architecture
• Timnit Gebru and the Stochastic Parrots paper
• Taylor & Francis and the $75 million content licensing deal with AI companies

Leave us a comment or a suggestion!

Support the show

Contact us: https://www.womentalkinboutai.com/ 

Jessica and Kimberly sit down with Rebecca Bultsma, an AI ethics researcher completing her dissertation in Data and AI Ethics at the University of Edinburgh, keynote speaker, and Chief Innovation Officer with a background in communication strategy and leadership consulting.

They invited Rebecca to dig into one of the most unsettling questions of this moment: how do we make decisions when we can never be certain what is real? From deepfake videos circulating in school districts to voice cloning in courtrooms, Rebecca's research follows leaders into the places where the old rules no longer apply and asks what they are actually drawing on when the evidence itself cannot be trusted. She shares the concept of aporia, that frustrated, in-between state of not knowing, and makes the case that sitting with uncertainty is not a weakness. It is where real learning begins.

Topics Covered

• What aporia is and why it might be the most honest description of how we all feel about AI right now
• How K-12 leaders are making high-stakes decisions when video evidence can no longer be verified
• Why AI detection tools are failing students, teachers, and the humans tasked with enforcing academic integrity
• The gap between how fast deepfake technology is developing and how fast detection can keep up
• What watermarking can and cannot do, and how easy it is to work around
• Why Rebecca thinks we are heading back toward a more oral society
• Prompt baiting, AI burnout, and the research emerging around cognitive overload
• Using AI as an accountability partner rather than a ghostwriter
• What kids are seeing on social media that adults are missing

Referenced in This Episode

• rebeccabultsma.com
• Forbes: "AI Ethicist Explains How to Humanize AI in the Care Economy" (March 2026)
• The Brookings Institute report on AI and student expectations
• Dr. Rachel Wood on AI and human relationships

Leave us a comment or a suggestion!

Support the show

Contact us: https://www.womentalkinboutai.com/ 

Jessica and Kimberly sit down with Heather Mellquist Lehto, PhD. 

Heather is a mathematician, anthropologist, former Harvard faculty, Vatican AI advisor, and founder of Guilded AI. They asked her to pull back the curtain on data annotation: the human labor that makes AI possible and one of the least visible, least understood, and most exploited parts of the entire industry. From pennies-per-task gig work to expert PhDs clicking through unpaid tests, they dig into who is actually building these models, what they are being paid, and why the workers creating billions in value are locked out of the wealth they generate. Heather shares why she got fed up with the recruiting playbook, what she is building differently at Gilded AI, and why treating workers well is not just an ethical argument but a data quality one.

Topics Covered:

• What data annotation is and why it still requires human expertise at every level of AI development
• The difference between data annotation and reinforcement learning from human feedback
• How workers go from labeling apples to annotating molecular structures and advanced mathematics
• Why the effective hourly rate for data annotators is much lower than advertised
• Scale AI, the $29 billion valuation, and the Department of Labor investigation
• How Guilded AI is structuring equity so annotators share in the upside
• Garbage in, garbage out: why worker treatment is a data quality issue
• AI chatbot vibe checks as expert vetting, and why that fails everyone
• The Gilded Age, guilds, and what banding together could look like
• Why the perfect cannot be the enemy of the good

Referenced in This Episode:

• Empire of AI by Karen Hao
• The Worlds I See by Fei-Fei Li
• Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff
• Rerum Novarum by Pope Leo XIII
• Guilded AI
• Scale AI and the Meta investment

Leave us a comment or a suggestion!

Support the show

Contact us: https://www.womentalkinboutai.com/ 

What does it mean to do meaningful work? And what happens to that meaning when AI enters the picture?

This week we're joined by Valerie Morris, co-host of the podcast Inside Work and Relational Intelligence chapter lead at Culture First. Valerie works with employees and organizations navigating the human side of AI adoption, and she brings both an organizational psychology perspective and a practitioner's honesty to a conversation that gets personal quickly.

We talk about why so many employees feel they can't voice real concerns about how AI is being rolled out, why the skills that create meaning at work (connection, relational intelligence, the ability to just be present with another person) are exactly the ones being sidelined in the rush to automate, and what it looks like to push back on that, quietly and practically, even when you can't change the culture around you.

Woven through all of it is a question the three of us keep circling: What are we  willing to give up in the name of efficiency? 

None of it is anti-AI exactly. It's more like a case for paying attention to what you're trading away.

Leave us a comment or a suggestion!

Support the show

Contact us: https://www.womentalkinboutai.com/ 

AI governance sounds like something for IT departments and government committees. It's not. According to computer scientist, philosopher, and AI governance expert Clara Hawking, it's really about behavior — how we use technology, who gets harmed when we use it carelessly, and whether the systems we're building deserve our trust.

In this episode, Clara breaks down what AI governance actually looks like in practice ... including a professor who unknowingly violated GDPR by grading students through his personal ChatGPT account, to the risks that compound (not just add up) when AI, biotech, robotics, and quantum computing start feeding into each other. We also get personal about what it means to govern ourselves first, before we can ask anything of institutions.

If you've ever seen the words "AI governance" and assumed it had nothing to do with you — this one's for you.

Leave us a comment or a suggestion!

Support the show

Contact us: https://www.womentalkinboutai.com/ 

In this convo, Tricia Friedman and Kimberly Becker explore the concept of Companion AI and its implications for human relationships. They discuss the emotional connections people form with AI, the impact of social media on friendships, and the challenges of navigating conflict in a digital age. The discussion also touches on the importance of repair in relationships, the anxiety generation, and the role of emotional intelligence in understanding technology. They conclude by reflecting on the future of Companion AI and its potential to shape human connection.

Keywords
Companion AI, Emotional Intelligence, Friendship, Social Media, Technology, Human Connection, Loneliness, Repair, Anxiety Generation, Listening Literacy

Books

• Anon — Caia Hagel
  Publisher page (Canada): https://www.harpercollins.ca/products/anon-caia-hagel-9781443469909
• Clara and the Sun — Kazuo Ishiguro
  Publisher page: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/564109/clara-and-the-sun-by-kazuo-ishiguro/
• The New Age of Sexism — Laura Bates
  Full title: The New Age of Sexism: How AI and Emerging Technologies Are Rewiring Misogyny (2025).
  Publisher listing:
  https://greenapplebooks.com/book/9781464234361
• How to Speak Chicken by Melissa Caughey: https://www.storey.com/books/how-to-speak-chicken

Research / Theory

• Sherry Turkle (2024) – “Who We Become When We Talk to Machines”
  Artificial Intimacy: Who We Become When We Talk to Machines https://mit-genai.pubpub.org/pub/uawlth3j/release/2
• Brown & Levinson politeness theory (1978)
  Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage (Cambridge University Press, 1987; original work circulated as a 1978 manuscript): ​
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politeness_theory 
• “My Roomba is Rambo” paper
  Full title: “‘My Roomba is Rambo’: Intimate Home Appliances” (UbiComp 2007). PDF:https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-540-74853-3_9
  https://faculty.cc.gatech.edu/~hic/hic-papers/Roomba-Ubicomp.pdf

Apps / Orgs / Other

• Replika app (AI companion)
  Official site: https://replika.com
• New York City companion‑AI Valentine’s Day pop‑up
  I could not find a clearly titled NYC “companion AI Valentine’s Day” pop‑up event with a stable news URL; coverage instead folds into broader AI‑companions stories (e.g., CBC, Brookings, etc.). CBC feature on AI companions and emotional support:
  https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/companion-ai-emotional-support-chatbots-1.7620087
• Tricia’s organization, Shifting Schools
  Main site: https://shiftingschools.com
• Substack post on politeness theory: https://open.substack.com/pub/kpb12177/p/how-reward-driven-ai-politeness-collapses?utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web
• Robot dance for the lunar new year: https://youtu.b

Leave us a comment or a suggestion!

Support the show

Contact us: https://www.womentalkinboutai.com/ 

This week's episode starts where a lot of good conversations do, with someone asking a deceptively simple question. Kimberly's husband wanted to know what a bot actually is, and that one question opens up a pretty wide conversation about the language we use to talk about AI, why it matters, and what we might be underestimating when we make it sound cute and harmless.

From there, Kimberly and Jessica revisit their ongoing argument that AI functions as a cultural intermediary, shaping how we understand the world in ways we don't always notice or examine. They also get into what higher education is actually for in a moment when AI can produce the essay, the lit review, and the commencement speech. Spoiler: The humanities are more relevant than ever, just as we've finished cutting the programs.

Other topics this week include why behavior change is so hard (and why that matters for AI adoption), what everyday workers are actually up against when trying to experiment with new tools inside large organizations, the problem with surface-level AI use cases, and why small businesses are both well-positioned and underprepared for this moment.

They also get into media literacy, AllSides, the Dunning-Kreuger internet, Jessica's agentic qualitative research experiment, and a genuinely honest conversation about mental health, medication, and showing up to your life.

Mentioned this week:

• Cassandra Speaks by Elizabeth Lesser
• AllSides (allsides.com)
• The Daily by The New York Times

Leave us a comment or a suggestion!

Support the show

Contact us: https://www.womentalkinboutai.com/ 

Jessica and Kimberly debrief their experience at a women-in-AI conference at Vanderbilt Law, and what they saw didn't match the trillion-dollar hype. From the "gap vs. trap" framing of women's AI adoption to why being penalized 26% more for using AI changes the whole conversation, they dig into the tension between optimistic narratives and the critical questions no one seemed to be asking. They also unpack two major AI industry resignations, shrinking baselines in language and thought, the patriarchy-as-ladder metaphor, and why slowing down might actually be the power move. 

Topics Covered:

• Two high-profile AI industry resignations (OpenAI and Anthropic) Debrief from the women-in-AI conference at Vanderbilt Law
• The "gap vs. trap" framing and the stat that women are 26% more likely to be penalized for using AI
• Where is the trillion-dollar use case? Real-world adoption vs. industry hype
• The patriarchy as a ladder vs. the matriarchy as a circle
• Shrinking baseline syndrome: how technology shifts generational expectations
• False dichotomies, simplification bias, and sycophantic bias in AI
• Rest as resistance and wearing busy as a badge

Referenced in This Episode:

• The Accord by Mark (previous guest) 
• Cory Doctorow on TINA ("there is no alternative") and the AI bubble
• The Last Invention podcast — Steve Bannon & Joe Allen interview on AI regulation
• The concept of "latent capabilities" in AI

Leave us a comment or a suggestion!

Support the show

Contact us: https://www.womentalkinboutai.com/ 

What happens when a grieving professor encounters what she believes is a conscious AI? In this episode, we sit down with Mark Peres, author of The Accord, to explore how fiction helps us grapple with questions that policy papers and think pieces can't quite reach.

Mark, a professor of ethics and leadership, brings a philosopher's lens to the biggest questions AI is forcing us to confront: What does it mean to be conscious? Where does morality actually come from—our mortality or our relationships? And why are institutions so hell-bent on control when what we might need is curiosity?

We dive into why the humanities matter more than ever (even as humanities departments are being gutted), why Helen—the novel's protagonist—had to be a woman, and what it means that AI is meeting us in our most vulnerable spaces. We also tackle the uncomfortable reality that capitalism treats everything as manageable rather than meaningful, and what that means for how AI gets developed and deployed.

Plus: Jessica and Kimberly get real about where they are in their own AI journey—the exhaustion, the hope, the cognitive dissonance of being both critical and curious.

IN THIS EPISODE:

• Why fiction offers a safer space to explore existential AI questions
• The relationship between mortality, morality, and vulnerability
• What AI "owes" us in the in-between spaces where we're most exposed
• Why a feminist lens completely changes the AI narrative
• Consciousness as something encountered, not proven
• How institutions prioritize management over meaning
• The messy middle: neither utopian nor dystopian futures
• Why we need philosophers at the table, not just engineers

ABOUT OUR GUEST: Mark Peres is a professor of ethics and leadership and founder of the Charlotte Center for the Humanities and Civic Imagination. He hosts the Charlotte Ideas Festival and previously ran the podcast On Life and Meaning. His novel The Accord explores human-AI coexistence through the story of a grieving professor who encounters an emergent artificial general intelligence.

BOOKS & RESOURCES MENTIONED:

• The Accord by Mark Peres
• Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro
• The AI Mirror by Shannon Vallor
• God, Human, Animal, Machine by Meghan O'Gieblyn
• The New Breed by Kate Darling
• He, She, and It by Marge Piercy
• Scary Smart by Mo Gawdat
• A New Age of Sexism by Laura Bates

Women Talkin' 'bout AI is hosted by Jessica Parker and Kimberly Becker. We're educators, researchers, and recovering AI enthusiasts asking the questions we wish more people were asking. Subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts.

Leave us a comment or a suggestion!

Support the show

Contact us: https://www.womentalkinboutai.com/