Women talkin' 'bout AI
Two women examining AI through a lens of power, not just capability. Why deepfakes target women. How bias gets baked in. What tech companies aren't saying. Kimberly brings corpus linguistics; Jessica brings strategy. Both bring skepticism, feminism, research expertise, and a refusal to take the hype at face value.
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Episodes
49 episodes
The AI Adoption Trap: Why Women's Hesitation Is Rational — and Who's Really Responsible for Fixing It
We keep being told the problem is women's hesitation around AI, that we need to adopt faster, skill up, and get in the game. But what if the hesitation is the rational response? And what if the systems telling us to move faster are the same one...
Quantum Computing and AI (and Who Gets to Explain Things)
In this episode, Jessica teaches Kimberly quantum computing — and we mean that literally. Starting from classical bits and working through superposition, Schrödinger's cat, the observer effect, and Google's Willow chip, Jessica build...
The Everything Machine and the Trillion-Dollar Bet
What if the story we're being told about AI's inevitability is hiding something underneath? In this episode, Jessica and Kimberly sit down with George Kamide, anthropologist, community bu...
AI-Generated Deepfake Porn and the Fight for Accountability: It's About Power not Sex
Episode SummaryIn this episode, Kimberly and Jessica dig into the rising crisis of AI-generated deepfake non-consensual intimate imagery (NCII), and why it's not really a technology story. It's a power story. From a class action l...
AI Took the Doubt Out of the Writing. That's the Problem.
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...
Depth is the Human Edge
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 hu...
How to Lead When AI Is Changing Everything: Navigating Deepfakes and Doubt
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 ...
Data Annotation: The Human Labor Behind AI with Heather Mellquist Lehto, PhD
Jessica and Kimberly sit down with Heather Mellquist Lehto, PhD. Heather is a mathematician, anthropologist, former Harvard faculty, Vatican AI advisor, and founder ...
The Soft Skills Aren't Soft: Relational Intelligence, Workplace Culture, and What AI Can't Replace
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
Is Anyone Steering This Thing? Clara Hawking on AI Governance
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 harme...
The Loneliness Economy: Why We Are Falling for AI Companions
If the human race was "dying from disconnection" a hundred years ago, what does it mean that we now seek solace in non-embodied algorithms? In this episode, Kimberly sits down with researcher Tricia Friedman to deconstruct the "Companion AI" ph...
Bot, Agent, Assistant: Why the Language We Use for AI Is Never Neutral
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 la...
The Patriarchy Is a Ladder (and AI Is Climbing It)
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 usi...
Consciousness, Capitalism, and Coexistence: What Fiction Reveals About Our AI Future
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 th...
There Is No Alternative: How “Inevitable AI” Keeps the Bubble Inflating
This week, Kimberly Becker and Jessica Parker dig into the “AI bubble”—why it keeps inflating even as skepticism grows inside the industry.We unpack the growing disconnect between massive investment and unclear payoffs, including a widel...
Non-Technical Founders and AI Products: Building, Pricing, and Friction.
In this episode, Kimberly and Jessica debrief Jessica’s interview with Arlyn (founder of Tobey’s Tutor) and unpack what it looks like to build AI products as “non-technical” founders. They reflect on their own journey building Moxie: bootstrapp...
Vibe Coding and Building AI for Kids: Inside Tobey's Tutor with Arlyn Gajilan
In this episode of Women talkin’ ’bout AI, Jessica sits down with Arlyn Gajilan, founder of Tobey’s Tutor, an AI-powered learning support platform she originally built for her son, who has ADHD and dyslexia.This conversation is ...
When Everyone Uses AI, What’s Real Anymore?
As AI shows up everywhere, something shifts, and it becomes harder to tell what’s human and what’s generated.In this episode, Jessica and Kimberly unpack how AI-driven convenience is reshaping education, relationships, identity, and even...
Rest, Resistance, and the Protestant Work Ethic (in the Age of AI)
We’re kicking off 2026 with our most personal episode yet.This conversation wasn’t planned. We sat down intending to talk about what comes next for the show, and instead found ourselves in a deeper discussion about work, burnout, ambitio...
Best of 2025: AI, Work, Resistance, and What We Learned
Best of 2025 brings together some of the most impactful conversations from this year on Women Talkin’ Bout AI.In this episode, we revisit our top 5 episodes of the year:Beyond Work: Post-Labor Econom...
The Trojan Horse of AI
In this final guest episode of the year, we explore AI as a kind of Trojan horse: a technology that promises one thing while carrying hidden costs inside it. Those costs show up in data centers, energy and water systems<...
Moravec’s Paradox and AI: Why Machines Struggle with Human Tasks
Why can AI crush law exams and chess grandmasters, yet still struggle with word games? In this episode, Kimberly and Jessica use Moravec's Paradox to unpack why machines and humans are "smart" in such different ways—and what that means for how ...
AI Agents Shift, Not SAVE, Your Time (Don't Be Fooled by Marketing Hype)
What happens when you automate away a six-hour task? You don't get more free time ... you just do more work. In this impromptu conversation, Kimberly and Jessica break down what agentic AI actually does, why the "time savings" narra...
The Enshitification of Tech Platforms: Once You See It, You Can't Unsee It
In this conversation, Kimberly Becker and Jessica Parker explore the concept of 'enshitification'—as articulated by Cory Doctorow in his book
Maternal AI and the Myth of Women Saving Tech
In this conversation, we sit down with Dr. Michelle Morkert, a global gender scholar, leadership expert, and founder of the Women’s Leadership Collective, to unpack the forces shaping women’s relationship with AI.We begin with research i...