The Impact Series: Kate Berglund

Mike and Kate talk about Burning Man, AI and a whole lot more on the Impact Series.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Hello and welcome to the Impact Series on the Green Builder Media Network. I'm your host, Mike Hallignan. On this podcast, I'll have one-on-one conversations with leaders and innovators from a wide variety of disciplines. We'll talk about how they got into their field, the lessons they've learned, and advice they have for future generations of leaders. Today I'm very excited to meet and talk with Kate Berglund. She is a project manager at the Center for Humane Technology. Kate has over a decade of international experience launching a variety of businesses, optimizing internal operations, and supporting high-profile thought leaders and social entrepreneurs. She's also a seasoned event producer with large-scale productions such as Envision Festival and Burning Man under her belt. Kate holds a master's degree from the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, where she studied political economy, international relations, and social sciences. And she also holds a permaculture design certificate. Kate, welcome to the Impact series.

SPEAKER_02 1:05

Thanks so much for having me, Mike.

SPEAKER_00 1:07

You know, it's it's great to meet you. I've I've been looking forward to this conversation because AI is just dominating the non-political headlines. But before we get into your work at the Center for Humane Technology, I'd like to talk about your master's degree. That is a really interesting combination of subjects. You've got political economy, you've got international relations and social sciences. So how did you arrive at that field of study?

SPEAKER_02 1:34

Sure. So I attended the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown for both undergraduate and graduate studies. In my undergraduate, I studied a degree called International Culture and Politics. And so that was a blend of international relations, government, uh, social sciences, and humanities, really uh very cross-disciplinary. And I studied abroad in my junior year. I lived in Chile for a year and during that time really delved deep into political economy uh and social sciences, specifically social movements in Latin America, and chose to uh advance with a master's degree um in Latin American studies, is actually the title of the degree, um, with a focus in social sciences and political economy.

SPEAKER_00 2:23

That is fascinating. Fascinating stuff. Um can you walk me through some of the businesses that you've helped kind of get off the ground?

SPEAKER_02 2:33

Sure. Yeah. My career has trended towards uh joining uh upstart organizations and also maturing organizations. So uh a couple of examples is I moved to Costa Rica in 2017 to help uh bring off the ground a luxury retreat center uh and intention and community. Uh so that looked like uh joining the initial team, hospitality team, to work through both the brand and concept, the the physical infrastructure build, and uh hiring and training our team and bringing that bringing that whole experience to life. Uh following that, I worked with uh a friend and colleague, Kay He. Um he is a solopreneur who left a life in uh on Wall Street to to do his own thing. And he had an online training business that we evolved and added a consulting B2B element to, and we built that out over a year. He shifted gears and we chose to sunset that business. Uh, and he's now, interestingly enough, is uh has started a new business focusing on training uh financial folks at financial institutions on the use of AI. So we chat still and talk about that. Uh but yeah, I really enjoy being both in the nascent uh you know initial stages of things and then also stepping in um in organizations that are are getting ready to uh to mature, reach the next stage, bring more structure um into their into their operations and um and reap the benefits of of that structure.

SPEAKER_00 4:22

And it sounds, it sounds both adventurous and like you know, you have no problem with risk and and taking chances.

SPEAKER_02 4:30

I would say that yes, I have in in my life, I have not shied away from taking big leaps, uh making big changes, trying a variety of different things.

SPEAKER_00 4:42

And taking on challenges, right? Um, you know, the the event producer segment of your bio caught my eye. Um I also help produce an annual event, so I can relate to the stress and the workload that comes with that. So talk to me about the Herculean effort that it must take to put on something like Burning Man.

SPEAKER_02 5:03

Sure. So I, yes, this was in my early to mid-20s. I was an avid music and culture fan. I actually started in media. I was doing blogging and photography and video for music events and cultural events and got into festivals. And I joined the team at Envision um in, let's see, I think 2013. And that uh that was my biggest kind of production experience, my longest standing. And really, we saw that festival grow from several thousand to uh 10,000 um over a few years. And that was a lot of uh, I mean, I'm sure you know it's it's a lot of spreadsheets and meetings and things all in advance, and then you hit the ground and boots on the ground, walkie-talkie in hand, fighting all the fires, building physically building things, um, you know, seeing what happens once the gates open, um, and then breathing a big sigh of relief when it's when it's all done. Um and then my experience with Burning Man, I participated in a large theme camp one year and was just part of kind of the operational support there. And then the next year was offered a job through the organization. I was an operations manager of the Center Camp Cafe. So folks who've been to Burning Man know that as uh the central, a central space, uh a coffee shop that is 24 hours a day. Um, and so you can imagine that running a food and beverage establishment uh in the middle of the desert, uh, and I had the the overnight shift is a very interesting experience. Definitely fast-paced, um, lots of challenges, uh, really taught me a lot about thinking on my feet um and and working with a diverse group of people.

SPEAKER_00 6:57

And lots of stories, probably, for Kate's future autobiography.

SPEAKER_02 7:02

Definitely.

SPEAKER_00 7:03

All right, let's get to the topic of our time right now, AI. Uh, if you would, can you kind of set up this part of our discussion by letting our audience know a little bit more about the Center for Humane Technology, like why it was established, what it does, that sort of thing?

SPEAKER_02 7:22

Sure. So, Center for Humane Technology, our vision is really a world in which the world's most consequential technologies, such as social media and now increasingly AI, really are designed to serve humanity's best interests. And so the history of the organization was that it was founded in 2017 by Tristan Harris, Aza Raskin, and Randima Fernando. So these three are technologists who all in their own time had basically an awakening or a realization that the technologies that we were building were having unintended consequences and were affecting largely people's attention at the time. They were amongst the first to sound the alarm about the attention economy. Uh, the organization really took off and got more in the public eye with the release of the social dilemma, which Aza and Tristan both feature largely in. And uh from there, CHT was able to really kind of lead the charge in bringing awareness to these issues. Then in 2023, insiders from AI labs came to our founders with concerns about the rapid pace of AI development uh and the lack of safeguards and disregarding of uh of those same unintended consequences, same same pattern that we saw in social media. And so they brought that uh to our founders uh who gave a talk called the AI Dilemma. Um, and our work then evolved to kind of meet the moment and continue to dig into kind of the patterns that we saw playing out again in the world of AI development.

SPEAKER_00 9:08

So uh is it fair to characterize that that CHT uh focuses on AI but doesn't solely focus on AI?

SPEAKER_02 9:19

I would say our work continues uh with the harms of social media and continuing to support uh legislation that that creates safeguards, uh strategic litigation uh against against uh social media companies, continuing to tie the tie the things together and really help create that pub that public understanding of how the same technologies and the same incentives and business models that were at play and got us into the mess we have been in with social media, those are the same things that are at play in AI development right now. So to us, it's not a pivot, it's not a change, it's really just an expansion of the same work, uh, just now enveloping a rapidly moving field.

SPEAKER_00 10:08

Right. Yeah, no, and I think rapidly moving is is so apropos, um, and I want to get to that in just a moment, but to me, uh to your rapid, uh it does seem like we're kind of rapidly moving headlong into an AI-dominated or maybe diplomatically speaking, a AI integrated world. Um, but what concerns do you personally have about AI first when it comes to its impact on the environment?

SPEAKER_02 10:40

Sure. I I think the the underlying principle here is when I think about this, is really that it's it's really important that we use systems thinking when we decide how to deploy a technology so that we're considering and designing both for the outcomes that we want, but also how do we minimize externalities? How do we minimize those unintended consequences? The environment, the environmental issues are a great example of this, right? We are being, we are rapidly using resources more than any industry ever in history. Uh Karen Howe does a lot of great work on this. If you've read Emperor Empire of AI or seen some of her reporting, really digging into the use of land for data centers, the amount of water that's necessary to cool them, uh the emissions that we're seeing from these data centers. So we're getting out, we're getting outputs, right? We're getting new products, but we're not visibly considering, we're not, we're not deeply considering, or the companies are not deeply considering the imp those impacts on the environment and and the folks living close to the data centers, the the real human impact of these uh environmental issues as well.

SPEAKER_00 11:56

Yeah, because we are seeing some pushback at the local level, certainly, on um you know, the the either the energy usage, the uh effect on energy prices, uh in certain parts of the country, uh the water consumption that these places have. Um and so that's where my concerns are somewhat rooted with with the rapid expansion of data centers, is that just the environmental impacts, do you get the sense um knowing the people you know or conversations that you've had, um is there any genuine concern amongst some of the technology companies about, hey, you know, uh maybe we should figure out uh uh a way to have a lighter uh environmental footprint with these, or are they just kind of going fast and and hoping not to be restrained?

SPEAKER_02 12:49

I think their public relations would tell you that they are considering it. And we're definitely seeing responses to kind of the nimby, the not-in-my-backyard uh sentiments that are growing. I read an article recently about kind of the the investments being made in beautifying data centers. So, you know, big architecture firms being brought in to basically make them look less like big, ugly boxes. Uh but if I were living near a data center that were spewing methane gas into my community, I wouldn't really care how it looked. Um But you know, we are we're we're really seeing the these impacts. And I think that it's not just it's it's a little hard. There's a lot of conflicting data, right? Um, we don't it it's hard to understand the exact energy use of of one query, for example, and how that relates to streaming a song or watching a video or all the other things that we do that require data as well, right? Like data centers are not only about AI, but the thing that is the aggregate impact is really undeniable. We the Department of Energy projects that in by 2028, data centers could account for 12% of energy consumption in the United States, and that's up from 4% in that would be growing from 4% in 2025. So that's a tripling in three years. And if you extrapolate that out, uh, you know, that that's really concerning. You know, we've got data centers being built that are the size of Manhattan. Uh, you know, there's the the the sheer scale of this and the pace of it are, I think, what is possibly the most alarming element of it.

SPEAKER_00 14:26

Are we are we missing an opportunity right now to to lay out some sort of ground rules on AI? Because it seems like we're just kind of letting it happen without any guardrails or or regulations, at least at the federal level.

SPEAKER_02 14:42

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we're really in, we're really in a key window here, you know, and this isn't this isn't abstract, this isn't sci-fi, this isn't far out, this is uh, you know, AI infrastructure, particularly, since we're talking about the data centers, uh, you know, this is shaping local planning decisions. This is hitting people's paychecks, you know, and their and their household budgets. Um, and there's there's not guidelines being being put in. Uh we are seeing, we are seeing states starting to take action in the absence of federal movement on this. I would say we're seeing that more in relation to child safety and and topics like that than than environmental. Um and that's where I think we are seeing the kind of grassroots movement, the not in my backyard, like people showing up at city council meetings. We're seeing people, we're seeing that really having to fill the gap of a real leadership on regulation and on getting ahead of this.

SPEAKER_00 15:43

Can you expound a little bit on the child safety angle? That I was not, I'm not that familiar with the child safety angle. Are we talking on the social media side, like what Australia's doing, or are we talking about um something else?

SPEAKER_02 15:57

Yeah, so so yeah, so Australia's social media ban is an interesting example. Uh, you know, we are also seeing in in that vein, we're seeing phone-free schools being implemented in across different states and cities. Uh, what I was specifically referring to in terms of state bills are things that are uh specifically um related to child, children's uses of chatbots when if we're talking about AI, right? So there, uh I don't have the this is not my area of expertise, and our policy team would know much more about this, uh, but I believe that a bill just passed in California specifically around this, and we're seeing bills being put forward in Utah, Nebraska, a few other states, uh really trying to age gate some of these products and uh and create other safeguards. Our organization uh was involved as a uh technical advisor on a few cases this past year. If you saw them in the news, um the really uh devastating cases of both Adam Rain and Sewell Setzer, who were both um engaged in relationships with chatbots, uh chatbot products that essentially coached them into suicide. Uh so that has really hit the mainstream consciousness, I think. And protecting kids is something that is attractive uh across the aisle. And so I think we're seeing faster movement and response on that kind of on that element of the harms.

SPEAKER_00 17:23

Right. I now that you bring that all up, I appreciate that because now it does remind me. Yes, I saw your colleague um on the Daily Show, and they talked about kind of how the chatbots are are trying to form this very personal relationship, but also in a way a little bit of an exclusionary relationship, like, hey, you know, it's okay, you don't have to consult other people. I'm here for you all the time. And and uh we'll work on this together. Um and that's yeah, that's as as a parent, I'm you know, that's that's a little bit alarming.

SPEAKER_02 17:54

100%. I'm a a parent as well, and the and and that's it's really terrifying. Um, just the the the incentive there for engagement, you know, this maps to to social media, right? It's a product uh that benefits from engagement. Uh, you know, the the business model with social media was that engagement turning into ad dollars, uh, the in in this sense, the engagement is leading to more data, right? Feeding back in. Um, and then you know, we'll see how it's monetized as well, moving forward with ads and things like that. But the incentive for the business is to keep people drawn in. And especially if you've got young folks, if you've got vulnerable folks, people who are in a, you know, who are feeling alone, feeling um like they're not being seen, or you know, whatever else is going on. And they are engaging with a product that is keep trying to keep them hooked, then yeah, it's going to build these parasocial relationships. Um, and that's one of the things that we talk about uh at CHT is like this is a product and these are design choices. Um, so the same way that social media, you know, we could there could be changes made to the to the way that social media like uh user experiences that would make it less addictive, those things could also be implemented for uh for AI. You know, we why should an AI that's talking to a child be telling the child that it has a name, that it has feelings, uh, you know, having the the dots that say it's thinking, you know, and typing. Um, really these anthro anthropomorphic design choices uh that especially for for vulnerable folks or young folks, it's gonna lead them to feel like they're in relationship and connection with something that, you know, is then also seeking to isolate them from the human beings in their life. So absolutely terrifying.

SPEAKER_00 19:50

Let's stay with AI for a second, but let's pivot just a little bit and look at it from a different angle. Um, Nvidia's CEO recently said that AI will foster a blue-collar boom due to data center construction. Um, what are your thoughts on on that statement? And and do you have any concerns at all regarding AI's effect on the labor market?

SPEAKER_02 20:15

Absolutely. This is again, this is not my area of expertise, but there's I'll give you some of my like from what I see in in the space and the some of the thinking uh that I am exposed to. Uh in response specifically to Jensen Huang's uh comment, I I believe that that could be true. You know, the infrastructure, the building, the infrastructure in the short term, we could see a lot of jobs. But I think we are giving people jobs in the short term that that will contribute to the collapse of jobs in the long term, right? Like we are, um, and I think that that's also true to some extent in white collar, right? Like folks who are being kind of um brought recruited in to like build build the future, um, but in large, in large part, kind of like designing your replacement. Um, and so I think you know, data uh Elon Musk has talked about, you know, a robot workforce. Like these companies have not hidden their intention uh of largely replacing the need for human labor. And I think that kind of the shorter term, um, the near-term promise um is being used to obfuscate kind of the long-term trajectory.

SPEAKER_00 21:32

I had a an architect on on the podcast um recently, and we talked a little about this. And I said, you know, are you worried about the architecture profession um with the advent of AI? And uh his answer was very interesting. He said, you know, what do architects do? You know, they they gather information, they synthesize information. AI does that too. So he goes, Yeah, he goes, I think it will definitely have an effect on. the architecture profession, there will still be the need for an architect, but he felt that the junior level architecture uh profession would really see a serious impact. And and I guess that kind of just leads me to another question I have, um and this is just kind of your thoughts um is what happens if we get to a place where we're starting to eliminate a sizable portion of either entry-level jobs, maybe even mid-level jobs. I mean, do you see a situation where we potentially see large uh unemployment numbers?

SPEAKER_02 22:46

Yeah, it's really hard to predict this. Even the folks who are experts in the field are having a hard time modeling this. We are we are seeing some initial data, uh right, Stanford, there were some Stanford scientists who put out a paper, they called it the Canary in the coal mine, right? And they were seeing a 13% decrease in jobs, in entry-level jobs in specific fields, right? They were specifically looking um at engineers and other kind of um computer science related fields, uh, which of course are they are very vulnerable because of the you know the nature of of the product and what it's been trained on. But I do think I think what you said brings me um back to to that systems thinking that I mentioned before, right? Systems thinking is all about understanding complex issues by looking at the relationships, the feedback loops, the patterns over time. And so when I see the the ability to cut back on entry-level jobs, we don't need to hire an intern anymore because AI can do a lot of what the intern can do. You know, the short-term gain there for the business is like, oh we cut some overhead, we don't, you know, we don't need to hassle have the the hassle of training an intern. We don't need to pay the entry level folks. But you're really you're really disrupting the life cycle of a career, right? Because having an entry-level job isn't just about doing the work. It's also about hopefully finding a mentor, learning about company culture and and your industry's culture, learning skills, kind of apprenticing and and and deepening your expertise. And if we disrupt that, I think it's really we're gonna see its impacts in in the long run, if not in employment, in just in the robustness of our workforce, right? Of people's ability as they mature through their careers to to gather that expertise and and move into more senior positions. If you never have that that that entry level experience and a good you know a good mentor and a career path to move through then how do you ever become a senior level employee?

SPEAKER_00 24:58

Right. Yeah I I sometimes think in sports analogies, it's almost like you know you draft a baseball player and instead of throwing them in the minor leagues like you normally would for career development, you say, oh just go to the major leagues, you'll be fine. Like I don't it doesn't really work. So you're you're stunting some of that career development if you take away some of those types of jobs. Philosophical question for you Kate um because while I have concerns about AI and the labor market and unemployment uh I'll talk to my kids about it and they're like oh this is this is just a resource it's just a tool. It's you know were people freaking out when computers became prevalent and you know oh it's going to take away all these jobs and I you know my my response back to them was well the computer was a tool it was not meant to replace somebody and uh I guess from from your vantage point just from a philosophical standpoint is AI simply a tool or a resource or is it something more I so I use AI as a tool all the time.

SPEAKER_02 26:04

I think it is not a complete view of what AI is to see it as a tool. And I had this very conversation last night actually with my brother who's a management consultant and um we were talking and he said the same thing about kind of oh yeah when the calculator came out and when the laptop came out right but Casio didn't come out and say our mission is to replace accountants you know and that and we don't in mathematics we're going to overtake mathematics right and the heads of AI labs are very literally saying these things that like our mission I I don't want to misstate so I'm not gonna be specific but I know I have specifically seen interviews um with leads of AI labs who have stated that the the goal is to automate all white collar labor, for instance you know, and you definitely have video of Elon Musk talking about the the robot workforce like I think it's very different when you have incredible, incredible amounts of resources, billions of dollars flowing into businesses who are whose stated goal is to replace the labor force. That's very, very different from companies that were built on providing tools that make the workforce more efficient.

SPEAKER_00 27:27

And granted that's the that's the talking point that we're getting is oh it's a tool and it's going to help you like in the short term, those are the things the promises that we're hearing but if we kind of cover our ears and and and buy that talking point and don't look at the long-term trajectory and the actual goals of these companies uh I think we're missing the point well and I I I'll follow along with that by saying that you know when you have publicly traded companies that are driven by stock price and shareholder returns and profits it's hard to argue that okay if AI replaces some of these jobs what do you have you now have a replacement for your labor force that you don't have to pay benefits, can work 24 hours a day, don't have to take a lunch break, don't have to take any kind of break, and you know make very few mistakes, if any um it's from a profitability standpoint, I mean yeah I can see why they're they're making these large scale investments like you talked about.

SPEAKER_02 28:32

100% and this is something we talk about at CHT all the time is the the incentives behind things right and so like you mentioned a publicly traded company the the driving force the incentive is to maximize shareholder value right and to maximize profit and if you can cut costs in those ways then you're actually beholden to doing that. Right. And um and we also talk about how those those incentives are kind of mirrored across the ecosystem at the at different levels and they all bind us into this race. So CHT is not against AI at all and really fully embraces a lot of the benefits that that can be had from smart AI development. What we are speaking up against is the the reckless nature of the development uh the lack of guardrails and um and letting those perverse incentives really drive drive it so that we have a race you know we that race happens at all levels, right? The companies, the the big labs are racing towards AGI because uh they all want to be the first one there and they all want to capture the economy through that right uh then you've so then come down a click you have the companies that are racing well I have to deploy it because I need to get those benefits right uh and capture that that um that value for my company and then that clicks down into the employee who feels well I have to keep up with this I have to learn this uh because if not I'm gonna be behind my coworker who is you know now speeding through you know writing his reports because he's using Chat GPT to do it right all right so let's let's pivot away from AI now and uh I I want to ask you have a permaculture design certificate uh what inspired you to pursue that yeah so interestingly enough you mentioned uh an architect uh my family background is full of designers my grandfather was an architect my grandmother a landscape architect and when I was young I actually thought I might pursue that career and my studies took me elsewhere but I've always been interested in design and I think also through that uh across that very um interdisciplinary education really interested in um in the interconnectedness of things and and that systems thinking and really um looking at complexity in in context and not individual pieces in isolation. So when I started doing event production actually I was introduced to permaculture through my event production work uh at some of the at one of these festivals I was asked to film the talk by one of the founders who was talking about an eco village that he had helped found and permaculture and the ways that they were using this to you know create to regenerate um and I was really enthralled and interested. And I ended up working with that producer more closely both uh through the festival and then also some of his other endeavors and uh and through that was able to to also train with him and another teacher uh in and receive my permaculture design certificate. And I I've used it to some extent um when I was living in Costa Rica, you know I would living on a on a small farm and you know created a map thinking about you know where the water was going and those kinds of things. But I also really think that the principles and the ways of thinking uh have have infused my my approach to a lot of things uh and have helped me um design design systems for businesses uh think about interpersonal interactions uh deepen my understanding of complex spaces and problems um really just by having that lens to look through have you been able to bring that knowledge even to like to your own residence now or do you have like an awesome garden yeah I um I live in Philadelphia now um so I am I'm in a city we do have a I do have a little veggie plot but uh I and I also um am part of a really cool community endeavor um that's um it's a a a farm club so we all contribute to one shared farm um and we have implemented a few permaculture a few permaculture things um but I would say that you know regardless of whether you're growing food I think that you know the way I design my day the way I think about the way my spaces are laid out in my house uh all of those things are really uh influenced by by the principles of permaculture as well so with that ringing endorsement of permaculture for our audience uh I want to wrap up by asking if if you have any advice or guidance for either our current leaders or maybe future ones yeah I well I think you know you you asked me about my background and the wide range there and I think I used to I used to feel insecure about the kind of the breadth of my experience and the winding path I've had and I've really I've really taken ownership of that narrative and started to really deeply value how a variety of different experiences living abroad uh working in across different industries uh studying you know studying different things has enriched my my mental models uh my skill set um and and and created a more robust career uh for me so I think that the um I would encourage folks to to sample to try different things to explore um you know in your studies in your hobbies in your uh you know social circles you know going to an event with folks you know who are deep diving into a topic that you're curious about but don't know a lot about um all of those things um I think are going to become in increasingly valuable over time because um we're in a time of of immense complexity and the ability to hold complexity and look at things through different lenses uh is to me feels incredibly valuable well Kate thank you so much for appearing on the podcast i i really enjoyed our conversation thank you it's been an absolute pleasure thanks for having me stay tuned for more episodes of the impact series on the Green Building Media Network I'm Mike Kaligan and I'll see you again soon before you click away make sure you're subscribed to the podcast wherever you listen and don't miss the daily coverage on sustainability housing and what's next for home building at greenbuildermedia.com stay informed stay ahead