There Are No Girls on the Internet - Girlboss Is Back And This Time She's Selling You AI

Episode Date: June 2, 2026

The girlboss era promised that if women just worked hard enough, leaned in hard enough, optimized hard enough, equality was within reach. It wasn't. And now, a decade later, the same voices are back with the same urgency and the same "you'll be left behind" framing. The product this time? AI. Bridget sits down with Samantha and Anney from Stuff Mom Never Told You to talk about why Sheryl Sandberg, Reese Witherspoon, Mel Robbins, and the original girlboss herself Sophia Amoruso are all suddenly very invested in getting women onto AI platforms and why the women who aren't rushing to adopt it might actually be the ones paying closest attention.     Let us know what you think by emailing [e-mail] or leaving a comment on Spotify.  Bridget's forthcoming audiobook with Simon & Schuster, Love At First Prompt, explores AI, sex, and intimate relationships. Pre-order at LoveAtFirstPrompt.ai Follow Bridget: Instagram | TikTok | YouTube | BlueskySee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Joy 101 with Hoda Kotby is presented by C.E. There are No Girls on the Internet as a production of IHeart Radio and Unbossed Creative. I'm Bridget Todd, and this is There Are No Girls on the Internet. So I am a little bit of a recovering girl boss. I know it's pretty embarrassing to admit, but the whole girl boss thing just hit me at the exact right moment in my life. The Girl Boss era told women that if we just worked hard enough, optimized enough, leaned in enough, the system would open up for us. And it didn't. And now, a decade later, some of those exact same voices are back with a new product but the same old pitch. This time,

it's AI. I sat down with my friends Samantha and Annie over at the podcast stuff Mom ever told you to talk about what's really being sold, why women are actually skeptical of AI, and why that skepticism might just be the smartest thing in the room. Hey, this is Annie. And Samantha. And welcome to Stuff and Never Told You, a production of I Heart Radio. Today, we are once again so happy to be joined by the brilliant, the bold, Bridget Todd. Welcome, Bridget. I like the B alliteration, always common with the alliterative superlatives.

Love to hear it. It's one of my skills, one of my many pretty useless skills. But thank you. Well, Bridget, how have you been since the last time we spoke? Things are okay. I am trying to stay positive. You know, it's, I really, really enjoyed when we hung out and watched and talked about the social network. That was definitely the high point of things for me.

And I've been trying to find ways to connect with what's going on in the world. But through the lens of pop culture, it just was such a nice, refreshing change of conversation. Thank you for giving me the space. Oh, thank you. That was so fun. It was. I was delighted. to have an excuse to re-watch it and to have Samantha to watch it.

And now I'm already thinking of what our next installment will be. I'm thinking her. Oh, my God. Yes, please. One of my favorite movies. I assumed with all the AI stuff, this would be quickly coming. So I've only seen a few clips, and it seems very early 2000s emo, unresolved type of film. Yes, I would watch it.

It pairs very nicely with Lost Intrifts. translation. That's what I thought. Two films about the same thing from different perspectives. Yeah, it definitely, you've definitely nailed the vibe, which was kind of of an era, you know, was the aughts. We're all listening to a lot of sad indie rock and feeling feelings. I mean, it was like Eternal Sunshine and Spotless Mind. Another classic. The Zach Braff one. Oh, Garden State. You could tell me nothing when I had the, the Garden State soundtrack,

I'm dating myself here, but there was a timer that, was like the coolest record you could put on was the Garden State soundtrack. Yeah. Fun fact, J.D. Vance, our vice president, before he became J.D. Vance, he was sort of a kind of alt-ty, artsy kid, and the movie Garden State was very meaningful to him, and he wanted to be a filmmaker or screenwriter because of the movie Garden State. Fun fact about J.D. Vance. Man, why couldn't he? I know. I'm really sad he didn't. I think how much better off he would all be. I think so many people that we are unfortunately subject to the whims of in our government now,

they just want to be famous. They just want people to pay attention to them. I don't know. But all right, J.D. Vance. You didn't make it that way, but you made it this way as vice president. Well, I'm very interested in what the topic you brought today, Bridget, because I haven't quite heard of it, but when I was looking over that, outline. I was like, ah, yeah, that makes complete

sense to me. Can you tell us what we're discussing today? Today we are talking about the resurgence of girl boss culture being repackaged through AI. And I want to start with a question for both of you. What do you remember about the girl boss era?

Was this something that you participated in that you were at all adjacent to? I feel like I missed that window because, A, I was aging out. I feel like because I was just trying to maintain. It was one of those moments. I'm like, I don't understand this. Okay, cool, cool, cool, too. Oh, it died real quick. That's how that went down and I missed that whole

moment. I remember it. I think I was at the time, and I could be wrong, because I know you're going to go over kind of a brief history and reminder, but I feel like at the time I was freshly out of college. And I just remember thinking it felt like somebody was trying to sell me something. Like you pay this much amount of money and give you 10 steps and then you won't be struggling every day. And I would say I was adjacent to it in terms of I was panicking about not having enough money because it was my first job out of college, you know, all that stuff. And I was pretty well off in terms of that situation. But I was still thinking about. like, what about retirement? What about all of this?

I think in part because my mom, when I was nine years old, I asked my mom if the American dream was a real thing. Aw. And she said to me, no. She said you can work as hard as you can and you will not get past certain barriers in your life. And then she said, money doesn't buy happiness, but it certainly makes it easier. And so I think I was already in this mindset of like, I'm just trying to survive. Annie's mom. That's real.

Dropping knowledge. That's real. You're nine years old, mind you. That's real. I love that because my mom was like, have a family. That'll make you happy. And I'm like, okay, sure. But I love that your mom was that honest.

I will say, I really did think it was for upper-class white people. The American Dream? No, the girl boss. Oh, yeah, yeah. I mean, you're not wrong. That's absolutely an astute observation that is correct. I remember seeing the people who are really getting into it, and it felt like that was kind of that sentiment. I think it came initially, I don't think it was that. I think initially it was a lot of, like, people of color who are entrepreneurs really taking on things and becoming a boss because they started their own companies.

Yeah. And that was cool. But then it felt like just a bunch of rich white women. or at least like upper middle class white women who had some like good support or slash network that were saying these things. And it just didn't feel realistic. Yeah. Samantha, it's so interesting that you say this. That is exactly my sort of trajectory around girl boss. Girl boss culture really took root in the 2010s. And at that time in my life, I was, you know, had been out of college for a good while. I was sort of figuring out of

what I wanted to do. And that was the first time that I was sort of getting the sense that maybe a traditional nine to five job was not going to be best for me and that what was going to work out for me was being my own boss, entrepreneurship. And I completely agree that for women of color like myself, black women, we are definitely folks who start businesses who are interested in entrepreneurship. And so I think that in the 2010s, we were having conversations about what it meant, what it looked like, what it took to be your own boss, be an entrepreneur, all of that. That happened.

And so, like, that was very legitimate and real. In my opinion, when it ended up happening, or I guess at least in my personal experience, it coincided with all of these white, very upper class women who were very, like, who lived the kind of lives I could never, you know, to, to Annie's mom's point, could never aspire to, right? And they were selling a very specific. version of what a successful woman looked like. And in my own personal experience, like, this was incredibly confusing because I was just starting the journey of starting my own business and being an entrepreneur. I had no idea what I was doing. And that sort of dominant message was that

you are doing it wrong. Like, whatever you're doing, you're doing that thing wrong. rich white ladies like your Cheryl Sandberg, former CEO of Facebook, your Sophia Amoroso, former CEO of Nastygal. These were the women, these like white, rich women, who were being like,

oh, we know how to do it right. And so if you buy my course, buy my book, take my training, I can tell you the right way to do this. And so the girl boss was born. The term girl boss was sort of popularized by Sophia Amoroso. So she founded this vintage clothing brand called Nastygal.

In 2014, she published her best-selling memoir called Hashtag Girl Boss, which I have read. The cover is pink. It has a picture of her with her arms folded, sort of doing a power pose on the cover. Even if you've not read it, just from knowing the title and then hearing my description of the cover, you basically have read it. Like, what you're thinking is basically it. It's all about how she started her million-dollar. clothing empire from her humble beginnings dumpster diving. And one of the critiques that sort of emerged from this culture was that Groboss culture really put the burden of systemic inequality on

individual women, right? This era really told women the problem wasn't, I don't know, the gender pay gap, lack of child care, the structure of workplaces. No, no, no, no. The problem is that we women weren't leaning in hard enough, weren't working hard enough, weren't speaking the right way. When we went to meetings, we weren't sitting in the right place. When we articulated our ideas, we weren't using the right cadence or the right words. It was aspirational for a very specific kind of woman.

Sam astutely figured out very early on that woman was usually white and already very wealthy or privileged. And it really asked everyone else to fit themselves into this system that wasn't designed for us and not really spend that much time asking questions about, like, well, why is a system like that? Do I really even want to fit into this system that is so broken and so sort of rigged against me? Again, Annie's mom really dropping knowledge for a nine-year-old. Hey, I think about it all the time.

It stuck out in my brain, so. She did her job. Yes. She did. This was also kind of the same era of Cheryl Sandberg. We talked to, she came up in the social network episode. She comes up a lot. Considering, I would say that, in my opinion,

a lot of her sort of cultural cachet has really faded, if you think back to that era, when Cheryl Sandberg joined Facebook, it was a big deal. She wrote Lean In, and he sort of became this, like, figurehead for a certain kind of woman and a certain kind of feminism, right?

I would say that lasted for a little while, but that we kind of thought we were done with this era. You know, we, I think that most people today would acknowledge that Linen and Girl Boss culture did not actually create meaningful liberation for women. It might have helped some individual women succeed at work or make economic gains, and I'm not discounting that. But in terms of collective liberation for women, I think most of us can probably agree it didn't

do that. However, you might have thought we left Girl Boss, Lean In, Culture, in the dust, I would argue that AI is attempting to revitalize it right now in 2026, almost 10 years later. Yes. And I find this really interesting for a lot of reasons. But just this whole idea of sometimes it reminds me of people who wear like lucky shirts all the time for their sports. Oh. Whatever team they want to win, they wear the lucky shirt because it makes you feel like you have power. I've always felt like this is sort of the same. If I do these steps that these people are telling me to do,

then I can beat this system, that I can beat all these rules that are around me that are really the problem. It's not that you're not working hard enough at all. But, you know, to have these people who are so well off and who aren't facing a lot of the same obstacles being the ones to say, hey, lean in. You know, and it kind of seems like it's the same girl bosses that are coming back for this AI. Yeah, that is pretty much what I would say is going on, that these exact same figures who sort of sold us girl bossing and leaning in as the key to liberation for women, they are back.

The message is pretty much the same, only this time the product is not, buy my book, take my course, it's use AI. Yes. So who is the cast of characters we're looking at, Bridget? Oh, let's break them down. We can start with Cheryl Sandberg, former CEO of Facebook. She's almost too perfect of an example of this. So she was the original architect of Lean In. She wrote the book, Lean In, started a women's organization, like a women's empowerment

organization. I've actually met her in person, a fun fact. It's, again, hard to remember now because it so seems like a relic of a time gone. by, but Lean In was huge when it came out, and now the organization has sort of pivoted their focus to closing what they call the AI gender gap. And so I think I talked about this on an episode that I did with you all a while back. It is true that women are adopting AI at work less than men are in the workplace, and there's lots of very interesting reasons for that, which we can get into. But her organization is like, you know what, that is a problem. We need to

close that gap. That is what we're going to do. So in service of doing that, if you were to go to the lean-in social media channels, they're posting memes where it's Carrie Bradshaw from Sex and the City typing on her laptop and wondering, I couldn't help but wonder, is AI the new boys club? Oh, no. I love that they take a dated show to make a dated reference about the new. It just feels like they're clawing their way back with like, we got to rebrand. This is how we're going to make it back.

It absolutely feels that way. And another part of lean-in sort of like current thing they're doing right now is they're trying to combat the Tradwife trend by telling women to use AI. And so, like, that is their mission right now is, like, women need to be leaning away from the pole of Tradwife's nonsense and instead, AI. And, again, I feel like there's got to be something in the middle between trad wife and, like, AI.

Well, I was going to bring up trad wives because I actually think that's kind of the same thing that they're doing. Because Chad wives often are like, oh, it was just me that did this. And it didn't take it. It's not my job and all of this. But it turns out it is their job. And it took a lot of time. And they're hiding how much money they have or how well off they are. This feels like the same thing of like, oh, if you just use AI.

and you can succeed in this way similar. That is such a perfect segue into what Reith-Wether spoon is doing. So I'm not even mad at the Treadwives, for real like that. The thing that bugs me about Treadwife nonsense is exactly what you just described where they are pretending

something that is not true is true. So they're pretending, I don't work and you shouldn't work either. Oh, me, I just, make a million dollars a year running this multimedia content agency and branding agency. Honey, that's a job. You have a job, just like I have a job. We all work.

You work. You make money. A lot of these tradwives are actually the breadwinners in their households and their partners are like on their payroll. Don't tell me that you don't have a job. The thing that bugs me about it is that they are essentially lying and trying to make themselves seem like, oh, I don't, I'm just a. I don't know anything about content marketing when it's like, okay, you do this for a living.

And I feel like the video that Reese Witherspoon made and got under a lot of hot water about recently, about AI, kind of gave me the same vibe. I'm not saying that Reese Werderspoon is a trad wife in any capacity because she's definitely not. But in this video that she made about AI, she's standing in her kitchen and she's making a smoothie. She's definitely going for, ah, shucks, I'm just a mom kind of energy. And then she says, you know, hey, I was on a bowl. book club recently, and I asked the women in my book club, how many of you all are using AI? And of these 10 women in the book club, only three of them said that they use it. So of those three, she was, okay, well, how many of you feel like you know what you're doing,

you're confident in using it? And only one woman raised her hand. And so she said, oh, if this means that one out of 10 women, only one out of 10 women is confident using AI, women are going to get left behind. Technology moves so quickly that if you don't get at least a little bit familiar with it early on, it's going to advance and then you can't catch up. And the tone of the video to me had this kind of aw, shucks, I don't know much about AI, but let's learn about it together vibe, which is what I resented. I don't even, it's not even that I really am that bothered by telling

women to get mixed up with AI. I don't personally agree with it and I don't personally agree with the framing, but it's not even that that really bugs me. It's the way that the packaging is so clearly a lie. Why do you need to lie about this? Why do you need to pretend like, oh, shucks, I'm just a mom making a smoothie. Let's figure out this AI business together, shall we, ladies? If our brains can handle it.

Yes. There's like a scolding element to it as well, right? Yeah. Again, if Reese wanted to make, or if any of these people wanted to make a video that was like, here's what we know about what women are saying and telling us about why they are, we are adopting AI less and having honest conversation about that, I'd be all for it.

We've all done it on the podcast together. What's so different about this is scolding women for the way that they feel. So women are saying things like, hey, I am more sensitive to some of the ethical concerns about using AI. Or, hey, I know that I have more eyes and more scrutiny on me in the workplace than my male counterparts, so I'm incredibly cautious about AI use because I know I'm going to be more scrutinized if I use it. If a man uses that they're going to call them an innovator, if I use it, they're going to call me a cheater. Those are kind of nuanced reasons that the research shows that women aren't using AI the same

rates as men are. They are not reasons to scold women. You know what I'm saying? There are topics for conversation, sure. I don't like the scolding tone and the tone of, well, you're going to get left behind you're not going to make as much money. And you know what? It's going to be your fault. It's the same girl boss stuff. That's the same thing that the girl boss culture sold us, that if I didn't lean in enough and if I didn't speak the right way

or didn't sit in the right place at meetings, I would be left behind in my career. It's the same scoldy energy. Now it's just for AI. And I kind of put a weird, like, and I felt this way about the girl boss too, I remember thinking they don't want everyone to succeed. It kind of pit other women against women

with this very conversation of like it's limited. There's only limited capacity for success. And women already know you're not going to be at that top priority. You don't have much space to begin with. So it felt like it was a lot like the competitive nature of women against women. And I feel like this conversation of like this other woman is going to take you out. It still feels that way even though they're trying to gear it to all women. Yeah, that's such a good point.

I definitely see a little competitive. Don't you want the edge over other women? Listen, the women in my camp are getting ahead economically using AI. Do you want to be left out? Do you want to be part of my AI circle of winners or the folks who are left behind? Like, people whose careers are struggling. Like, I don't know, award-winning celebrated writer Roxanne Gay. Because when Reese Witherspoon put this out online, somebody told Roxanne, when Roxanne Gay said, replied and said,

Reese, this is not the vibe. Someone was like, Roxanne Gay, you need to get on board with AI or get left behind. And I'm like, you're talking to Roxanne Fibingay right now. I don't think Roxanne Gay's career is in jeopardy. I actually think Roxanne Gay will be fine. Right. As in fact, if she tried AI for her job, she would get in trouble. Yes, exactly. Exactly that. And just the like, audacity to tell somebody like Roxanne Gay that. And Reese Witherspoon, not for nothing, she has sort of done this before in 2021, she told women that crypto and NFTs were here to stay. And if you didn't get involved now, you were going to get left behind. And we see how that worked out. Every woman who didn't get on board with crypto and NFTs will never economically recover from that terrible

choice to not get really, really heavily and financially involved in NFTs and crypto. What a bad choice that turned out to be for those women, am I right? Right. Who was it, Justin Bieber, who can't sell his NFTs? Yeah. that he bought for millions. And if he did sell it, he would take such a lot. Right. Really smart decision to get in on the ground floor of that one. Do you call it soccer or do you call it football?

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like when actress Olivia Munn shared how she overcame fierce health challenges, I've gone through breast cancer and then helped my mother through breast cancer. And that was more difficult. There's a lot of people who understand postpartner depression. I was not prepared for postpartum anxiety. Listen to Joy 101 with Hoda Kotby on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I mean, it really feels like she's a part of someone. Someone is paying her a ridiculous, like even, I don't know, does she have a sponsor?

Is someone is Chat, GBT, PeeT, paying her, is Sam Altman paying her money to be like, I need you, to push this out for those women. Oh, this is a great question. It's not one that I can completely answer. So I, like a lot of people, when I saw that video, I said, well, she, this is definitely, this has the whiff of a, of a sponsored post that is not appropriately being labeled as such. She did clarify that nobody was paying her to talk about AI. But then a couple of weeks later, her production company, Hello Sunshine, which was recently

about by Blackstone, did partner with Purdue University to offer online classes. for young women on AI adoption. So I can't totally answer whether or not she's being paid specifically to talk about AI. But I do feel confident in saying her stance of it just organically came up at my book club to talk about AI. And now I am doing a partnership with Purdue University

about AI adoption for women. That don't sound right to me. I can tell you that. No. What do your book clubs look like? It's the topic of confidence. conversation. And you have another example that I was interested in because I've been hearing a lot about this person lately. Oh, yeah, Mel Robbins. So Mel Robbins, people listening, she probably

needs no introduction. She wrote the book, Let Them, her whole philosophy. I wouldn't really call her girl boss. I'm not the most familiar with Mel Robbins, but I do know that her book, her theory is all about if someone or something has given you a hard time, let them, just let them, let it. And so Mel Robbins does have a partnership with co-pilot. And she made this post digging into some of the research that we've talked about on this podcast about women adopting AI less. So I will like shout out to her for grounding the conversation in research. And she says women need to be adopting AI more. And she gave some specific examples of how you could start. If you were somebody who had not used AI and you wanted to get involved with it, she gave a specific prompt. And she said, ask Microsoft co-pilot this specific question in this specific prompt to help you get your finances in order. And one of the pieces of that prompt was her saying, ask Microsoft co-pilot what financial records, bank statements, financial information, it needs from you to help get your finances in order. And so this is what I took real umbrage with. Again, I'm not even really necessarily against them saying like, oh, play around with AI, get your hands dirty with it, see what it's about.

I'm not even necessarily saying that that's a bad thing or that they shouldn't be doing that. What I took Umbrage with here is that she, her post is very clearly talking to an audience that doesn't really have a lot of technical or AI know-how. The prompt that she told them to use is very specific, yet she didn't mention anything about redacting these documents. You know, if you're going to put together a specific prompt for people who have not used AI a lot or tech, or maybe not even very tech savvy, you can't assume that they're going to know to redact documents.

And it is absolutely a terrible idea to share your sensitive financial data with Microsoft co-pilot. You absolutely should not do that. So even beyond the conversation of whether or not AI is that actual financial advisor, spoiler alert, it is not. You shouldn't, you, like, it just felt very irresponsible to me to tell women to do this. Not for nothing, Microsoft was hacked in 2024 by Russian state backed hackers who were able to get into the emails of not just senior Microsoft staff, but also their own security team. And so Microsoft holds all of the information that you feed into co-pilot for up to 18 months. Mel Robbins didn't tell anybody any of this.

She just said, go ahead and put your financial information into copilot. So I found that to be like irresponsible advice to women. Which, by the way, she's a lawyer. Like, yeah, she's come up a few times in our episodes. I can't help it because there are things that I'm like self-help. gurus need to be stopped. Like, I, yeah. That's a whole different episode.

I'm going to put that at that. But, like, not only is she giving really bad advice, I feel like legally she should be thinking of that through putting your sensitive financial documents into a program that has been seen as unsafe. Also, probably one of the worst known AI programs out there. Oh, absolutely. And, like, I do think when it comes to Mel Robbins, I'm not. I'm trying to think why this left such a bad taste in my mouth.

I think it's because we're in a financial climate that's kind of rough and people, you know, myself included are experiencing economic uncertainty and anxiety. And that's like a very specific kind of sensitive trigger. I think using financial anxiety as a way to manipulate women into using AI and then using and then telling them to do it in this like incredibly ill-advised way, just really. doesn't sit well with me. And you know, Mel Robbins is super wealthy. Mel Robbins definitely has human financial advisors and human lawyers and human accountants. Mel Robbins is, I can almost guarantee you, she is not uploading her bank statements into a chatbot. She just thinks that you should upload your bank statements into a chat bot. She thinks that that is the level of

financial advice that you deserve. She has access to probably the best financial folks. in the world. She thinks that you deserve an AI chatbot that is not a human financial advisor, a chat bot for whom if you do something goes wrong, there is no person or human for there to be any kind of accountability. That's the kind of financial services that she thinks that you deserve. And I just think in a climate where a lot of women and everybody are financially struggling, that's not really that cool to me. Right. I mean, you're definitely not wrong because people see her. the reason she is as successful as she is, people really look up to what she is saying. They trust what she has said, whether it's her book telling them, let them, like being like,

let them loose, let it be, let it go type of conversations. Some of these conversations have changed their life. They have paid money to go and see her. They have paid money to sponsor and help. She has one of the number one podcast because it is all of these great advice that they're seeking because either they're lonely. they don't feel like they can trust others, and they really feel this connection. So if you're trusting someone, because we know as podcasters the responsibility we hold in these conversations and trying to get the right information, we are oftentimes talking about how nervous we

get if we think that we did something, we said something, or we misspoke, like coming back to like, oh, I have to change that, or we have to correct that in the next episode type of conversation, knowing that this is who she is, having millions and millions of listeners, probably predominantly women who are just trying to find someone to tell them it's going to be okay and this is how. And then to do something like that feels like such a predatory act, especially when it's sponsored by a company that just needs to make money off of other people's culability. Yeah, I'm curious. I often feel like I'm just the personality type that is always going to be suspicious of

self-help leaders and gurus and all of that. And I don't doubt that people have found real value in those folks. So I'm not, you know, no shade. But I think there's something about me where as soon as somebody is trying to sell me that they have the answer, I'm like, oh, really? You know, I'm just, I'm a skeptic at heart, I guess. Where do you all fall in this sort of self-help trajectory, just out of curiosity? I feel like I was pretty out of it in my take just now. But after like our generations of watching my parents specifically, I've been. you all know, fall in love with the content that Oprah, and don't get me wrong, Oprah did her thing, whatever, whatnot. But like bringing on people like Dr. Phil, bringing on people like Dr. Oz, and projecting

their fame and their notoriety in this world, that seeing that has become what had become, and I think still is, like the snake oil salesman of today. If you don't actually have a degree in any of these things, and if you come out with just absolute like musts without any fluctuation, that as a social worker, as social background, that gives me like red flags all over the place. Yeah, I think when I was younger, like middle school, I was much more, I don't know, desperate almost for like what is the answer, usually around weight loss at the time. What is the thing? But as I got older, there's something about it that is really hard to disconnect for me.

Because, you know, a show like this one, we have sponsors, but we're not necessarily trying to sell you anything that's going to, like, change your life. Like, we're just trying to keep the show running, and this is how it works. And I feel like it, in that way, it feels more transparent. Like, yes, we all know that shows have to have ads. I can skip the ads. but it's when someone is trying to sell you something that is like this is how you turn your life around it'll completely change your life and here's how i don't know there's just something about it that

feels you're trying to sell me a way to like live longer i don't know there's something that feels a little bit more wrong about it i'm not sure yeah i feel you and it's interesting that you put it in the perspective of being a podcaster because i once had a call with a consultant about how I could try to make more money from podcasting. And I was like, oh, this person seems like they have it all figured out. I'll take the call. And the big thing, the big secret was you should turn your podcast into an online course and then people will pay for that online course. And I was like, oh, scamming people. Okay. Sure. Great. Thanks. Glad we took this call. That's your big idea. Yeah, your big idea was scams.

And I guess not that it's like, I guess scam might eat too strong, but you're so right that I want to make interesting and formative content that people feel engaged with. I don't want to sell access to something that makes it seem like I have all the answers because I do not, you know? And anybody that says, I have all the answers. There's a one fits all solution to the problem that you have. And if you just pay me, I'll give you that answer, whether it's. speaking differently at a work meeting to get a raise or AI, I'm just automatically sort of skeptical of that. And I think that the fact that we have so many of these

girl boss relics who are still around selling that as a big feminist win, my spidey senses are just going off. And again, I don't even really have a problem if Reese Witherspoon wants to have courses that market AI to women or do a skill share for women to get involved in AI. I don't even really necessarily have a problem with that. But I don't think we need to be framing it as a feminist win. I don't think we need to be framing it as this is the work of the business of feminism is getting more women involved in AI.

Just say you want to run an AI training or you want to see more women in the space. That's fine. I don't really like that it, you know, you're not Angela Davis because you're getting women involved in AI. And that's the way that people are sort of framing it. There was a very interesting piece in the cut about this. It reads, one startup founder, Aaron Gow, said that the technology could be a 24-7 mentor for women, helping to free them from the weight of imposter syndrome or offering feedback on overly apologetic language in their email. By the way, there has been studies that demonstrate that AI will, when women use AI to try to get like negotiation advice,

AI tells them to settle for less money than they would a man. So I don't know that this would be a great digital mentor to have in your back pocket. 24-7, given that that's the case. She goes on to say, this technology could be more than this another tool, she wrote for time. It could be the great equalizer we've been waiting for, giving women the support, efficiency, and confidence that prior systems have consistently failed to provide. Grau and other prominent women in tech recently helped Gloria Steinem use AI for the first time. As we set with this remarkable icon in her home where countless leaders have shared their stories and planned for change, we can find.

and uncomfortable truth, women are once again being left behind. And her timepiece ends with this. She says, as we left Gloria's apartment, she reflected on what she had learned about AI, and her words captured the possibility ahead. You've created a whole universe here that didn't exist before. But like, a whole universe built for who? Built by who at what cost and who was paying that cost? Who's benefiting? The same questions that we probably should have been asking, the first time around when we were all being sold girl boss culture

as our salvation, those questions are nowhere to be seen in this dynamic. I mean, I feel like I don't understand AI because I'm like, how is it going to change anything

other than your plagiarizing things in ways? It sounds like you do understand it from my perspective, Sam. Okay. So I'm like, I don't understand how this makes you successful because it just sounds like

it's teaching you how to still. the original content and change it into new things. Maybe I'm wrong. It will teach you. Like I know people who use it to help me like teach me how to do this program and it'll tell you how to put codes and what's that, what, whatnot and create websites that you want or change the looks of things. Cool, cool, cool. So maybe instead of having to go to the route of going to school to learn coding or classes and you can just easily find routes, cool, I get that. But even with that, outside of those small things, I can't understand how women can be bigger with AI outside of being actually in the companies, which is the conversation we should be having with the companies about, like, are you hiring developers that are women?

Are you bringing in people, women who understand that what kind of safeguards are needed in these programs? Yeah. That's what we need for women to be a part of the AI world. Am I wrong? No, you're absolutely right. And I think that's the conversation that I would be completely down to have. But instead, the conversation that a lot of these influencers and girl bossers and all of that are selling us are, you can use AI to individually improve your life in these small, tangible ways. It's not who built this and were women involved. And again, there's some of the research about why women are using AI less is that they see the people who are leaders in the AI space. the people who take up outside, and not to say that there's not other kinds of folks in this AI space or definitely are.

Those people are just are not getting enough shine and attention. But the people that you hear from are the Sam Altman's and the Elon Musk and the Mark Zuckerbergs of the world. It's no surprise that women see the people who are in charge and taking up a lot of space. They know the track record that these people have when it comes to building technology and how that technology harms and marginalized women.

The very same thing we were talking about when it came to the social network. And it's no surprise that these women are like, eh, I'll pass. And so if you wanted to have the tougher conversation about those institutional issues, let's have at it. But in the meantime, the conversation that I'm really not moved by is you can use AI to plan your wedding or you can use AI to, you know, Dr. Sarah Soska, a gender and technology researcher, put it very well on Instagram recently. She said, as AI becomes increasingly associated with surveillance, militarization, and labor displacement,

influencers are now being paid to sell it to women through beauty, wellness, dating, motherhood, and self-help culture. AI is being softened, rebranded, from infrastructure to lifestyle. And I think that is really the move that you're sort of describing, Sam, but they're taking something that is genuinely, like, complicated

and implicated in serious harms and that we should be having a conversation about who built it and the institutional failures they're in. And they're just rebranding it as this individual wellness product or a self-optimization tool or a feminist act. And it's no wonder why, just from a messaging standpoint, that brand of messaging is failing to connect with people. People see right through it. People, women don't like it. It's not,

we don't believe you. You need more people, you know? Well, also with that, like, if we're talking about feminism, the age of feminism we are, well, actually, we're going to talk about where we are in feminism and what state we are, but like, intersectional feminism has become the biggest conversation. So when we're talking about intersectional feminism, we're also talking about climate change. We're also talking about making sure that we are saving the world water salvage, all of these things. And what we know about AI, one of the biggest things we know about AI is they are killing the climate at a faster rate. They are harming the systems. They are taking water that is absolutely in dire need in some of these areas.

a lot of the areas, especially doing droughts. So why would someone who would truly be described as a feminist today? Why would we take this on and be like, yeah, absolutely. This is something that we need to be a part of because this is going to change feminism. And that's one of the things that women self-report, when you look at the research of why women are adopting AI less than men, women are self-report being more sensitive to environmental impacts and concerns around AI than men are. And so I think that's a reasonable, like that's a reasonable,

conversation that somebody who was reasonably trying to get women to embrace AI would want to talk about it and make space for. But I guess what I'm saying is that these people, these women that we're seeing with the big platforms who are trying to lead this women get involved with AI Brigade are not having those conversations. It's like they're not actually listening to the concerns that women are actually voicing about this technology. Well, you know, on top of that, the thing that is interesting to me, especially with the girl boss coming back. Because again, as I said, it's like, it's for rich white women, right? This is utterly about privilege, was what it seems. And it feels like we're back to that again. Like those who have privilege are like, no, this is going to really make us rich. That's the whole goal. And everybody else is like, is that the goal? Like, I don't, also it's not attainable for all of us.

It's cute for you who is being sponsored by AI. But for the rest of us, this is not benefiting us in any least way. Oh, I love that you brought it there because that takes me to the OG Girl Boss herself, Sophia Amoroso. Sophia Amoroso is an interesting person. She is someone who I have been following for a long time. She was the OG Girl Boss. She made this post about how she is using AI to streamline her life. And when she didn't like it, or when a lot of women did not like it, she said on her substack,

women are sleeping on AI. and it's going to cost them. And that to me is very interesting because when Sophia left Nastygal, she did not leave under good circumstances. She had to step down because the company could not keep operating with her, so she was sort of like,

it just didn't go very well. Then she started a media company called Girl Boss, which there was a Netflix show about her life called Girl Boss. None of this stuff went over very well. And so after that, I've sort of been watching her, and for a while she was doing

online courses for entrepreneurs. Like, basically, let's just say whatever the, I don't want to use the word griff, because I don't think she's a grifter. Let's just say that she's someone who, whatever the new thing to make money seems to be, whether it's selling online courses to women entrepreneurs or selling women on like investment advice, she's on it. And so the fact that she is, would be pivoting to AI influencer right now is on brand. The fact that people, people who somehow always find themselves on the ground floor of the new thing that you can sell to make a quick buck. The fact that those people are all like, oh, it's AI now is unsurprising to me. Does that make sense?

You kind of pick it off when I'm putting down? Yeah, yeah. She can afford this conversation. Like, it literally is what she was doing previously in a new hustle. Yes. Summer is on at base 31. The drill hall, RBC stage is packed with big show. live music and electric summer nights,

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Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Like, I don't want to say these people are grifters, because that sounds too strong. But I think that they have sniffed out that there is money to be made. And why not them making it? I genuinely do not think that the vibe here is that sisters, we could all have economic freedom if we all just embrace AI. We will all be rich. I think it's, I will be rich if I scold you into paying me to teach you how to use AI.

Like that's what I think, this. is really about here. And I wouldn't even necessarily have a problem with that, but you don't need to scare, scold, or manipulate people into doing that, especially not women. And you don't need to be doing that and trying to sell me that as like a feminist win. Like you're, it's not a moral crusade. You're trying to make a buck. Yeah, like, do your thing, make your money, but like, let's be real about it. Exactly. The transparency. You're trying to make money. Got it. Yes. Don't scare, especially because the financial situation, people are desperate, and that's what makes me really angry about it is when somebody's like, here you go. Just work harder.

This is what you need. But I also find interesting, Sophia Maruso had quite a response to some of the critiques she was getting about her AI pivot. Yes. So she posted a screenshot on her Instagram story showing how many followers she lost on Instagram. Instagram after she posted about the ways that she uses AI to streamline her life. And she said, this is what posting about AI does, wild, weeding out the Luddites. That had the tenor of an insult. It was clear to me she meant that as an insult to people who weren't down with AI or like didn't like this post.

But here's the thing about Luddites. The Luddite movement is actually often misrepresented as being anti-technology. The original Luddites were skilled workers in 19th century England who were protesting how factory owners were used. using new machines to cut wages, replace labor, and concentrate power and wealth from the hands of the many to the hands of the few. So the Luddites were not saying technology is bad. They were pushing back and challenging

and asking questions about who benefits from technology, who bears the cost, right? And so in a kind of way, even though I can tell that Sophia Amoroso meant this as an insult, she kind of accidentally stumbled on the truth because the Luddites, as she put it, who took issue or took umbrage or unfollowed her after her AI post, they're not anti-technology. They're asking questions, questions that we should be asking about this technology.

So in a kind of way she ended up being sort of correct. Well, and that's a good segue into what I think is one of the most interesting pieces of this conversation, is as we've been discussing, as we've talked in previous episodes about, women do have hesitations about adopting AI. And I think looking into those reasons is really important and tells a lot about the situation of what's going on. Exactly. And the entire Girl Boss pitch kind of rests on the premise that women are not using AI as much as men,

which is true. And the thing that they add is, and that's a problem because women are going to be economically left behind. It's a problem that the women need to fix. Not the reasons or the institutional failures that have led to this problem. It's the women who are doing something wrong and they need to be scolded into fixing it. Otherwise, they're screwed.

Now, the data is real, right? So a Harvard meta-analysis of 143,000 people across 18 studies found that women are about 20 to 25 percent less likely, to use generative AI. Women make up about only 42% of chatGBT website users globally and 27% of mobile app downloads. This gender gap is consistent across education levels, regions, and industries.

However, the reasons why I've alluded to some of them are very interesting to me. And I think more interesting than the dynamic of just scolding women for getting left behind on AI would have you believe. So the standard explanation is that women have less access to AI, less training in AI, and less confidence around AI. That confidence thing is explicitly what Reese Wetherspoon noted in her AI video.

And there is a little bit of truth to that. However, even when researchers equalized for access, one study in Kenya, where women were explicitly offered the same training tools, women still used chat TBT about 13% less than men. So it's not really just about access or less training or less confidence. it's about something else. Yes, and I think the reasons are very telling about why we shouldn't be blaming women individually and instead looking at systemic things, systemic reasons. Exactly, and I think women are more likely to identify AI's real problems, right?

Women are more likely to flag biased outputs. And the bias is very real. One study said that an AI chatbot advised women to ask for significantly lower salaries than men with identical profiles. And so if you're selling women, oh, AI could be a great 24-7 mentor for you. AI could, like talking to AI to get it to revise your emails to make you sound more confident in the workplace, that's going to help you lean in and get more money. I don't know. This study seems to suggest that it's like the same old tired advice that you might get from a man in a workplace.

Right. Women are also more likely to cite things like privacy concerns. And of course, women experience higher rates of tech facilitated abuse. So none of this is a rational or unreasonable hesitation around AI. This is real stuff. And the thing that might be able to present a fix for this is institutional, right? It's exactly what you were alluding to earlier of, like, who is in the rooms where these tools are getting made? Who are asking the questions when it comes to these things being developed and designed?

Me using AI more as one woman is not going to change any of this. And so it's, again, just like with the girl boss thing, it is selling an individual solution to a problem that is clearly institutional, that you can't, that one woman is not going to be able to girl boss or lean in her way out of. Yeah, it kind of reminds me of the similar conversation, but around sort of the, you know, you just have to work so hard and you'll make it, but around women specifically where it's like, where, how does she, do it. How is she a mom and she has a job and she has kids and all of this stuff? I can very easily

see them selling this idea, these girl boss AI people selling that idea to women who need a different solution. Yes. They don't need an AI is not going to come in and fix that, but they do need a solution. Yeah, exactly. And so there are so, like, there are so many, reasons why women are saying that they're hesitant around AI. You know, as I said, women, our work is already scrutinized more harshly. I worry that some of this, just embrace AI, ladies, it's time, it's good, could actually get some women in trouble at work if they were to embrace AI because women's work is already scrutinized more harshly than men.

As one psychologist put it, women are already discredited in workplaces. Having people know that you used AI is just another thing. thing that can be used to undermine your credibility. And these rich ladies who frankly don't have to worry about office dynamics and workplace dynamics the same way that the rest of us do could actually be giving people women advice that could set them back in real ways, right? Like, let's just like keep it for real. Mel Robbins probably isn't going to lose her job if she uses AI and it goes south. Sherry from the real estate office in Des Moines, Iowa, might actually be risking her job if she uses AI because Mel Robbins told her to, and it doesn't go the way that she was planning.

Yeah. Bad advice. Just bad advice. All around. Or at least like not taking into account the realities that most people face. Yeah. I think that's a good way of putting it. Like, women are already really tasked with doing a lot more domestic labor and child care labor in their homes and also in offices, all kinds of labor that's on our show. shoulders. So then when you factor in, okay, also learn AI, more than half of all professionals say that learning AI feels like a second job. So if you're a woman and you're already have a job and then a second job caring for your kid or your aging parents or household labor, the expectation that if you can't fit learning AI on top of that, that you are somehow the failure, again, these are clearly institutional issues. And so I think, as you said, Annie, when women are

being sold, us not using AI as our individual problem to fix rather than something that is the result of institutional failures. We're doing the same girl boss thing all over. We're locating the problem in an individual women's choices rather than the systems that produce those choices or problems in the technology itself. Right. So we've touched on this, But what are these celebrities and influencers actually trying to sell for this? Well, if you ask me, going back to the sort of girl boss of it all, that era really promised you that if you optimized hard enough, if you just made the right choices and did the right stuff, you could work your way out of systemic inequality. And I don't think that anybody out there believes that that actually worked for women. You know, the system did not change because of the girl boss era.

The women who leaned in the hardest did not close the pay gap. Some of those women probably might have had individual gains and individual economic successes and gotten better jobs and better pay and, like, good for them. No shade to that. But those gains were certainly not systemic or meaningful. And I think that women just got better at surviving inside of an unequal structure and in a lot of cases, we burnt the F-out. Like, if I had to say probably my biggest personal takeaway

from the Girl Boss era is that it leads to feeling really spent and burnt out and not really having the energy or capacity to figure out how to get yourself out of this overwork mess that you're in. So I just don't think it actually accomplished the change that we were sort of sold that it would. Oh, no, absolutely not. I mean, again, you get to the end of the 10 steps, whatever they sold you, and you feel like you have failed. Where did I go wrong?

What step was the one that I didn't do it? And you are burning yourself out because it feels as though I have this blueprint now. I paid for this blueprint now. And it's not resulting in what I'm being told and what I was sold and what I see from this person. And I think, Samantha, you made a good point earlier. about for well-off people, you can take your risk and I'm an AI now, I'm in crypto now, or whatever it is. And if you lose money, it's not going to destroy your life probably. But for people, it will. For people who don't have that support, it will. So, no, I think it absolutely

was something that just burnt out a lot of women and did not result in any real success. And something that you mentioned earlier, Annie, kind of along those lines, is I hadn't thought of it this way, but now I'm seeing the real connection to the Tradwife movement because I think one of the reasons why the Trad Wife movement really took off is that movements like this really can take root when women are economically anxious during times of political or social or economic instability and anxiety, which we are certainly in one now. And when people are feeling really burnt out. you know, when I scroll Instagram and I see a picture of a woman in a prairie dress making bread in a lovely kitchen, in a lovely, you know, mountain town, I'm exhausted. I work a lot. And of course that looks appealing. And so I think that AI is sort of the flip side of that. You're saying, okay, well, you are exhausted. You want to have more money so you can spend more time with your kids, if it's not tradwife, maybe it's AI, right? Like, it's the same kind of emotional and financial manipulation that takes advantage of the way that our actual economic and political climate

feels very unstable right now. And so if we're not going to choose to make bread and leave your job and, like, give a man control over your economic future, maybe you'll choose AI. Maybe that's going to be the thing that you choose that you're turning towards. because of this moment of economic instability. Again, it all comes back to the same place, which to me is like manipulation. Right. I mean, it's definitely reminiscent as you were talking about when political times and economic times are unstable, kind of like the stock market. Like it feels like when we were promised with the booming of Wall Street that if you invest in these things, kind of how our parents really, really thought this 401k system, this retirement system

that we're going to have. We're going to put our money in here, which is, like, Annie, you were talking about, like, maybe the last bit of money that you have in praying that this is going to give you tenfold and putting your whole stock into this and then realizing when it crashes and it's not stable anymore, you're the one, those who put everything trusting in this, like, completely are the one that's bankrupt, but it has ruined your life. And the people who are okay are the ones that have told you do this. Yeah. Because they have to build the system up somehow,

and that's taking from those who don't have enough, but are hoping to get that quote-unquote dream. Exactly. As the cut put it, the new ambition is not to scale new heights. It's to cling to what you already have. Don't get replaced, stay relevant, adapt, or die. And I think that really taps into exactly what you're saying, of they're cultivating this atmosphere of fear

to tell women, oh, the worst thing you can do right now is not embrace AI. If you don't embrace AI, you're going to get replaced. You're going to lose all your money. You're not going to be able to economically succeed. And guess what? It'll be your fault because you didn't listen to me about embracing AI.

Like, it is creating these circumstances that, to me, do not but lend themselves well to people adapting to new things or adopting new things. Like the way that this is being foisted on people is not a reasonable way to get people to try a new thing. Saying, if you don't try this,

you're basically going to lose all your money and it'll be your fault. It does not create the conditions of people wanting to embrace this thing. And I guess if I could make one big point, it's like, I think if these women are actually interested in having women try AI, I don't think that women

should be fearful of AI or like think that this technology is like outside of our reach or grasp because it certainly is not. But if they're interested, in having more women in the space, there's a way to do it, and it's not this. Yeah. And I, again, it's worth asking these questions. It is worth asking why women do hesitate to adopt AI. And I think instead of, as you said, Bridget, instead of turning the conversation to, oh, here, women, you need to be brave and get on board or else. And even with the stock market,

Samantha. The same conversation happened to the stock market. Women are too afraid to invest. They don't know what to do with money. It is the same conversation that we see a lot where it is reflecting the blame back on women as opposed to looking at the system and why it is that women are more hesitant because we've been burnt before. There are reasons. Isn't everything basically like, aren't women just stupid pieces of trash who are to blame for their own? problems. It doesn't matter if you're talking about the stock market, AI, our economic situations, marrying an abusive guy. It always comes back to, aren't women stupid pieces of crap that can't be trusted with their own agency, really? Further proof, see? And just to like wrap it up, listen, I'm not saying don't use AI. Most of us are probably interacting with AI already. Sometimes you're acting, acting. interacting with AI, like invisibly without even really knowing. The question is not whether

these tools can be useful or not. The question to me is like, who is controlling them, who is profiting from them, who shaped them, who built them, and who is being expected to absorb the harm that they sometimes can produce. And so when the same women who are selling you AI now are the same women who were selling you lean in and girl boss and NFTs and crypto. And when that pitch is identical, all of this urgency, all of this framing of you don't want to be left behind, maybe the right response is not to just reach for your credit card and play ball. Maybe a reasonable response is to ask, like, who is benefiting from me believing this and why are you selling this to me right now? You know, the questions that the Luddites were asking, I think were some of the right questions.

And there's nothing wrong with having the discernment and the pattern recognition of really recognizing the track records of the women who sold us on the fact that what they were selling could actually improve conditions materially for women when they were selling us Girl Boss and Crypto and all of that when they're now selling us AI as the thing. There's nothing wrong with being like, wait a minute, haven't we been through this before? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Everything feels so cyclical, but we need to keep, we need to remember what's happened previously and avoid it happening again. Yes, have these conversations. Well, Bridget, as always, we could go on and on. There's so much to talk about with this conversation. But for now, thank you so much for being here, as always. Where can the good listeners find you? You can listen to my podcast or Arnergles on the internet. You can pre-order my new audiobook coming on July 17th called

love at first prompt. You can get it at love at first prompt. And you can follow me on Instagram at Ridge at Marine, D.C. Yes. Go do all of us stuff if you haven't already listeners. If you would like to contact us, you can, or email is hello at stuff I never told you. We're on Blue Sky at Mom's Up. Podcast and on Instagram and TikTok at Stuff I Never Told You. We're also on YouTube. We have some merchandise at Cotton Bureau, and we have a book you can get wherever you get your books. Thanks as always to our super producers, Chandler and Casey and our executive producer, Maya.

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