TrueLife - Chrissy Benciveng - Innovative A.I. Education

Episode Date: February 20, 2024

One on One Video Call W/George https://tidycal.com/georgepmonty/60-minute-meetingSupport the show:https://www.paypal.me/Truelifepodcast?locale.x=en_US🚨🚨Curious about the future of psychedelics? Imagine if Alan Watts started a secret society with Ram Dass and Hunter S. Thompson… now open the door. Use Promocode TRUELIFE for Get 25% off monthly or 30% off the annual plan For the first yearhttps://www.district216.com/Chrissy BencivengLadies & Gentleman..Chrissy Bencivenga is a dynamic force at the crossroads of education, business consulting, and AI innovation. With a unique blend of passion, innovation, and neurodivergent brilliance, she brings a fresh perspective to problem-solving and leadership. Chrissy's non-linear thinking and commitment to inclusivity drive her to dismantle outdated systems and champion diversity in the workplace. Armed with expertise in recruitment strategy, leadership development, and AI technology, Chrissy is a catalyst for change, dedicated to fostering belonging and amplifying voices in every endeavor. With an insatiable curiosity for AI advancements and a commitment to staying at the forefront of business consulting trends, Chrissy is shaping the future of work—one creative solution at a time. Welcome to Chrissy's world, where passion meets purpose and innovation knows no bounds.http://linkedin.com/in/chrissy-bencivenga One on One Video call W/George https://tidycal.com/georgepmonty/60-minute-meetingSupport the show:https://www.paypal.me/Truelifepodcast?locale.x=en_USCheck out our YouTube:https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPzfOaFtA1hF8UhnuvOQnTgKcIYPI9Ni9&si=Jgg9ATGwzhzdmjkg

Darkness struck, a gut-punched theft, Sun ripped away, her health bereft. I roar at the void. This ain't just fate, a cosmic scam I spit my hate. The games rigged tight, shadows deal, blood on their hands, I'll never kneel. Yet in the rage, a crack ignites, occulted sparks cut through the nights. The scars my key, hermetic and stark. To see, to rise, I hunt in the dark, fumbling, fear. Fearist through ruins maze lights my war cry born from the blaze.

The poem is Angels with Rifles. The track, I Am Sorrow, I Am Lust by Codex Serafini. Check out the entire song at the end of the cast. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the True Live podcast. I hope everybody is having a beautiful day. I hope you're having a beautiful year. I hope you got to wake up next to the person that you love the most and the sun is shining, the bird is singing. Hope the wind is at your back.

I got an incredible guest for you today. Someone who has begun to see the world the way they want to see it, in my opinion. And someone who has let go of the person they were trying to be so that they can become the person that they're supposed to be. Chrissy Ben-Sivinga is a dynamic force at the crossroads. education, business consulting, and AI innovation. With a unique blend of passion, innovation, and neurodivergent brilliance, she brings a fresh perspective to problem solving in leadership. Her nonlinear thinking and commitment to inclusivity drive her to dismantle outdated systems and champion diversity in the workplace. Armed with expertise and recruitment strategy, leadership development,

and AI technology, Chrissy is a catalyst for change, dedicated to fostering belonging and amplifying voices in every endeavor. Chrissy, thank you so much for being here today. How are you? Thank you so much. That was excellent. I love the way you phrase everything. It's so exciting, right?

It's exciting. It's exciting to connect. Yeah. Yeah, I can't agree more. You know, when I started looking over, one of the first things that really brought you to my attention was not only that you're a fellow member of the octopus movement, but the way in which you life has been treating you like all of a sudden you found yourself

with this crossroads and you began to see yourself look back on your past and realize some things about being a nerd divergent and moving into this new world and I was hoping you could show with the audience a little bit about your story about who you were before you became who you are today absolutely I think our stories are what make us right and it's so interesting that I lived a pretty basic life on Long Island, New York, and I worked as an administrative assistant and I was married. And I was overweight at that time and that matters because I have a long history with eating disorders, eating disorder recovery, bulimia, compulsive overeating.

I know it well. I've been a 12-stepper and all of the, all of the modalities to hear. from an eating disorder. And for the first 35 years of my life, that ruled me. So anything else that I did was like, oh, wow, thank God. I was able to get a husband, even though I have an eating disorder, right? Everything that I did was defined by that. And it kept me inside this box of the I'm not good enough box. Everyone else deserves that. I can't have that. That's not for me. And I had this really horrible self-talk. I didn't even, I wasn't aware of self-talk at the time.

I didn't even know it existed, right? I was like, that's my brain, that's my brain talking to myself. This is normal. And I would second guess and doubt myself, my whole entire life. So growing up with an eating disorder comes along with certain sets of challenges when you try to date. And you try to get a job or you try to do anything. Yeah. Because you feel like you have this big secret, right?

And at points in my life, I ballooned up to 250 pounds. So it's not that much of a secret that I have an issue with, you know, just it was very, I found out later that I was pre-diabetic and that I shouldn't have been eating carbohydrates. But having that is my identity as a young, a young preteen and a performer. I was a singer, I always felt that I couldn't get it right. Like everything that I was doing was never good enough. Like my body wasn't thin enough. I didn't get good enough grades.

And I was top of my class. But when you start nitpicking on yourself in that way, nothing you do is ever good enough. There is very little self-love. And basically you're looking to everybody else in your circle and your life for your validation. I was an emotional roller coaster. If people were loving Chrissy and all about Chrissy at the time, I was happy. If no one was around, I didn't know how to self-soothed.

I didn't. I had zero emotional, you know, emotional guidance skills where you can feel the emotions and work through them. And a lot of people don't have that. So I'm not, I'm not, you know, I'm not making it seem like. like I should have been given those things as a child. But as I learned and as I continued therapy, I started to build some skills about loving myself where I was. And I hated that.

I did not want to hear it. I was like, no, no, no, no, no. No, but tomorrow I'll be better. Tomorrow I'll be skinnier. Tomorrow it'll be great, right? So long story short, as I, because I had that underlying affliction, I would either be on top or I would be failing out of college ripping bong hits every day. Like there was no middle ground with me.

And you'll see that's a common story with a lot of neurodivergence. We could keep it together for so long. And then we're like, whoa, what's going on here? I can't conform. I can't do this anymore. And you snap. And I went in the complete other direction. So I always wanted to finish college.

It was important. My mom had passed when I was in my early 20s. And I was like, I really want to go back to college. It would make like her spirit happy, right? So I was bartending at the time. I was doing a little bit of traveling. It was during the time of my life where I was, I was starting to eat a little bit more healthy and understand exercise and how it worked and get, and I was able to get my food compulsion, the compulsive overeating under control. So I lost a lot of weight. I started bartending because someone like me always relies on their personality. That's how I got through school. I was top of my class because I was a teacher's pet.

I'm really good at talking and I'm excited to meet people and I'm excited about content. When it comes to remembering things and tests, sometimes I get tripped up a little bit. So I always relied on my people skills. So I became a bartender. I made a lot of money and I decided to travel. And I went to Spain for the first time. I'd never left the country at like, I think it was 24, 22 to 24 around that time. And I fell in love.

I was like, oh my God, there's this whole other world besides Long Island, New York. I did not understand, right? And a lot of people live that type of life where if your experiences don't lead you that way or you're not, if you don't come from a family that's financially sound, you're not globetrotting. You're not going around the world and getting to experience different cultures. But as it happened, I had a friend who had a house there and she took me along and I fell in love. So I come back from Spain and I had been, I had flunked out of college like I think 12 times by this point. I kept trying to go to community college. My mom wanted me to go so bad and I would like lie that I was going and I would actually sit in the car with my friend and she'd play guitar and

We'd sing songs and we'd get high. I was like, I could not make it work. I just could not do it. So I finally get back into college and I go to, I take one Spanish class in the community college near me. And I did great. And all of a sudden, I was like, this is what I want to do. I'm going to go back to college and I'm going to get a bachelor's in Spanish.

I did not have any foundation for this, but I'm like, I'm going to do it. Okay, sounds great. I go through college. I get the bachelor's in Spanish. And then I'm like, what am I going to do with this? I'm not proficient enough to be an interpreter. I'm not proficient enough to be a translator. And I did not want to be a teacher.

It just didn't call to me being a teacher. And a lot of women get pigeonholed into being a teacher. They say, oh, you'll be off for the summers so you can be off with your kids. How great is that? And it's like, yes, let's have women be around kids all the time. and also build their careers. Yay. So I was like, that did not call to me. So I basically wound up doing a lot of administrative assistant roles. Now, I don't know if you understand, I just found out this year that I have ADHD. So this is new to me. So I kept trying to force myself into companies, you know, at the ground level,

which is usually administrative assistant. And I once again got by. on my personality because I did not have the ability to organize for other people. I didn't, I don't even have the ability to organize for myself. And I'm supposed to be organizing and doing Excel spreadsheets and it's very difficult. So I kept finding myself in these careers that were not aligned with me whatsoever. Then I eventually wound up in a nonprofit because I didn't want to do corporate sales anymore. I just couldn't do it. I'm like, oh, nonprofits, you're not selling anything to anyone. This is great. This is for me. And they had great time off. And at the time, I was married and I was trying to start a family. That was at the forefront. So every career

move that I made was contingent on the fact that, like, would I be available in the evenings to do homework with the kids? And these fictitious kids that I was planning my life around. So I worked at a nonprofit and I supported people with developmental disabilities and I was so excited. And then I went into a period of time that was consumed by an infertility battle. My ex-husband and I, we tried to have children for about eight years. We spent every penny we had. We spent my dad's money. We spent as much, we lived with my father and we were able to save some money. But it was just, you know, like there's this saying that you can't ruin what's meant for you. And I could not get pregnant to save my life.

And I could not ruin what was meant for me because I can look back now and be like, I was not meant to be a parent. And that's fine. And I'm at peace with it. Not even at peace. I'm grateful. I'm so happy that my life is the way it is right now. But when you're trying for something that you can't make happen no matter what you do,

that chasing energy. that is not a happy place to be. That is not a happy place to be at all. It was very, very, it was a beautiful time in my life because I got to learn contrast, right? Abraham Hicks talks about contrast. You have to know what you don't want in order to know what you want.

That's an important part of it. So I worked for probably almost 10 years at the nonprofit. fit. And I decided at this point, I had lost a lot of weight. I was singing out again. I felt really good about myself. And I told my ex-husband, I do not want to try to have children anymore. I don't want to even go down that road. I can't put my body through it. I can't do it anymore. And then I decided to go back to school for a master's in human resource management, which is we'll get to that in a little bit. Because that was going to be me breaking through the glass ceiling, right?

I'm going to, more data entry. What was I thinking? I don't know. I just wanted to make company, I wanted to help companies really focus on their culture. Because I had been a worker from, I would say, just right below middle management. I had been a worker in organizations and corporations for about 15 years now. And I knew how I felt. And I knew that I could help in that.

area because I could connect with people. So I was like, human resources is it. In that time, I did separate from my husband. I went back to school. And then a few weeks later, we entered a pandemic. It was the global pandemic of 2020. And I, everything changed. I was no longer married. That was my identity. I was with with this person for 15 years of my life. It was a huge loss. I was very close with the family. We're in a pandemic and it's my father and I living in Long Island with my dog and I just had to reinvent myself. Right. So how I did that was I went into a little cocoon and because I didn't want to gain the weight back because I had worked so hard on changing all these habits in my life. And there were no gyms open during this time. So I remember

running the streets of my of my town like rocky like didn't and I'm just running I was running and I was like this is not going to happen and I would listen to all these podcasts right I would listen to all these podcasts and all these books while I was making sure that I kept my life together and that I would say was the most influential time in my life where it was the perfectly planned most perfectly planned pandemic. I know for a lot of us, but I was really, I had nothing. I felt so disconnected from what I knew and it was such a sad place to be that I had nowhere to go but up. And I was I was in school at the time and working. So I really was very resilient during this time. And I kept thinking to myself that that the resilience that I have within me is such an amazing thing.

thing for companies to have. Companies have to learn to be resilient. We saw all these companies not ready. My own company included, my own organization, they were not ready to handle the pandemic. They didn't have the infrastructure, the technology. They had people working from home. We were health and human services. It was a mess. It was a cluster FUC guy. It was just a mess. And I was like, wow, this resilience thing really matters in life. You have to be able to shift on a dime. And I can do that and not something that I can bring to organizations. So here I am. I would say early 40s right now.

And I'm breaking through the glass ceiling. I tell everyone at my organization that I'm getting my HR masters. Lo and behold, a position opens up in the recruiting department. There's only two recruiters. It's a pretty small nonprofit. it. And now I have access. I'm learning all this leadership stuff, right? All the jargon that we talk about on LinkedIn. I'm learning all the vernacular and I can say things like organizational leadership and I can walk into these employee resource groups and give my views and tell people what I'm about. And I was just

flying high. I was so excited. I was a recruiter. I was on the fast track to, be in the C-suite. I was so excited that I was able to Google what C-suite meant, and now I knew what it meant, and then I was going to be there. Right? So I made the C-O-O my mentor. I just started talking about the Cotter's eight steps. Like, I'm really good with bringing in change management. And I was like, yeah, we can really transform this organization. Let's do it. I had started to be exposed to DEI work, diversity, equity, and inclusion through my master's program. And that really spoke to me as well. But in the beginning, I think I was using it as a way to just a stepping stone, as a white woman to just get ahead. Right. So people will listen to me. I know something that you

don't. So I was so full of myself at that time. Now, mind you, most of the C-suite did not have master's degrees. And I was rubbing mine in left and right. I was like, hey, did you know I have a master's? Oh my God. I have a master's in human resource management. And then I was, And then I started taking certificate programs that are meant for the leadership to take. And I took the D&I through E. Cornell certificate program. And while it happened at the same time, while I was recruiting people of low income, black and brown people for health care, while I was doing that, I was taking this D&I certificate program. And I was like, oh, snap, white privilege. Like I had not, like, I know it sounds, it sounds crazy in the world we live in, but you only hear what you're ready to hear. And at that point, I was not ready to look at my own biases. So as I started looking at my biases, what do people do when that happens? They go to everyone else and start telling them to start looking at their biases. And they start buying books for all the leadership. I think a week before I was fired, I handed them.

the CEO a book called White Fragility. It's by Robin DiAngelo. It's why white people don't like to talk about racism, basically. And I was going hard. I was like, wow, we need to revolutionize this place. We're so inequitable. Look, you know, do we wait for attrition? Like, what happens here? Right? I'm the new kid on the block, mind you. And I'm like, what are we going to do? We need a DEI program. Guess who has a certificate now? Right. I was so obnoxious. I really, really was. So a week later, and I do stand by all of this, but the spiritual journey really got me to understand that things are the way they are for a reason, right, without judgment. And I was at a very, very judgey stage of my evolution. So I was judging

the leadership teams. I was judging everything. I'm like, why can't we, why can't we do this? Why can't you let me do this? You want me to be an executive, right? Like, I was just, oh, this is the worst part. I would openly say, I'm a female in her 40s who doesn't have children. I have the time and wisdom to spend on this. Do you know how many female friends I've made? Zero at that point, right?

Imagine that. These poor women trying to juggle family life and their careers. And I'm coming around like, oh, yeah, I have, you know, I still basically live life like a 25-year-old bachelor, male bachelor. That's how I live my life now. And I love doing that. But it is, when you come to a place and you're rubbing it in people's faces, it didn't serve me very well.

Long story short, I was actually flexing my time inappropriately because I couldn't get all of my data entry work done. And I wanted to be the CEO during the day and not recruit people that I had to take my work home with me and do the background checks and do the data entry at home. And I was flexing my schedule and I thought I was acting like an executive. I'm like, but you guys do this? You don't punch in. Why do I have to punch in? Right. I'm a recruiter. I have to work around the clock. I'm constantly texting people. Basically, it came out that I was flexing my time and it wasn't approved. It was approved during the pandemic, but I kind of like kept up with it. It behooved me to be able to work whenever I wanted to because now that I know that I have ADHD,

I understand that I have to work when I'm inspired, not on the nine to five schedule, right? That's why a lot of people with neurodivergence eventually become their own business owners or are learning disabilities. Like I have discalculia, the dyslexia of math. So all of this was discovered this year because I was fired and I had time. I had unemployment and I had free health care now. And I had all this time to look into what was going on with me. And it was amazing. So it was the biggest blessing in disguise.

It was, I thought the pandemic was good. My firing was amazing. But it wasn't until I meditated for months straight to find my purpose. that I woke up one day and I had been avoiding everything AI. I really had. I was like, I just got a master's in HR and you're telling me they're, we're not even going to have jobs in HR or the majority of jobs in HR in about five years, maybe even sooner.

I couldn't wrap my head around that. I'm like, what am I going to do besides sing, which is great. I'm a professional singer. I love it. But I want to do everything. I want both. I want both. I want the career and I want the singing, right? So so let me pause you real fast because I want us to stop for a minute and talk about what it's like to be fired. I know what that feeling is like and on some level

you know, when you're when you're walked out of a building by security in front of everyone that's meant to be a way to show the rest of the people don't do this. You know, it's it's meant to be humiliating those for at least, least for me on some level, there was this weird mixture of liberation and humiliation. And I'm just curious if you found that. And can you talk a little bit about like? What was it like? Was it like, oh, shit.

Like, I messed up right here. Or I shouldn't have done that. Or were there some times where you really thought about what happened? Maybe you could talk about the period directly after being fired. I was thrown into direct victim mentality. You know? Right. I couldn't believe that happened to me.

me. It was a big fall from grace because I was not only the recruiter. I was the singer for the agency. We supported people with developmental disabilities. So I would go around to different sites with someone who played guitar and I would perform for everybody as well as be the recruiter for the agency. So there wasn't a person in that agency who didn't know me. I made sure that I was known and now I was not. I was I was known for being fired. And it bruised my ego in such a way that I'm so happy that it happened to me because I can laugh about it now. And I know that I never want to get into a situation where I go around, first of all, I can't fit into the box of the typical work force. I have to work in a consulting aspect. That day in and day out, just being there, people

watching you to make sure you're producing and cascading goals. It's just too much for me to be, I couldn't be creative. So I was so happy that that happened. But it was, I started talking about it right away. I have an Instagram account for my music and I have a hot tub. So I hopped in my, I was the middle of winter. I hopped in my hot tub and I started this like vlogging called hot tub sessions. And I just talked about what it was like being fired. Honestly, how and all the realizations that I came to and the fact that we brush everything under the rug, I talk about things like an eating disorder and infertility and being fired very openly.

And I do it because I want other people to feel free to talk about it as well. we have this this societal rule, this unspoken rule that we're going to just brush everything under the carpet. It happens in our families as we're growing up. We're not going to talk about things. We're not going to talk about our experiences. And I honestly, there's, I always say the word fired too. I never say let go. I don't even say terminated. I'm like fired. I was flexing my time. inappropriately and speaking out against bias in the workforce and that got me fired and that's okay it's so okay you know for the first time i will say i was able to build my worth not based off of my performance right and and it's even hard for me now to not be performative because we're all

Sometimes you have to be performative to get your word out there, right? So it's about finding that authenticity in all of it and not shape shifting too much or masking. I always try to just be real with people and let them know that when people say they get divorced or they got fired, I'm like, congratulations. Yeah. Right? And I'm like, that's really great. You did it. Yeah, you did it.

Congratulations. I'm so excited for you. Yeah, I heard, there was a quote I heard a while back, and I forgot who it was from, but it was something along the lines of. We should be congratulating people that get in a fight or get fired because that means you stood up for something you believed in. And regardless of what it is, you know,

when people get fired or when they get in trouble in the societal, I'm not saying that for some sort of violent crime or something like that, but look, it's imperative to, find your voice. It's imperative to stand up for what you believe in. And when you begin speaking your truth, it's not that maybe it's not that you did something wrong. It's that you're making everyone around you really uncomfortable. And that's what I find happiness to a lot of people look at it. It's not so much that they're doing something wrong. It's that people are starting to listen to them. And it's ruining the method of production. You know, it's like, hey, this person

is starting to make a lot of sense over here and they're threatening these people. Get rid of them. And that's the first step is like, and it takes a little while. figure this out, but you should be congratulating yourself because when you do that, you've just taken the first step towards the person that you can become if you're willing to take that pathway. So I love hearing it. I love that you say congratulations. Thanks for doing that. Yeah, it's really important. And all of that taught me. You know, I was also developing a mindfulness and meditation practice throughout all of it.

And at the end of the day, this is how I look at it. I know that I needed to work on the racism that lived inside me. What other people do is really none of my concern. They're playing their part in the ecosystem. I wanted to be able to genuinely connect with people of the global majority. So for me, that meant entering classes that are. deemed anti-racist classes. I don't like saying anti-anything, but it was a way from, because I don't want to fight against anything, anyone who's under, who has done a little bit of

work in the spiritual realm or in mindfulness, you're not fighting against things. You're letting, you're letting go, right? I'm letting go. I do not need other people to act a certain way for me to be happy anymore. That was four years in the making, four, four hard years. of journaling and meditation and thinking I have it figured out and then getting humbled and then thinking I haven't figured out, getting humbled again and realizing that if I go on with this anti-racist DEI career, I would be going into places for the rest of my life saying you're wrong, I'm right. You have to listen to me. Look at all this information that I have to prove that I'm right. I have statistics, right?

And that doesn't feel aligned with my soul either. I had, if you're familiar with Abraham Hicks, my father and I went to Abraham Hicks. And Abraham Hicks is a channel. Esther Hicks is the channel that Abraham comes through. And it's a lot of just, if it resonates with you, you know. Abraham just speaks. And the words that come out are like, wow.

So mind-blowing. It could be along the same lines of Wayne Dyer, Gary Zukoff, even Gabby Bernstein, if you're talking about spiritual people in modern day culture. And it has a lot to do with not letting other people affect you, right? And not trying to impose your will on other people. So I had gone to Abraham Hicks with, you know, not everyone gets to speak, but you can. go with an intention. And my intention was this. And I wanted this question answered, and I did get it answered there, although I didn't go up to ask my question. My question was, if all I see is racism, am I creating more racism? Because I know I live by the fact that your thoughts control your

reality. This is law for me. And everything that I've attracted into my life in the past, good, bad or indifferent has been a direct correlation to where I was energetically. So I was spiritual and I was in all these anti-racist courses and I didn't, I couldn't, where's the intersection of that? Right. We talk about intersectionality all the time. It was really, really hard because at the foundation, I wanted other people to change so we could have the world that I thought would be right, right? And what is right? And I let go of that really quickly. I was like, I cannot do this anymore. So I was basically thrown into a period of time where I had zero direction. I did not know what I wanted to do. And fortunately, I was able to take the time with singing and cashing out every last 401K.

I ever had, taking the penalties. I traveled the world with my father. It was great. We've, we've had a great year. And it's a testament to my father because he's an 80-year-old. I do want to talk about my father because he's an 80-year-old Vietnam veteran who worked on Wall Street for 38 years, retired after my mom passed almost 20 years ago, and harbored a lot of PTSD, a lot. But, But he was good. He was a good masquer. And it wasn't until I took up spirituality that he did too. And he started meditating.

And we are an amazing father-daughter duo now. We are meditating all day long. We're manifesting. We're living in our abundance. He even did the, I call it liberation work, like the anti-racist work. And he was reading Martin Luther King. And he was like, did you know this, Chris? It was such a beautiful thing.

The man was born in 1944, raised in Brooklyn, and he can turn around and be like, wow, we are really racist. And he's like, you know, like, and not overtly, but like it lived inside us. And to see him go through that transformation with me, I have, I, he's like my ride or die, right? My father is my rock. And we are taking on the world together. So I mentioned that because I get to live. I'm so, I have so much gratitude. I get to live in this house that was paid off in 1990 something and I don't have a lot of overhead. So I have a lot of time to figure out what I'm doing. And I finally did. I teach AI in libraries. That's that's where I've landed and it is fantastic. I love it. I think that your story and so many people's stories are a story of liberation, whether it's liberating from some limiting ideas

that you've had in your life. Maybe it's not, and they're not even, I've found that a lot of the ideas that we have are not even our ideas. They're just conditioned into us at an early age. Like there's these wedges of division that are pushed down between us to stop people from actually doing what they want to do and becoming obedient workers. And however people can find a way to liberate themselves from being an obedient worker to being someone who is self-actualizing, whether you are finding something you're passionate about and giving back to the community.

And there's never been a better time than right now. You can look around and see the old paradigm crashing like a wave on a beach. But what happens when that wave crashes is all of a sudden there's a moment of calm and you can get out into the water. It's happening right now for everybody. And if you're willing to take a chance, if you're willing to believe in yourself or look at your family and see them as a mirror of yourself or an echo of yourself and be like, look, here's what my family did. This is the road I'm going to go down unless I start taking these other steps. And it's amazingly the kind of changes that happen when you start taking those steps and influencing people. How did you get to this AI?

Like some people look at AI and they're like, oh, man, I've been a truck driver for this long or I've been a truck driver for this long or I've been a. I've been an HR for this long. Like, was it daunting to get into there? Or did you feel the AI kind of called to you? And it was sort of like a dance and a relationship in which you bobbed and weaved and kind of had a romantic relationship with on some level? It definitely called to me. Like I said, I was not interested in learning it.

And if you're on Instagram at all, all you see are ads. And the ads go something like this. It's like someone in a robot suit. And they're like, you're not going to lose your job to AI. You're going to lose your job to someone who knows AI, right? And it's just very, it's like, I've got 10,000 prompts that you can follow and you can grow your Instagram page and blah, blah, blah. And it was like, oh, what? I don't understand.

And I actually back in the day had used Chad TPT when it first came out. Someone told me about it. And I tried to use it for recruiting to help me be a better recruiter. And then I got fired and I was like, nope. I just didn't, I didn't even go back to it. So what happened was I had started listening to a podcast. It's called Everyday AI, Jordan Wilson. He's on LinkedIn.

He is such an amazing resource. I started listening every day. And you know, you have to, in the beginning, you have to fake it until you make it. You have to just start listening even though you don't understand the language that they're speaking. You just start, right? And I started with Everyday AI. And I also started with a course by bot builders. They have power.

I can't even explain. They have a million names. But they were able to with this course. And this was a paid course. And it was video modules. I need video and audio to learn. So it was video modules all about what generative AI is. It breaks it down to the most basic.

of concepts. We're talking text to text, text to image, text to video. And then what I started doing was I started buying apps that would put it on my phone. Because at that point, I didn't realize Chad GPT didn't have an app because I had heard a couple months earlier that they didn't. But now they did. So I bought a couple of apps that were large language models, but I was like, are you chat GPT? I'm asking these models. I'm like, who are you? Why are you helping me? But I was able to write all my content. So I'm a person who speaks and writes in stream of consciousness. I'm all over the place.

Clearly you're having a conversation with me. I bring it back around. But I write in a very ADD manner. And it was able to take my brilliant ideas and then put them into this beautifully flowing, whatever you would call, like paragraphs. It was so amazing that I was using it for all of my Instagram pages because I have a lot of different interests. And I love speaking my mind on video. That's something that I just really enjoy doing and I can do it.

And a lot of people can't. So I'm like, if I have this skill, let me do it. So I have a bunch of accounts and I just started using it especially for LinkedIn. So I've always hated LinkedIn because I don't like reading. I read at a fraction of the rate of the normal person or what's normal anyway, but I'm a very slow reader and I have zero comprehension sometimes unless it's read to me. So I was only able to really start posting on LinkedIn the way I wanted to when I started using chat GPT. And then what I started doing was I started utilizing all of them because I was learning about the Every day AI will tell you all about each AI application that's coming out.

So as Gemini came out, I'm using Gemini to create prompts. I learned how to use Discord. I learned how to use Mid-Journey. So now I can make mid-jorney art. And what I'm doing with inclusion with that is amazing. I'm making people, when you put woman, it comes out with someone who looks like a white playboy model. Every time that you put, make a woman, right? And I was like, oh, man, how do I add a little meat on this woman?

And I'm crafting different prompts to create plus size models. I'm crafting different prompts to create transgender models. And I put them in like a watch ad. So I'm creating all these cool, different, diverse people. And I'm making them look like they're the salesperson for a watch or a car. Right? Because you don't usually see people who are marginalized in these ads. I mean, you do, but everyone does adhere to certain, like, we call it the white beauty standard, right?

So I was having so much fun playing around with all of this and just experimenting. And before I knew it, I know how to use almost all of the major generative AI service. out there. And a lot of them are paid services and I just keep, I'm like, it's all for learning. I just keep swiping the credit card. I'm like, I'm going to learn this. I'm going to learn that. And as I meet people and as I talk to people, I know that it's my job to teach it to them, whether it's paid or not. Because the flip side is that I woke up one day. I told you, I had seen a quote. I was definitely avoiding AI completely. And then I saw, a quote, the magic you're looking for is in the work you've been avoiding.

And I think D-Pen, and don't quote me, but it's a motivational speaker who said it. And it was like, oh, wow. So I woke up one day with this download from the universe. You have to learn AI. I'm like, okay. Then I'm in the car driving the next day. And I'm like, why me? Why AI?

Why do I have to learn this? I don't. This is so much. to learn. I hate technology. Why? And the voice told me, the voice told me because you're likable. Because you're, you know, I'm a bridge. I'm not, I'm willing to speak to people even though I'm not polished, even though I'm going to, I'm going to go off on tangents. People love to listen to me. And people love learning generative AI from me, like my father, my 80-year-old father. uses Bing on his phone all day long and just asks it questions. And he doesn't even Google

anymore. That's what I'm trying to do. In my teaching, I try to get people, because it's a skill you have to learn. It's prompting. You have to learn how to talk with the technology. I might not be super techie, but communication is my jam. So in the future, what we're going to need are people who really know how to get the output by asking questions, by delving further. And I can teach that to people in, I can break it down into a little, a more simplistic way. So they're not so overwhelmed by what it means. And I think that's very important right now because people are going to need some information so they're not as scared. I'm not scared of anything. I've been through so much in my life. I feel that Terrence McKenna, right? You jump, when you jump, you're jumping into

the feather bed or when you're thrown off the cliff, you're actually, so each time that I've jumped, it really has been a feather bed, jumped or pushed, right? And I understand that about myself, but a lot of people are not connected with their source in that way. And they have a lot of fear about what's really going to happen. You had mentioned we can see it breaking down around us and before us. There are so many people who cannot see that. You and I can see it. We can see it in the octopus movement.

There are a lot of people who do not see that right now. And that became very apparent when I do my networking for HR. I still do all my networking. I go into Manhattan. I'm going on an HR cruise next week. I hobnob with all of the executives in HR, and I can tell you 100% they do not have their finger on the pulse of what's about to happen. And that's okay, but I'm here to kind of help them. We, you know, you talk about fitting in the box, right?

And they just want people to work for them that can just do the tasks. And that isn't, and a lot of people want to just be told what to do. But here's the problem. Those jobs are going to become few and far between. Right? So there's going to be so many changes. How can we help people? I see this as an opportunity.

Okay. We're burning. I was like, burn down the workforce. Burn it down. It's happening. I want to be there for the rebuild. Yeah. And it wasn't very equitable before.

But now everybody's got a cell phone. And I can go into a lower income area in Long Island. and teach a class with just a cell phone and teach them how to use generative AI to answer business questions. If you want to start that T-shirt company you always thought about, or there's e-commerce,

or maybe you think about drop shipping. There's all these ways using online, the social media and all the things that are coming up, you're able to start your own business and you don't have to fit into that mold anymore. You're seeing it more and more and you're seeing it amongst diverse groups of people. And I tend, I gravitate towards people, like black creators, that's who I want to learn from. That's, that's where I need, that's my blind spot.

Right. As a white-bodied person in this world, it behooves me to partner and learn from people who are different from me. And that's where the DEI comes in to everything. So I have, have this whole big mission and vision and how it's going to pan out besides me doing courses and libraries, I'm not exactly sure, but I'm excited to find out. Yeah, I think that AI is like the great leveler, regardless of what color you are or race you are or religion you are or what socioeconomic background you're from, AI provides you a tool that's like having your own think tank. And the fact that you can think different is what's going to be the catalyst to propel you into a world that is different. And it's very liberating to think that now the people that see the world differently, be it the way they were raised or be it the way they, however they see the world, like they can now bring that vision to life.

And it's going to make the world much more colorful. It's going to make the world much more interesting. It's going to make the world better. The fact that everybody can play now is like, and there's tons of people that are going to need help adjusting because not only are we adjusting the people that can make it to the top, but we are adjusting identity. And you have been through identity and understand an identity crisis

when you are taken away from this world of having enough, you know, and you lose your job, so many people's identity is tied to what they do. And if you're someone who's currently in the white collar world or has a really good job doing something that is slowly being eroded by the world of artificial intelligence, you're going to lose your identity. You're going to lose who you think you are. And that can be hard to do, but you should, it's imperative that you embrace it because if you only are the thing you do, you're limiting, you are living a limited life. you're so much more than the thing that you do. Like you're a daughter, I'm a husband, a father, a son, a friend, a podcaster, an author, a reader, like you're everything.

And when you just embrace this little narrow idea of who you are, no wonder you're so unhappy because you're so much more than that. And I can't wait for the rest of the world to catch up and see, hey, this thing breaking down, it's beautiful. It's fantastic. And we should be welcoming it, trying to accelerate. Is that too crazy? I think that's what I'm doing.

I'm trying to accelerate it, but I'm also bringing in the ethical component. Yeah. There's always going to be people who are going to abuse it, right? I'm not looking, I'm not looking to copyright. I'm not looking. We're going to see a lot of that coming down the pike. I mean, the New York Times is suing Open AI in Microsoft right now as we speak for copyright, right? Like there's, we're going to, we're going to see this happen.

But if we stay in our lane and use it to propel the ideas that are inside of us, us as an assistant. It seems like a winning combination to me. And it's just where the world's going anyway. So when people say that they have fear about it, I don't trust it. Like I don't talk to Alexa because then it has my information. And, you know, to me that doesn't make sense because the world's going in that way anyway. Like that's why talking about politics to me seems like the biggest waste of energy ever.

because I'm like, do you have a direct line to the White House right now and you're talking to, like, do they care about what you think? I think it's very funny because people will talk and talk and myself included. I was there, right? I was getting involved in all sorts of politics with the stand I took with my organizational career. But at the end of the day, the system is going to system. It's going to do its thing. And I don't want to judge the system anymore, right? And I've learned to accept the system and know that they're all playing their part. So they're fulfilling their soul purpose. What about me? Am I fulfilling my soul purpose? Am I focusing so much on them that it's keeping me from my soul's purpose?

And that's, to me, that would be the biggest disservice to myself and my higher self or whatever source you want to bring into it. I just, and for me, it's important that I stay in my lane and I talk about why can't I find a company that's inclusive? I'm DEI and I was like, I was so like, I was so victim and I was like, they don't exist. They're the unicorn, right? I learned about it in school, but now nobody wants to hire any DEI professionals and I was so down about it. And then I realized that you, it's so cliche and I say it all. the time, but you really have to become the change you want to see in the world. Yes.

Right? So when I'm manifesting and I'm thinking about my vision, I'm picturing such an inclusive roundtable. Maybe it's not even a table anymore. Maybe we're just sitting around a tree, right? Definitely tree hubber, vivy girl over here. Maybe we're sitting around the tree, but it's diverse. Maybe we have different people of all different abilities, all different.

And I want to create with that group of people. I want the most diverse group of people. I want to know what they have to say. And I always say to myself, I don't understand why a company's main goal isn't to have happy workers. Like I never could get that. I didn't understand how cool would it be

if you own a company and everyone loves working there? Like doesn't that sound like the best thing ever? Because I'm not driven by money. I'm not even driven by like comparison culture. If I judged my life on what everybody else had, I would, oh, it's a horrible place to be. And it creeps in wherever we go, the comparison culture. But at the end of the day, I have to do this for myself and for the people who come into contact with me. I'm not here to point fingers anymore, even though I want to.

It's very easy when you're from an enlightened place and you're like, wow, It's so great over here. It's very easy to say, you should come here too. But who am I to interfere with that person's soul journey and their sole contract? Right? Like, who am I to interfere with that? Maybe they signed up for that. Maybe they signed up for a life that's unawakened and working in an office and a nine to five.

Maybe they wanted to see what that was like because there's another life coming. and I know I'm very esoteric with my different lives here. But it's just accepting, letting go, and allowing. And I try to embody that every day. And some days are better than others. Yeah. It's well said.

It's comparison culture and judgment. And, you know, for me, I found psychedelics to be really helpful in getting this third person perspective of what's going on in my life, whether it was dealing with abuse or whether it was dealing with relationships or whether it was dealing with, you know, thoughts that weren't serving me or negative self-talk. Like, it just really helped me gain perspective and learn from nature and just become a better

person. I'm wondering, what is your relationship with psychedelics? Oh, I love mushrooms, psilocybin mushrooms. I, I microdose pretty regularly. Nice. I go on cycles and nothing and nothing is, you know, some people really follow a strict rule. I do everything intuitively. So during the pandemic, I got into them pretty significantly where it was more like a macro dose.

Nice. And I'd go out into the woods by my house and I'd take my bike. And I would just bike for hours. I'd bike down to the docks. I'd bike back through the trails. And I got to be honest. I got to out myself a little bit. At first, I was doing it to be cool because there was a guy that I liked who thought it was

really cool that I was into all of this. So I would go out on these journeys and I'd take pictures of the trees and sunsets. I became obsessed with sunsets. It really helped me, honestly, develop a relationship with nature. I didn't have one before. And like everything else in my life, I was led there in the most convoluted way. Just to be cool, right? I wanted to be cool and different and very fun and vibey.

And what I found was that I am obsessed with nature and I can just sit for hours and look at a tree and just be in the energy of a tree or a sunset. Oh, my God. Sunset, sunrises. I started paddleboarding. So I go out onto the water. I would say May through October in Long Island, you have some good. you have some really good paddle boarding weather. And I would just sit out on my board, micro or not.

You know, I'm a big fan. And I would just watch. I would just sit, listen to music and just watch everything around me and just feel the energy. It was really important for me to tap into energy because if you don't speak energy or understand it, I lived probably about 40 years of my life, not even recognizing that this world is really vibrating. And if we really want to, we can tap into that energy. So I try to do it all the time now from wherever I am. I'll just drop into a meditation and like zap myself with energy.

And I, believe me, I was an atheist before all of this. I was a Catholic to atheist. None of this would have made sense to me. and I always say I would not have been able to stomach what I say now a couple years ago. I would have been like, who is this crazy person? You know, but it's where I'm at. I love it. I love being tapped in to the spiritual world or the energetic world.

I love it all. I can literally, I don't watch television anymore. I stopped about four years ago. I think that's a common thing. where I was done, I didn't realize I just wasn't one day I wasn't able to watch it anymore. You know, and I think when you're in a marriage too that's unaligned with your soul, a lot of couples, that's their only thing that they do is watch television shows together. And that's the only thing I really had in common with my partner at the end of our marriage.

And I was like, I don't even want to be doing this at all. So I just stopped, right? I stopped watching TV. I enrolled in a master's program and I'm like, I'm done with TV. But it was my way of separating from all those energies that were not serving me. I didn't know that then, but I know it now. So the fact that I don't watch television, I'll just listen to a podcast or listen to books or get out in nature. Some people think that that, like, if I would have told 20-year-old Chrissy that, I would have been like, your life, I would have looked at me and been like, Oh my God.

That sounds horrible. How do you handle a life like that? It would sound horrible to me to not know what's going on with pop culture. And I don't now, right? Unless somebody tells me, I don't. I didn't even know it with the Super Bowl. I got to be honest. Yeah.

It's so amazing how we comparison culture seems to lead to a way, in which we live through fictional beings, characters on television. Like we fully give away all our authority, we give away all our authenticity to pretend to be happy and compare ourselves to someone who is an actor or an actor. Just think about that word, you're an actor? What does that mean? That means you pretend to be somebody that's real.

I'm somebody that's real. You're somebody that's real. Way better than an actor. It's so mesmerizing. And I think that most people get to this spot on their journey where they're like, I'm so much more than I've given myself credit for. And when you get there, you realize like all these distractions are just that. They're there to distract you from becoming the best version of yourself. Like you should love yourself.

You're an amazing person. And everybody listening to this and the sound of my voice or Chrissy's voice, there's something so amazing about you. My friend Sean over here in the comments is talking about life. And I bet you Sean is an amazing individual. I bet if he takes a moment just to sit back for a minute and realize the miracles around him, I bet you a big smile creeps onto his face and he's like, that guy George and Chris, you're right, I'm awesome, you know what? Yeah.

If you just begin to, like you said, allow and tap into that energy, everything else falls away. And the picture, you separate the noise from the signal, right? Mm-hmm. Yeah. And I will say, in addition to the self-love journey that I was on, my gratitude journey is what really led me to my purpose. And that I didn't realize, I thought I practiced gratitude until you sit down every day and make it your point to meditate on gratitude and just focus on the things that are going right. That's powerful. That's really powerful because you don't have to change a damn

thing in your life. You can just love it the way it is, right? Like you can love yourself the way it is and you can just love life the way it is. And that helped me get out of comparison culture in a big way. I'm just loving every little bit of your life, everyone in it, every, and you know what else I learned? This little trick. I want to share it with everybody. When somebody is triggering you, whether it's a partner or it is a boss or somebody,

doesn't matter. if you could take a few days and just focus on their good points. There's good points to everyone. There really is. If you can take a few days and every time that negative thought about that person creeps in, you kick it out. I like, I envision myself punching out negative thoughts. I'm like, I literally punch out negative thoughts.

I don't allow them in my mind because I know that that's different. directly going to block my manifestations, negative thoughts. I know it. I know it to be true. So whenever you're having an issue with someone, if you can really just concentrate on the good parts and don't even let yourself go there. I try to bargain with myself sometimes to have negative thoughts. I'm like, come on, come on, come. Please. Can I please? Can I please just spend this whole car ride thinking about how they've wronged me? Can I please do that? And then maybe I can have a fictitious conversation with someone else and tell them how they wronged me, right? Like what is going on in that mind of ours?

You have to take control. You have to like watch those thoughts from the outside in. That's Michael Singer right there. Watch them out from the outside in. And you have to just stop it. Just no tolerance. No tolerance for the negative thought about that person. And it really will improve your relationship.

I mean, it's a constant. You have to go back. to it. You can't just, it's not a one and done type of thing, but it's a practice that I try to implement in all areas of my life. I just always try to look at the gratitude and the positive things. And that's why I wanted to have a business that is about teaching and empowering as opposed to telling everyone what's wrong with society. I don't know. Sounds better that way. It's a happier place to be. And the happier that I am, the happier the people will be around me.

And that's my biggest, the biggest service that I can do for the world. When I was an activist, I was not very happy. And I understand why people are activists. There's a lot of things going on that it's like nauseating to see the oppression in this world. But when you notice that that's feeding a part of yourself that is a different. that is addicted to negative thoughts. And then you just have a life that's a mixed bag. And I don't want a mix bag of different energies.

I want to keep it positive as positive as possible. Yeah. It's so well said. And I think there's something that can really be heard in the voice of lived experience. And that's why I think your story is so compelling. is that really open and honest and talk about this transition from here to here, but not just the transition of it, like the actual thought process of how it was and how it is now.

You can see, like, there's a lightness about you. Like, there is a real wellness contagion. Like, I'm going to do this thing that empowers these people. Look at this thing with AI. Like, it's so beautiful to see. What, what, I noticed you were working with Avatar. If you could speak to a little bit to what you're doing to helping people build avatars. Oh my God. So first of all, building yourself as an avatar is really expensive. And you know how I know that because it doesn't give you a price on the website. I've looked into it like Synthesio and those things, if I'm pronouncing it correctly. You have to set up a consultation. And then you have, I was like, I don't need the hard sales pitch. I don't need any of that. But what people don't really know is that Canva with Magic Studio Canva. If you scroll all the way down in Canva,

And then you pan over to the right. There's this, there's this like application. And I don't even know if I'm calling it the right thing. But you can just build in it. You can pick from a bunch of different avatars. And you, and I think it gives you about a minute, right? And I was experimenting. I was like, I want to have this person.

I picture my Instagram page as I continue on. And as I continue with a YouTube page on Chrissy teaches AI. I want to make it fun. So I always want, one thing. I always do is I always make sure that everyone knows that I'm either writing with AI or using, obviously, it's not me. It's a, it's an AI avatar, but it's a capability that Canva has. And people don't realize it because they haven't had the time to play around with Magic Studio. Magic Studio is the AI function of Canva. So it's, and it's, if you pay for Canva, you have Magic Studio. It's not an

additional thing. You just have to take the time and filter through and be like, oh, this is text to this. This is in and just kind of play with it. So unfortunately, the only people, the only way people are going to learn AI is treating it like a playground. Right. We talk about it like open AI playground, where people can experiment with things. And the world does it, myself included, I'm always like, well, where's my ROI on this? Right. Like how, who, how many people? people are going to need me to teach them how to how to and it's very easy honestly everything with AI is pretty easy it's about knowing where to go for the information it's about knowing what website to go to it's why i try all the different websites and all the different services or as many as i can

or as many as i can afford it's why i try them and sign up for the free services so i can teach other people say somebody's just interested in art right and and the idea with art is there's two ways to make art. You can make it right in chat cheap, T, but the capabilities aren't as good. And not everything that I'm talking about is paid services here. But you can also make it in mid-jury, additionally, a paid service. Everything's either between $11 and $21 a month, right? I don't pay for Netflix. I don't pay for any of those subscriptions. What I pay for is AI stuff. So if you're willing to just buy the service and play around with it, there are tutorials on how to, like, Mid Journey is so, it's such a deterrent to people because you have to get on the Discord server first. So you have to like set up an account.

And everyone is so sick of setting up accounts and accounts. And I'm here to tell you, you're going to have to be setting up accounts for the rest of your life. It's an account for everything. So just make sure you save your password somewhere. Don't be in fear that people are going to get your passwords and someone's out to get you and they're going to get your information. Just act. Just start signing up for these things and play around with it. But if we're talking about the major, there's mid-jury for art. There's Dali, which is now right, it's integrated right into chat, TPT, the paid service.

And what I do, which is really fun, is I will have Dali. make me a picture right in chat ch pt because they talk about you have to come out with these amazing prompts for this artwork right and i'm i don't want to come i want the shortest i want the straight line between a and b i want the beautiful creation but i don't want to have to put in as much that's what a i's about you get all this amazing output but you don't have to put that much in so what i do is i go into chat t pt and i have it make me a picture and i say something like like create a woman in her mid 40s plus size. And I just put all these different things, right?

And in front of a sunset and I use whatever words come to my mind. Like I'm just basically like vomiting into the chat GPT. And then somehow, some way, it is able to make the picture. But the picture isn't super sophisticated. But additionally, it'll give you a prompt. it'll say, I'll ask it. I'll say, can you make me a prompt for mid-journey? Now, once you're up and running on mid-journey, it's not that hard.

You just have to practice with it and maybe watch a YouTube tutorial. You take that awesome prompt that you got from Chad GPT or Gemini. Gemini does good prompts too. And you throw that into Mid-Journey. And now you get this beautiful ornate image. Then you can take that image and bring you. it over to runway and runway makes it into a video so that's where we're at that's how that's the progression check we got text we got pictures and then we got video runway will will add some waves and

movement to that art right so once you're there now you have you can make an ad campaign for a product there's a lot of different things the one thing you have to know about the mid-journey art and the dolly art and all the art and all the video creation, it cannot do text. It cannot get your, say it's like cup of Joe coffee and you're trying to create a label for your specific product. You have to then take that picture, bring it over to Fiverr or bring it over to another and just get your text put in. So there's all these different workarounds that I've just, I spend every day learning about AI. So I'm just a wealth of information and how it comes out is I'm just amassing all this information. And so I'm ready to go when everyone needs it. At this

point, people in my life laugh at me and they're like, oh yeah, that sounds good. I'm like, well, I'll be holding a workshop. You can come to it. Like I work at a yoga studio too. I'm going to be holding a workshop there. I'm literally just in the mindset that I just want to teach it to anyone who wants to listen because you never know who needs help with a business. Right. So that's really where I'm at. But the avatar thing is that one is in right in Magic Studio. You can choose from a bunch of different stock avatars. And if you want to get more sophisticated, I think synthesio is where you can go and get all of the avatars for training. Think of learning and development. That's where my mind was going with this. I can just get this content. Now I had Chad GPT

write me a basic generative AI template that I'm going to use. Now I have my draft, right? I'm going to use it. I'm going to upload it in PowerPoint or Canva. And now I can make the slide deck creation. Now I have that, and you're able to use AI every step of the way. It's just a matter of doing it or figuring it out. And I'm going to be that catalyst for people. None of this is that hard. It's about niching it down and figuring out what you really need for your business. Because unless people are willing to not work like me and spend almost every day in courses learning about generative AI,

which I don't think is feasible for most people, but it's feasible for me. So I say to people, let me be the bridge. Talk to me about what you need, and I'll tell you what is going to be your best bet. And it's going to change by next week. It's going to change every second. We have SORA now.

SORA is the most cutting edge. Open AI came out with text to video. And it is so real life that it's staggering. And there's a lot of, it means a lot in the generative AI world. It's a big step, which means we're closer to general AI, which is like, that's what people are most afraid about. Like the thing, the computer system, the computer that can do everything, right? It can troubleshoot questions.

It can think. It can process like a human. I'm a big fan of collaborating with AI and not put it. not putting our decisions that affect people's lives and money in the hands of AI. We've had many issues with it. The Michigan unemployment system, they effed over like 40,000 people with their unemployment insurance because of an AI mishap. Right?

And the problem with AI is that we don't, it can't trace its steps. It can't tell you why it came to that conclusion. It's called a black box. So until we can actually trace the AI steps, we really, really need to have human oversight. It's so important. AI is biased 100%. Open AI will tell you right on chat, CPT. You ask it, why are you biased?

Why? And it'll say because humans are biased. And I'm trained with your data. So basically saying, fix your rules. race. Yeah. Fix your race and then come talk to me. It's hilarious.

The conversations I have with chat GPT about bias being a DEI professional or retired DEI professional. But yeah, the information is all out there. It's just really hard to find it and niche it down. And it's hard to, like on LinkedIn, you have a lot of people who are speaking from a higher level. So they're sharing what they know, but they also probably have a little bit of background in Python and writing code and understanding machine learning, which is not something that, besides taking a basic course, which I'm in right now, which is telling me what machine

learning in is, what narrow AI is. And I'm learning all the terms. But if you're not from that world. You don't need to know that to use AI. That's what is tripping people up. They think that they need to know how to write code or even if you tell me that AI can write code for me. I'm like, that's great. I don't even know what I would possibly use code for. I got to be honest. I'm a content creator who likes to talk on Instagram, right? So it's all relative. There's something for everybody, but it's about really finding out what you need for your business. Now, the way we're going is corporations are investing billions of dollars in AI technology right now, billions. And only 4% of the Fortune 500 or company and whatever we want to say.

This is sounds really smart and credible. Only 4% of the companies are utilizing it right now. And the people who work at these companies have fears that they're not going to get enough education on AI once it comes out. So these companies are investing billions in AI and everyone who works for the company is like, what's going on here? I don't know how to use it. I foresee someone like me coming in and being like, okay, guys, all right, chat GPT, what are we going to do? You don't know what to ask it, right? I didn't know either.

Now let's talk about what we can do to incorporate AI in our daily life. That's what I do. I incorporate it in my daily life. I don't Google anymore. I go right to AI and ask a question. And there's something called priming it when you're prompting chat TPT. And Jordan Wilson has a great course on this and it's free. It's called prime prompt polish.

And you learn how to ask the question. You prime it. You don't just ask a question. This is when doing big projects. Obviously, if I want to know a salmon recipe, I just ask the question. But when you're doing a big project, like I need a slide deck creation for basic generative AI. You start basic, you start broad, and you tell the bot what you're doing. This is what we're doing.

You're ready to work on this project with me? Yes. Okay. Then you ask the question and then you polish it. So you never take your first answer. You're like, okay, that's great, but can I have it in two different versions? And then you get the two versions. And then you could take one of the versions over to a different large language model.

Take it over to Gemini. Take it over to Bing. See what you get. And then you can take all the different information you get and create something from that. Or copy and paste it right into chat, GPT, and tell it to create it for you. So I'm a big copy and pasteer. It's really important that as we use this, technology that we give the feedback. I let open AI know that it is biased when creating women.

You know, I put in a picture of myself one time to do a flyer. I said, create an image of a woman based off of this image. I put in a picture of myself who a woman who loves teaching AI and has a passion about it. And it spit out this woman that was like, it was like like a hooter. waitress teaching AI. And it's funny. And I was lighthearted about it, but I'm like, hmm, I did not prompt it with anything to,

I did not lead it in any way to over-sexualize the image that was coming out. But it did it anyway, right? So if you think about it and think about who might program AI and the data that it receives and that there is, you know, is a need for more women in AI and programming, you know, STEM, right? So there, it's just so interesting. It's very, and it changes by the moment. And I think that's what I love about it. To bring everything full circle, I'm very resilient and I love being flexible in life. So I understand that

I'm going to create a presentation for AI and I'm going to have to change it three days later because something new is going to come out. So there's going to be constant updates. constant wait till AI is on our phones that's a whole other that's a whole another situation because then it's not being powered the same way and it's we're coming into a very interesting time it's it's it's beautiful it's there's no other way to view it but beautiful because it's here we're here AI is here we're not going to stop using it obviously if the the powers that be are investing billions in it, it's not going away. Right? So let's adapt. I agree. It's, I think it's a great spot to leave it right there. It's, it's beautiful. It's here and let's adapt. Like that should be,

I should write that down. That's a pretty good, that's pretty good. But before I let you go, Chris, first off, I'm super stoked to talk to you. This is really a fun conversation. And I think it's imperative that what's happening, that what has happened to you, so far is about to happen to a lot of people. And I think that they can learn a lot from this discussion from people that have, have lived experience that can sit down and, hey, who's this girl from New York over here? And they can listen to you and see what happened. They can go on and they can learn it.

And they can understand that the first step is the hardest step. But once you take that first step, you gain momentum and the world belongs to the people who are willing to become the most authentic version of themselves, to embrace who they are. and to be happy doing it. And I think you've exemplified that. But before I let you go to it, where can people find you? What do you have coming up and what are you excited about? I'm so excited in the spring.

I'm really rolling it out to libraries in a big way. So obviously, if you're online, you have to come to Long Island and get a library card from one of the libraries that I am presenting at. But other than that, honestly, right now, just find me on LinkedIn, Chrissy Bensivanga. Find me on LinkedIn. Reach out. I just set up a pick my brain.

So I'm going to be linking that. I'm on pick my brain if anyone's on that. I love having conversations about this. And right now, these conversations, all the questions that people have about AI will help me build my business and what people need to know. I'll be able to zero in on what content that people want created by the question. So I just urge people to reach out to me on LinkedIn, Chrissy Ben Savanga. And then on Instagram, I'm Chrissy teaches AI.

Chrissy dot teaches. It's a new Instagram account. If you want to follow it, I'm fun and quirky and myself on it. And I'm just, just as ADD as I've been in this, in this conversation. But when a thought comes to me about how important AI is in our daily lives or how I'm utilizing it, I put it right up on a story or I make a reel with it. and I just get the information out as quickly as possible. So there's going to be a lot of ways to watch me that way.

So just remember my name. I do everything by Chrissy Bentzvanga. It's beautiful. Well, hang on briefly afterwards. I still want to talk to you for a moment. But ladies and gentlemen, go down to the show notes. Check out, Chrissy. Do yourself a favor and start investigating AI.

And remember that whatever happens to you is sort of a blessing and find the beauty in it. And stand up for what you believe. in. It's worth the fight. You're worth the fight. And the world will reward you if you start taking some risks. And that's all we got for today, ladies and gentlemen. Hello.