The AI Lessons Every Mother Needs

0:00And I use it as a tool to really help me live the life that I most want to live. Women listening to this podcast, they're mothers, they're working, they're ambitious, they're busy, they've got the mental lows. How can we use it? Georgie Barrat is a technology journalist and consumer expert who spent her career unpacking how the latest innovations shape our everyday lives. Studies have shown women are adopting it less. However, you're at a disadvantage. So women need to be showing up. What does this mean for the future of jobs? What does this mean for our children? I have the four R's of prompt writing.

0:35That is what I call your AI blueprint and it gives that AI such rich context. What are some of the things that you're like, every mother should be using it for these things? I mean, if listeners could just take one sort of tip home with them. it's before we dive in today's show just a moment to express gratitude to our headline sponsor wild nutrition women's supplements who are a brilliant support to our show right let's get to it georgie i feel like the ai revolution is firmly here but i have this fear of being left behind do you hear that yes okay i feel that and i work in this space okay that is reassuring And I think there is not a single person that doesn't feel like that because it is moving so quickly.

1:21And it's changing fundamentally how we do so much of our work that I think that's a very legitimate fear. And do not worry, there's not a person that I feel like feels like they've truly got a handle on this. So start with that one. Okay, that's really reassuring. And for someone that's just clicked play, why should they stick with us? Why is this so important? And what are they going to get out of this episode? I guess I can speak from my own experience from using this tool really quite heavily in my own life. I came back from mat leave last September and I had all the usual wobbles of being back in the workplace.

1:59Like, has the industry moved on without me? Am I as confident about speaking about these subjects? You know, how do I learn where the industry is at? and I really used AI to help me get up to speed with everything to help me feel more confident role play conversations work out how I want to articulate myself and also work out what that bigger picture is of what I want to do how do I want to spend my time how now that I'm a mum of two, do I want to, you know, spend my working week? What should I prioritize? And I use it as a tool to really help me live the life that I most want to live. And of course, there's all the productivity benefits as well, i.e.

2:50I can do things a lot quicker than what I used to do. I can also offload stuff that I find boring and do the bits of work and life that I find give me more value so it's like that combination of all those different things that's made a meaningful difference to how I'm showing up and how I'm living life something that blows my mind is that I thought AI was like a few years old because that's when it came into my kind of Instagram feed but it's actually not that new is it I mean it's yeah it's really quite old it's it first came around in the 1950s um with alan turing you know asking like should machines be able to think and that was like the very beginning the foundations of ai but it's also been part of our lived experience for a long time um in the 1990s it famously beat a world chess champion which was the first time that we thought wow a computer could actually be more intelligent than a human on this very specific task and then in the 2010s it started to infiltrate all our technology our mobile phones with facial recognition when you're typing on google it's an ai that's working out you know what should be those top search results um but why we're speaking about it now yeah and why it's really burst into sort of public consciousness is the rise of generative ai these large language models and that's your chat gbt's of the world your gemini's your clauds and what that is is it's a large language model which what they've done is they've fed these large language models an enormous amount of data i'm talking like fed it the whole of the internet and like every book that's ever been written and what the ai can do is it can notice patterns in language so i find the best way to get my head around this is if I said to you the cat sat on the mat yes you'd say mat and that's not because you always see cats sitting on mats you just recognize that pattern in language because it's something that's always sort of being told to us from a young age and that's basically what the AI is doing but on a very complicated large scale so it can form sentences and form language in a way that is actually generating something new so it's not following a set of rules it's not going to look something up it's actually generating something based on everything and all the data that it's been fed so it is so interesting so you mentioned chat gbt gemini claude let's get into some of the specifics what are the differences between those which one do you use which one should we be using and why okay so i would say like the big four are Chachi BT, which I think is my favorite.

5:35It's sort of just got the edge. There's Claude. Yeah, my favorite. Your favorite. There's Gemini, which is Google's version of it. Have you used Gemini before? Again, I would say those three are all quite similar with what they can do. And depending on where we are in the sort of cycle of them releasing new products, one may have the edge. So Gemini is really good for creating images. Have you heard of Nano Banana? Anyone speak about Nano Banana? so that's that sort of gemini's image generation um software that sits within uh gemini and it's really good if you're like wanting to i don't know mock up a picture of your interiors or create something that looks like a new headshot or anything like that then you can um use nano banana for that so for me that's where i would probably use gemini over the other tools and then you have co-pilot now co-pilot is microsoft's version yeah it's not as good i personally don't think however what it is good at is often people have access to co-pilot if you're maybe using your work software because it comes with the license that your company already has so sometimes people are using co-pilot because that's just the thing that they have at work okay now which one has the edge they are all pretty similar so i guess my rule especially if you're just starting out out is just go for one tool and just really double down on that one tool you don't need to be learning them all you don't need to be worried about one being loads better because they're much for muchness um but what's really important is not to feel completely overwhelmed by all the different tools out there just start with one yeah because we know that women are adopting this at a 25 percent lower rate yes so tell us about why you think that is and why it's so important and that we kind of don't lean back in this moment, that we actually do embrace it.

7:28Yeah, so studies have shown women are adopting it less because firstly, they're just more conscious of some of the big questions that AI comes with. Yes, that's how I feel. That's how I feel. There's an environmental cost to using these tools. So they're thinking about that. There is an impact on people's jobs. You know, is it going to take away from my work? Is it taking away from other people's work? So they're worried about that. They're worried about their data. is it secure where is this ending up and they're also worried about whether what the um ai is giving you is um actually accurate information because we know it's not always right this ai stuff so these are all really important concerns but what i say is that these are very legitimate concerns that we should all be thinking about so this is not like risk aversion this is risk awareness and a risk awareness that we we should all be bringing when we're using these tools.

8:22However, if women are leaning back, then what we know is that this technology is in neutral. So there are biases baked into this technology because the data that it's been trained on has bias already in it. It's got the biases of the past. And if we do that, then technology fills the void and we still get these same patterns that we've been trying to battle against for the past, you know, 20, 30 years. So women need to be showing up and using this technology because they're going to be the ones that are then going to be shaping this technology. It'll be their data that's being entered into it.

8:59So it's really important that we're using them because we have a say with how these tools are going to be shaped and how they're going to interact with us. But also it's important for ourselves because I promise you right now, you will be in competition, whether you know it or not, with people who are using these tools, who are using them to do work quicker, to get rid of admin in their life, to help them think more clearly, to help produce better work. So if you're not using these AI tools, then you're at a disadvantage. So it's really important that we're upskilling because ultimately these skills compound and the gap's going to get bigger and bigger if we're not starting to use them now.

9:42yeah I think I think it's really good to hear that and it's like a bit panic inducing isn't it so where does someone start let's say they've dabbled with it a lot of people that I know have used it as like a search tool but that is like one percent of what it can do isn't it how do you use it personally and how do you see especially for like you know the women listening to this podcast they're mothers they're working they're ambitious they're busy they've got the mental all those how can we use it to do all the amazing things you were just talking about so I guess the first thing I think you should view your AI tool as is like a new employee so how would you interact with that new employee well you'd want to onboard them onboard them yeah exactly in some way so what kind of information would you give an intern or somebody that was starting to work with you you'd be telling them about who you are who you speak to in your job um whether that is you know you're selling directly or whether there's a particular client that you're often working with you'd be talking about like what kind of brand voice you have yeah any voice guidelines on like this is how i you know do sales pitches or this is how i write emails so you'll be giving them voice guidelines in some way and you'll be telling them about the big bigger picture like this is these are the goals this is what we're trying to this is the you know what we're trying to aim towards and so that is what I call your AI blueprint so if you can create a set of documents and I mean literally just like word documents that have this information in them then you can start uploading those documents to particular chats that you're having and it gives that AI such rich context about who you are how you like to talk and who you're speaking to that the outputs you get from it are going to be so much more specific to what you want to do yeah because if you just write a generic prompt you don't give it any context it's kind of like you're just going to get rubbish in rubbish out right that's exactly it and you can tell because you're a bit like me it's just there's a lot of words yeah there's a lot and we call it ai slop which i think is such a brilliant term but there's just nothing about it that's sort of you know like yes okay if you're just writing a quick email fine if you want it to summarize something fine but this is really taking ai to being your strategic partner to helping you think through stuff to helping you plan that bigger picture stuff um or like come up with a really good idea to help you take it to the next level and that's where you want to be giving it that really rich context so yeah first of all make sure you have those documents that you're telling it do you have those documents saved already do you have stuff like that just part of your business yeah so i i'll upload like we have brand guidelines like kind of visual and voice uploaded that I've got like a plan like a five year vision for what I'm trying to do I've uploaded that there's probably more that I can do but I think prompt writing is where I've got loads better so when I first started using AI I would literally be like can you help me now I know how to write a prompt which is act as a yes dot dot in my world it would be like podcast strategist help me think about this and then I might even say something like you have worked at you know a big podcast for x number of years you have direct experience in xyz use that and tell me how I could so I think I've got way better at prompt writing and then as a result that outputs I'm getting away better absolutely so I have the four R's of prompt writing so the first thing is role which is exactly what you've described there you literally assign it a role that's specific to the task that you're about to do so once you've given it that then you need to give it the reason which is basically the main thrust of your prompt like what are you trying to do why are you trying to get there then you want to ask for the results so again the more specific you are with this the better so I don't know if you were wanting to come up with a sales pitch it's like it needs to be five minutes long I'm going to be delivering it in this environment I want it to hit these particular points, which is being very clear on the result and the output that you want.

13:59And then finally, it's resources. So literally, what documents can you upload to that particular prompt that's going to give it so much more context on what you're after, which is not only your brand voice, but maybe you've done competitor research. You can upload that. Maybe it's a particular client you're going to be speaking to so you can upload documents on who they are and what they're about. And you could get AI to help sort of write that longer prompt for you so that it all like comes together and makes it easier for the AI to really understand what you're trying to say. it's so interesting as you're talking because I'm really thinking it is that mindset shift is that it is a lot how you would work with an employee like how you get the best out of someone on your team or someone you work with is taking that time and I think seeing chat you retia or claude or ever using in the same way is is a big mindset shift hey it's zoe quick one can you subscribe I don't know about you but I do this all the time I find content that I love that is helping me and then it just adds to my mental load that I have to go and find it again.

15:07If you hit subscribe wherever you are listening or watching to this, you don't have to do this. It is just going to show up in your library when you need me most. I will be there. It is completely free. So hit subscribe. You've really got nothing to lose. I think a natural extension of viewing it as your employee is actually starting to use voice with these AI tools. And this is something that I'm such a big advocate for and I promise you if I mean if listeners could just take one sort of tip home with them is to just try using the microphone button instead of typing because firstly it's four times faster secondly there's just like no cognitive friction when you're trying to describe a task to someone instead of writing it when you're writing it it's sort of like you reread it a bit you're having to like there's just quite a lot of like cognitive stuff that has to go on to get it out onto pages if you just hit that microphone button on chat gbt you can go off on tangents you can ramble sometimes i can talk to it like for five ten minutes and it's like this huge chunk of text that it then goes into my chat but what the ai is so talented at is taking all that sort of those muddled thoughts and then synthesizing it and putting it together into a really clear bullet points, or maybe I could try and describe to it the prompt that I'm trying to create and the reason why going through those four hours again, the results I want, instead of having to sort of like format it and really think through, oh, what am I precisely trying to say here?

16:42I ramble, ramble, ramble. And then I say, can you write me a prompt that will be able to produce that output? And then it's the AI that actually then puts it all together and makes it look pretty and says it in ways you're like oh yes oh yeah that sounds very good such a good copy and copy and paste that into a new chat because I can imagine as well as I'm you know often big thinking happens outside of those sort of core work hours and I get my best ideas when I'm like stood at the hob cooking the pasta for the kids and I can imagine having that voice open being like I'm just thinking about this thing and I wonder and talking through it it's like that real thinking partner it really is and my that is just something that's genuinely transformed the way that I've done work over the past nine months you know I drop my little girl off at school and on the way home I just have an idea and I literally open a chat I ask it to maybe summarize it for me so I can copy and paste it into another document or I can put it then into my notes and it just like captures those moments of inspiration in a way that it's easy for me to navigate back to yeah but that's like the sort of positive end of things also it's so good if i have like a moment of anxiety if i have that question that's just going round and round in your head and i think you know we speak about the mental load of being a woman it is all those tiny little pieces that like you know the things where your brain gets caught on it's going on and on and on at you and i think if you can use ai in those moments that right there and then to say this is what I'm thinking and you use it as a self-reflection tool or you use it as a mindset shift I have gone from moments of feeling really quite overwhelmed and a bit you know you just know that you're gonna not spiral to an extreme degree but just you're just getting in a bit of a funk in your head and I can use that tool open it talk to it and it can just sort of talk back to me to a point where I feel like okay I'm feeling better about this situation stupid question when you use voice does it speak back to your type back to you that's actually a very good question and this is why i like chat gpt over the other ones so on chat gpt when you use voice you literally press the microphone button in the chat bar it will just do turn into a sound wave so you can't really see the fact that your sentences aren't really making sense as you're talking and you're not like reading it as it goes along yeah and then it just converts it into text and you get text back i really like that sort of two-way conversation that's happening because I find it a bit weird when it's talking back to me I'm like I've never had that I think that would freak me out and I just you know it's still a little bit like okay right skim that you know I'm I know I'm brilliant I know that that's the best idea you've ever heard it's gonna make me a million pounds but you sort of yeah you can you can basically pick out the best bits that you like that's a good point you raise though because something that I've noticed from using them is that they seem to be unequivocally positive and that doesn't always sit well with me I think the best kind of thinking partners are challenging is would you write that as part of the prompt so I've got an idea about x or I've got a challenge with y here's what I'm thinking challenge me on this instead of saying this is brilliant this is absolutely right and definitely do you have that experience where you're using it and you're like you know you give it that's a brilliant idea then you go well actually that bit doesn't really make sense you're absolutely right yeah that's a brilliant idea as well you're like okay well both can't be true right now it's almost like you're talking to someone with zero integrity who just keeps changing it's so true yeah it's enough to really give you the ick you're like oh come on um yes so asking it to um you know critique your ideas asking it to reply back it's saying like where where are the holes in my argument with this what am i not seeing yeah can you act as a critical mentor that points out how I can you know expand my thinking on this these are sort of like prompts that you should always have up your sleeve to be able to interrogate what you're producing with AI and that's where you get this like dialogue with AI where you start with one thing it gives you an idea you then have your human interpretation on top of it but then you're like I know how I then go to the next level with this I know how to get the AI to help me think critically about this or to give me show me where my blind spots are in this particular place so that's like a really good way of using ai you can actually also change the settings within your ai so it's less agreeable with you you can change the general way that it interacts with you so if it's something that you find just a little bit too much um that's really good yeah you can literally go into the settings and say don't agree with me as much so i want to dive into like specific use cases what are some of the things that you've seen and you use it for that have really helped to free up your time and energy i'm thinking mental load with the kids admin tasks i use it to do like meal plan like what are some of the things that you're like every mother should be using it for these things to just take stuff off her plate yeah absolutely so um when it comes to like running your home and the general sort of mental load that happens with that i find it's so good for helping me meal prep and plan what I need to buy that week.

22:04So I have, again, give it the context. I have like a profile on each member of the family, then dietary requirements, what they like, what they don't like. I also have a bank of all the sort of go-to family recipes. And you've fed that to it. Yeah. I fed that to it. I've got it saved as documents or I've got it saved as a custom GPT. So that's sort of just hardwired into that particular chat that I'm having and I then can feed in our calendars so who's going to be in the house who's not going to be in the house it then can come up with a meal plan for that week but again what I find really annoying is then converting that into something that I then do my online shop with yeah so then I ask it or it just knows that the next step on from that is then to tell me what I need to buy that week organized by sort of categories I'm literally like going through the app it doesn't yet link up to an app just to be yeah and i'm sure it'll come but again i think it's important to flag those moments to people that ai at the moment is not very good at doing you know if you're in the ai app and you're wanting to go off and do a task like speak to my sainsbury's app to upload this to my basket it's still not perfect at doing that so you know there are limitations to what you can do with it but it could certainly organize it also it's like you know Georgie I think you've got all these items in your cupboard so you don't need to add that to your shopping list and usually it's right because it just knows like what I have already so that I find really really helpful um anything like all the school emails I get it can like take out the information from those school emails and tell me if there's any tasks that I need to do from it again it won't so do you copy and paste them or is it in your inbox it's it's linked up So with that particular one, it's linked up to my inbox and I've created a category of emails that is from anything to do with like the school and anything to do around Isla's clubs, all that stuff, you know, just all the different sources.

24:04So you've got it in your inbox. Yes. I'm not there. Yeah. And then it can synthesize that information. Now, it's not going to go off and send emails on my behalf. But as you know, there's just a huge amount of stuff that you probably don't need to be reading that it can just tell me, OK, this is the relevant bit that it knows like who my daughter is, what I'm interested in. And it will just then surface those relevant bits. And is that like a regular thing or do you have to remember to say, summarize what I need this week? Or does it push that to you saying, here's your weekly summary from your school emails?

24:37No, I do it as I ask it. no you can get it so it does it for you automatically i sometimes find that the automatic nature of it though a bit too like i sometimes ignore it i don't i don't know it just doesn't work as well for me yeah maybe once it gets even more sophisticated and it can start to i don't know go off and do actions for me that would be more helpful but yeah personally i don't use it for that and then like holiday planning yes now i planned my whole holiday in half an hour with chat gbt that would have taken me yeah a long time and was it just suggesting sort of the itinerary yeah we wanted to go to south africa we went at christmas we wanted safari so i was like put i was giving it writing those prompts like act as a travel specialist these are the ages of my kids this is the requirements this is what we want can you tell me the best place like i was being super specific and then i was going off myself and researching i didn't book it off the basis of that but just that first level research that takes so long I think I know and it's also it's like juggling everyone's competing needs which I think as a mom that's naturally just what you do but it can be exhausting doing all that the whole time as if you give AI that information then it will only give you the results that tick all that you know I you know one of my kids is gluten intolerant can you recommend restaurants that would work well for that we don't like to be in the car longer than two hours at a time and you make sure that that doesn't happen you know it's it's that level of detail and personalization that really makes a meaningful difference to your workload and admin and then I love going around like if I've got something to do in the house I I don't I'm using an example from last week had to change the filter on my water tab oh yeah and it just you know obviously it's never what I want it to be it's not working I don't really know what I'm doing I just open up the ai tool i go into video mode i show it what it's doing and it literally just talks me through right undo that bit now that's i know so you can use it and that's a really good tip as well i didn't even know you could do video mode yeah video mode is really really helpful videoing yeah but you could do that if you didn't know the name of a plant or if you were turning up somewhere and you wanted some more information on i don't know your menu or something like that you can use it at any point to have that AI insight into what you're doing actually very helpful if you're I don't know if I'm on Canva or I'm using a particular editing software and I just don't understand I'm like where's that button that it says that it needs to be here it will literally talk me through it and say that's where it is oh my god that's so good so we can use it a lot for that kind of mental load yeah family planning meal planning all that all that sort of things are there any are there any sort of watch outs when we're doing using it in that way well I guess firstly is that it can hallucinate and that's sort of the term that's given to AI tools where it doesn't know the answer and what it does is it very confidently and this is this is this is where it gets tricky very confidently gives you an answer and you think that that's fact because it's got so much stuff right is this right that ai will never say i don't know no i know i think well firstly if you prompt it to say um let me know if you're unsure of anything ask me questions if you're unsure of anything so that's always a really good prompt to have up your sleeve to say like if you're unsure ask me questions or tell me that you're unsure so it does it does say that it doesn't know stuff but yes if it doesn't know things what it can sometimes do is it just completely makes stuff up now that is happening less and less um so it's not something that like i don't want people to never trust the stuff that it gives you yeah but it's just something to be aware of and you know what it's really bad at sometimes like maths or like getting the date right on something you know those like quite obvious facts and you can always ask it to tell ask it where have you got that from so you can click through and see the source that you've got it from and sometimes you're like oh that article's like four years old or five years old again one way of sort of stopping that from happening is that you can say in your prompt if you're doing research only look at you know stuff that has been published in the past week yeah whatever it may be yeah so that you're giving it parameters and then it'll go off and stick with that what about ai agents so every time i open this instagram i feel like everyone's like if you're not using ai agents you're behind and it gives me i'm like oh i'm not using i don't know should we be using them what are they so ai agents is when you offload like a whole part of your workflow to it so it means that they go off and actually do something for you that's them sending an email or maybe like putting together literally acting like an employee yes exactly and the technology is starting to get there but it's really quite unreliable i would say unless you're doing very very specific tasks and i would say for most people right now unless you were like really on it with experimenting with these tools the technology isn't there yet with it so don't feel behind if anything i would be really wary if people were giving ai tasks to go off and do without what we call the human in the loop, without them sort of being part of it and checking it and making sure that it is what they want to do.

30:15So maybe these people are trying to sell me their course on how to do AI. I've got a feeling there's, I mean, there's a huge amount of hype in this world at the moment. I feel like, especially in my world, I follow a lot of people who are into coaching, who are into content creation. It just feels like every single post is... And it's very extreme the way people say, you know you could like 100x your productivity you only can do a three-hour working week I don't I just don't believe any of that I think it's it's there's too much hype with it um and ultimately it's not representative of where the technology is at at the moment yes it can help you with lots of different things but what I tell people to do is like zoom in on so I take if you're doing a client call you know there are many different stages of prepping for that call than actually being on the call with them where you could have an AI note taker that's taking away action points and then afterwards you could have AI help up write up those action points so there's like maybe like four or five different ways you could use AI during that process but it's not giving AI the whole thing to go off and do on its own you're constantly just using it to to speed up and produce better work what is your view of that because I wonder if this 25 adoption adoption rate is partly us women saying oh hang on a minute what does this mean for the future of jobs what does this mean for our children is this a good thing what's your view on how this is going to play out in the next five ten years I mean it is moving so quick isn't it so quickly and I there is I look I don't I think we shouldn't shy away from the fact that it is going to disrupt our work and there's going to be big changes that will happen in certain industries where i take comfort from is if you look back at history how technology has disrupted and changed the way things have worked because we've seen it many times over you know an example is like the industrial revolution and what technology what we've seen so far is that when technology comes along it lowers the barriers for entry so it means that more people have access to being able to do something but with that the human edge gets raised so we find a new way of adding our sort of like 10 creativity on top of that so with the industrial revolution suddenly it was really easy to manufacture everything but the human edge came from like innovation and engineering and i guess more of a recent example is like the internet now everybody has a voice everyone can you know has a social media platform everyone can publish whatever they want to say but the human edge comes from having a niche, creating a community around that niche, you know, really cultivating a sense of community with that, basically what you do.

33:06So I hope that AI is going to be exactly the same. It's suddenly going to lower the barrier, i.e. everybody can be creating video or creating amazing content online or using it for really in-depth research. But where does the human edge come from? For me, it would be your judgment, your taste. If AI gives you 50 outputs, how do you know which one's the best one? That's from you. That's your ability to think critically and to work out what lands with your particular product or service that you're offering. So there is still a way for us to use these tools and to find out a way to work with them so that we you know have a job market and we can stay relevant and the other thing that i'd add to that is that we can use these tools to help up skill us and to pivot and that's something that i've found so helpful that you can use it like a business coach to say like where are my gaps in my knowledge in this particular subject how like if this is my long-term vision can you talk me through the steps that will get me there which is what a business coach ultimately does but not everybody has access to something like that is now we all do so we can all be starting to experiment with the things that we know make a difference to you know changing your behavior and to striving for more we can start implementing it with the guide of ai yeah i think i i'm the same i like to think of it in an optimistic way it is hard to you know when you see the the content especially as you know we've we've both got young kids how how do you think this is going to impact school you know your kids are one and three mine are ten and six my 10 year old already talks about AI and church EBT and I know how do you think it's going to impact them I genuinely something I think about a lot I'm sure and it's something that I think ultimately I'm feeling positive about it but there is definitely nuance to around how they're going to be using these tools and whether it's going to help with their education and what kind of job market they're going to be entering into the things that I think about it's like I don't think they'll ever learn to drive I think by the time that my one-year-old's 18 I just think autonomous cars will just be part of what we do and it'll be too unsafe for them to get a license and go off driving but I guess when I think more specifically about how they're going to use these tools is I hope that they learn to use them in a way that gives them a love of learning instead of bypassing that learning process.

35:41It sounds obvious, but if you're using AI or your kid's using AI to just write the essay for them, then there's zero learning that's gone on in that process. There's zero sort of friction of trying to get your head around a subject. However, if you use AI to ask it to interpret some complicated maths homework in a way that you understand it or ask AI to test you in a way that appeals to the way that your brain works so that you actually stay engaged with that subject for longer that's where you're like wow that is where it's really really powerful um have you used notebook LM that's a that's such a great little tool and one that I'd really encourage anyone who's got kids who are a little bit older to use where you can upload any it's by google it's completely free you can upload any source to it so it can be youtube videos it can be documents it can be books whatever you fancy you just upload to it and then the ai only uses that as its sort of source of information and data but from that it can give you quizzes it can create flashcards it can turn it into a podcast that you can listen to they've just launched a new thing where it turns it into video so you have this like really amazing way of like interacting with this information and it's not going to hallucinate it's only going from the sources that you've given it but such a brilliant tool for learning but also for research you know if if i'm having to learn a particular subject i can just dump loads of information that i'm like this is what i want to learn and then i can go in it and i just ask it questions like okay what's the theory on this can you give me the reference for that so it's a it's a it's gone are the days when I was writing flashcards you know I remember when you were revising I still need that though I still need to be able to write stuff down for it to go in my head um yeah yeah I'm still I'm pen and paper gal I am as well I feel like that's going to become an e uh like a a niche nuanced premium thing in a way putting pen to paper yeah I know I know and but you know maybe look I always think like us humans have been around for 200 ,000 years and if you sort of stretch your arms out like that that like technology is like the very tip of your finger that it's been around for so what's hardwired into us is creativity communication storytelling being with one another physically and I hope that will always win out in the age of AI.

38:13I think we're going to see more and more demand for in-person in-person events, communities, connection. And isn't that brilliant? Yeah. Like I look back at what the past sort of 10 years of or 15 years of technology and I think it's taken a huge amount from us. If you look at the impact of social media on our kids, on ourselves, our attention spans, the way that our phones distract us the way that it's impacted the way that we conduct relationships and go out in the world I hope AI will right some of those wrongs by actually encouraging us to take action in a way that benefits our well-being in benefits in the way that we know makes humans happy and makes us happy and interrogate how do we want to spend our days and if you've got like this sort of dream life that you're after how can I get there what the steps I need to take it's a really interesting distinction because I suppose social media when you're consuming it is so passive yes whereas AI because you are using it in such an active way it is very different isn't it so I hadn't thought of that it's such a fascinating perspective it really is and I genuinely find myself now like in a you know if I'm in a car or something and normally I just sort of browse on social media which I still do but there have definitely been moments where actually I'm like oh I just want to talk out this idea or I want to ask it a few questions around you know how I'm parenting in this particular style and I find that at the end of that journey instead of like coming out and feeling just a bit drained because I've passively consumed stuff I've moved something on or I've shifted something within me where I'm like oh wow that's actually really put a spring in my step and I'm like that's the first time that technology has done that for me in a really really long time where I feel like it's giving something to me and like the overall vision of what I'm trying to achieve instead of just being like keep scrolling never stop such a good perspective it's such a good perspective is there any final thoughts we're gonna do quick fire now but is there anything that you just really want to underscore that we haven't spoken about I think firstly um find the one problem the one thing in your week that's really taking up a lot of time so don't look at AI and thinking wow there's so many things it could do start with the thing that you want help with whether that is at home or whether that is at work and then work out how AI can speed that up or make it easier for you so start with your individual problem and then another real good trick is get AI to interview you so if you have that problem ask the AI this is what I'm thinking this is what takes me a lot of time how could I use this tool to help me and it can interview you so you get the best out of it I'm already thinking of things I wanted to interview me on that's such a good such a good one okay final questions motherhood is teaching me dot dot dot patience at the moment a huge amount you know what it's teaching me at the moment is trying to not multitask as much because so much of my time when I'm with my kids, I'm like thinking about how can I optimize the rest of the day?

41:30How can I do the next thing on my to-do list whilst they're half playing there? How can I order something on my phone whilst they're chatting to me? Because there is just quite a lot to do. But what that means is I kind of miss those moments with them and I'm not fully present for them. That's beautiful. What is something that you valued before motherhood that you no longer do?

41:56something I valued before motherhood that I no longer do

42:04I think I oh in my head I can't quite get around give me an example here so you might have valued um I don't know maybe how you looked more than you do now or you might have valued your job title more than you do now or you might have valued I don't know being seen at the right places on a Saturday night and now you just don't care about it well I certainly don't care about going out so late I valued yeah no you're right that that definitely like having to turn up in multiple places and just sort of say yes to a lot more things before I had kids I would be always saying that is now I'm a lot better at prioritizing my time and how I want to spend it and just having a few more like definitive boundaries around that especially if it's going to impact me seeing them yeah it's so true and what's something that you didn't value before motherhood that you do now getting a good night's sleep being in bed at 9 p.m oh the the joys of that I'm turning the light off and thinking I've got a good stretch of sleep ahead of me as before I'd always eke out the most of uh of the day or the night that I'd be on I'd be like ah yes never want the party to end us now I'm like yes make the party you make the end party yeah what's one gift this is the last one that you would give to all mothers in the world and why you know what somebody said to me recently that by the time your kids are 12 you would have spent 75 % of the time that you'll ever spend with them and that has really really stayed with me which is like these are the golden days of being with your kids and enjoying those moments like enjoying the moments of the endless questions of them wanting a cuddle at night of them you know wanting to sing a song on repeat 50 times and actually if you like sort of gloss over that that messiness that chaotic day-to-day life then you're kind of missing the whole point of it and then before you know it you're gonna be out of those 12 years so I guess it's really really try and savor it pause enjoy it because I know that one day I'll look back at this and go they were the glory days it was so true it's hard to do isn't it when you're in it and it's just relentless but it is so true and where can someone find out more about you and your work yeah so come follow me on instagram at georgie barrett I also do like ai workshops and stuff like that I've got one coming up which is all about creating this ai blueprint that you can give ai the context on who you are so yeah come join the wait list amazing thank you thank you