Just Because You Can Doesn't Mean You Should

A check-in on AI, corruption, and the elusive Goldilocks summer

You’ll hear in today’s episode that I’m excited for America250. A summer of celebration, reflection, and thinking about how to enter the next chapter? IN. Sarah and I have spent hours dreaming up ways to celebrate. However, you’re thinking of marking the occasion, we want to be a resource for you. Our Substack premium members are going to receive so many resources: our Reimagining Citizenship series as written meditations; a murder mystery dinner centered on British spies; a family storytelling adventure; news briefs from 1776…we’re here for America250.

I’m here for meaningful observance, not tacky and selfish commandeering of the principles this nation was founded on. Witness my rage-bordering-on-disbelief in learning that President Trump has set aside $1.776 billion (with a B) in taxpayer dollars to give to people who allegedly suffered at the hands of the Biden administration. We talk about that fund and the President’s trip to China today.

Then we turn our attention to artificial intelligence, a topic so big and amorphous that it’s hard to know where to begin. So, we decided to start with ourselves, right where we are. Sarah and I share how we are personally using AI and what we’re learning from that process.

Outside of politics, it’s not quite summer, but summer feels completely spoken for. Sarah and I have completely different plans for the next few months. We share a sense of compression around those plans. If you’ve found a Goldilocks summer, we will sit at your feet and learn from you. -Beth

Topics Discussed

• Trump Goes to China

• The AI Backlash

• Outside of Politics: A Goldilocks Summer?

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Episode Resources

Pantsuit Politics Resources

America250 Good Neighbors T-Shirt by Bethany

Episode Topic Resources

• Kentucky’s Curious Cast of Political Characters (The New York Times)

• Trump’s China policy is a disaster (Slow Boring | Matthew Yglesias)

• Justice Department announces a $1.7B fund to compensate Trump allies in a deal to drop IRS suit (The Associated Press)

• Jury tosses Elon Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI and its boss Sam Altman (The BBC)

• Graduates Boo Commencement Speech About A.I. (New York Times)

• Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt booed during graduation speech about AI (NBC News)

• What the Internet Costs the Planet (More to Say | Beth Silvers)

Episode Transcript

[00:00:28] Sarah: This is Sarah Stewart Holland.

[00:00:31] Beth: This is Beth Silvers.

[00:00:32] Sarah: You’re listening to Pantsuit Politics. Today we’re tackling Trump’s trip to China. Is no news good news when it comes to Trump diplomacy? We’re also going to discuss the $1.7 billion in taxpayer money going into a slush fund for Trump allies, and then we want to check in on where we’re all at with AI. How much are we using it? Is it actually helping? Outside of politics, summer is about to begin, and we’re going to talk about our plans and our big feelings about the season.

[00:01:01] Beth: Speaking of summer, I’m excited because it’s America 250 Summer. I am embracing America 250 Summer. I am putting American flags where I would normally put heart emojis on messages. I’m just going for it. I’m all in because it feels like reclaiming something for me. We’re going to talk a little bit about the complex feelings about that later. But for now we want you to know that we are kicking off here a full-scale America 250 celebration. If you are observing the semi sesquicentennial, we got you. We’re your girls. However you want to celebrate, we tried to think about you and what we could offer you.

[00:01:37] Sarah: Yeah. We’re not asking you to put the flag emojis everywhere. I want to be abundantly clear. I support Beth’s choice. However, we know it’s complicated. And plus, even if it wasn’t, everybody doesn’t celebrate the same way. Some people prefer a quiet celebration. Some people prefer a celebration with primarily other adults. Some people want all in on the family celebration. So what we’re telling you is however you want to celebrate, we have you covered.

[00:02:06] Beth: And if you’re thinking observance more than celebration, we’ve got you. And on that front we took our meditation series, Reimagining Citizenship, from last year and put it in written form for you because we thought you might prefer to just sit with those words and maybe journal a little bit about some of the questions and ideas that come up in it. So we’re really excited to share that with our premium members.

[00:02:30] Sarah: Then Beth went full Beth and went out and made a murder mystery dinner party. She made a family play. These are all going to be gifts to our paid members to help them celebrate America 250. I’m going to get some costumes. I’m going to report the News Brief from 1776. What we’re trying to convey here is we’ve got big plans, okay? And there’s going to be some incredible shows as we get closer and closer to July 4th. We’re going to tell you all about this over the next few weeks. Don’t worry if you’re not catching it all now. What we want to start with is that we asked you to design the official Pantsuit Politics America 250 T-shirt, and you delivered. We got so many incredible submissions, and we are so excited to announce the winner is Bethany with her incredible Be a Good Neighbor pendant design. The shirt is available now. The link is in the show notes. Bethany, we love it, and we cannot wait for everyone to be wearing it all summer long, and especially at the finale of our personal America 250 summer, our Minneapolis live show.

[00:03:34] Beth: That’s right. That will be in Minneapolis at the end of August. If you want a hotel room for the night of the show, if you want a seat at the Spice Conference, if you want a spot at the executive producer retreat, we’re in the final days here. We need to lock that in by June 12th, and we really want you to come. It’s going to be really special. We’ve put a lot of heart and soul into planning this for you. So the link to join us there is in the show notes.

[00:03:58] Sarah:  Okay. Next up, let’s talk about Trump’s trip to China. Before we get started on the trip to China, we do want to say we are aware of Senator Bill Cassidy’s pretty terrible loss, third in a three-person race in Louisiana’s primary. And we’re going to talk about that on the Spicy live on Thursday, which will be at 11:00 AM Central Time instead of the traditional 10:00 AM Central Time because we want to wait for the results from the Kentucky Primary, specifically Best Congressional Race featuring Thomas Massie. So we’re going to talk about both races on Thursday on the Spicy live at 11:00 AM Central Standard Time.

[00:04:51] Beth: And I plan during that time to, among other things, exercise some of the feelings I have about how that race has been covered. I don’t appreciate the way people talk about Kentucky in general. And I have some things to say about that.

[00:05:05] Sarah: Did you see the cute little writeup The New York Times did about all our wacky Kentucky politicians?

[00:05:10] Beth: I did, and I thought that was the best of the Kentucky coverage that I had seen.

[00:05:14] Sarah: I agree. We’ll get into all of that on Thursday, but first we’re going to go to China. Trump went to China, Beth. It was a nothing burger. There was so little coverage.

[00:05:23] Beth: Can we talk about how incredible it is that the first time this man ran for president, the way that he said China was a joke. The derision with which he talked about China, the frequency with which he talked about China screwing us, it was a joke that comedians still use to imitate him.

[00:05:43] Sarah: I struggle every time I put Trump and China in a sentence together my brain goes China. I can’t help it.

[00:05:48] Beth: And yet it’s just a great honor for him to call Xi Jinping his friend.

[00:05:53] Sarah: I think the best analysis I read is that for so long China needed the United States as a type of validation, that when we and/or our leaders would travel to China, the United States was the global superpower, and China needed to gain that status in the eyes of its own citizens. But that’s not really true. It didn’t have a lot of pomp and circumstance, right? It wasn’t trying to roll out the red carpet and say “We’re a superpower too.” It wasn’t just a nothing burger in the coverage, it was the nothing burger in the way they treated Trump while there. It was gracious, but it was just like, “You’re my peer now, and I don’t need your validation.” And we are not just a manufacturing superpower. We have all these other areas of growth, particularly when it comes to green energy, which everybody needs now. And I saw somebody call it the G2. That’s what Trump wants it to be, is just the G2. But I think China sees that day is here. We don’t have to prove anything to you. There’s not a lot of negotiation to be had because we don’t need that much from you. And he comes back and he’s touting this Boeing deal. China’s going to buy 200 planes from Boeing. Everybody’s like “Big deal.” I think Boeing stock even slumped because people were expecting it to be at least a 500, and this is the biggest thing he had to announce, was this paltry little plane deal.

[00:07:18] Beth: I think paltry little plane deal is a really good encapsulation of the Chinese attitude towards him right now. Because I don’t even think it’s that they see us as a peer. I think they see us as in decline. And the sun setting on this presidency and the sun setting on America’s power in the world. And it’s not an unreasonable posture for them to take given that a lot of the problems he was there to address are problems of his administration’s own making. We have no leverage with China right now because of the situation in Iran because of the Strait of Hormuz. We took this trade competition and set it down on a field that specifically disadvantages us.

[00:07:58] Sarah: Yeah. I was reading some analysis from Matt Yglesias, and he was just talking about if you think Americans are mad about this war and the economic cost it is extracting, you should check in with the rest of the world. They’re furious. They’re in danger, and so any leverage we might have had as this sort of diplomatic superpower, he’s shredded all our diplomatic relationships with our allies. And they’re pissed, rightfully so. I’m pissed. I know they’re pissed because the economic fallout-- the economic fallout’s not a big enough word. The economic shock that continues to roll across the global economy when it comes to the Iranian war and the Strait of Hormuz. And yeah, sure, Xi Jinping agreed there shouldn’t be a toll on the Strait of Hormuz, but he didn’t say what he was going to do about it. He didn’t say what does that mean? Who cares?

[00:08:46] Beth: I thought that and $7 will get you a Starbucks now.

[00:08:49] Sarah: Yeah. Or a tank of gas, depending on where you live. You could see that This isn’t a real estate deal. This is bigger and more complex. He’s not up for the challenge. The situation continues to get worse, and he does not have a plan. He does not have a plan. And look, I don’t think that means that China is ascendant. They have their own problems. Their economy is also suffering because they cannot use exports to prop it up like they used to. They also have a government that’s not wanting to stabilize the economy in the ways that it used to. They have a real estate sector that’s still in problem. They also have a demographic crisis. I’m not saying that this means that the world is China, but I think they have come out ahead with regards to the war in Iran. They are just continuing to increase their renewable capacity, and you still got Doug Burgum out there talking about what do we do when it rains? Is this a joke? Guys, probably the same thing you knew you’d do when you were like h-huzzahing at wind deals when you were the governor. Stop playing dumb. You know this is bad. We have to increase our electric capacity. We’re not doing that. Y’all are propping up coal plants. Meanwhile, China gets it. It’s increasing its renewable capacity hand over fist and manufacturing the renewable products that the rest of the world needs to increase its green energy capacity. So in that way, I would say it’s ascendant, but it’s just frustrating. It’s all these problems are so self-evident, and I’m not saying that the solutions are easy, but we’ve just got Trump out there shredding relationships, propping up old economic realities and ignoring the economic crisis that he himself created.

[00:10:34] Beth: Yeah, I want to be clear. I’m not mad that Trump went to China. I started out by pointing out that hypocrisy because I think it is a demonstration of the way that everything in his second term is built on even shorter-term thinking than everything in his first term. Because the problems of the world are so interconnected now, because as you said, so many countries have a demographic challenge, so many countries have migration challenges, everybody’s reckoning with global warming to different degrees. There are so many shared problems. If you hear hantavirus on a cruise ship, everybody has to worry about that now. And so that is a real opportunity for diplomacy to be something different, bigger, better, stronger than it’s ever been. We should have more friends now because we share more problems in common. So him going doesn’t bother me. It doesn’t bother me that there was no breakthrough on Taiwan. I don’t think there’s going to be. Strategic ambiguity has been the policy of the US government for a long time for a reason, and this is something that I’m really trying to push myself on. I have criticized progressives, campaigns, lots of different constituencies for wanting to take too much control over situations while I have supported pretty hawkish foreign policies, which is just the ultimate version of trying to take control over something that’s fundamentally out of your control. So I’m really trying to push myself on questions like, would I support us taking the kind of posture towards Taiwan that we’ve taken towards Ukraine? Am I even happy with the results of the posture we’ve taken towards Ukraine? Would I be okay with an American dying at war for Taiwan’s sovereignty? I think probably not at this point in my life. And so I am trying to really press myself on those questions. It doesn’t bother me that he went. It doesn’t bother me that he tries to forge some level of friendship. It bothers me that is his ultimate priority because he thinks that those friendships will make lots more money for a very small number of people, and it bothers me that I think he just gets played every time because he ultimately doesn’t know what he’s doing and has fired all the people who do know what they’re doing.

[00:13:01] Sarah: It doesn’t make me mad that he went to China, but the reporting from ABC News about the $1.7 billion taxpayer-funded/fund does make me mad, Beth. This set me all the way off. If you missed this, I am sorry to be the one to tell you. So Trump had a $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS. Again, just one more way that we have lost all sense of appropriate separation between the President of the United States and his business dealings and his approach to the federal government, his approach to his own party. But he had this lawsuit. Now, he dropped it in exchange for the Justice Department creating a $1.7 billion taxpayer funded anti-weaponization fund to compensate people who they say were targeted by the Biden administration. So I think what we can anticipate here is taxpayer money paying people who attacked the Capitol on January 6th, the ones who haven’t gone back to jail for committing further violent crimes since he pardoned them at the beginning of the second term. I don’t know, maybe he’ll pay them too. Who knows? The sky’s the limit.

[00:14:24] Beth: That is not speculation. That would follow a pattern that’s already begun. Because they have already given a large settlement to Michael Flynn who pled guilty to what he was charged with initially, and then took back his guilty plea, and then was ultimately pardoned, and now has taxpayer dollars in his bank account. They have already given money to Carter Page, who, let’s be fair about it, was improperly surveilled. Okay? The process that the FBI undertook to surveil Carter Page was inappropriate. An inspector general found so. So he was wronged by the government. I don’t think that means taxpayer dollars ought to flow into his bank account. But that’s what has happened. When the president brought this lawsuit against the IRS, the judge in that case told the parties that she needed to see some briefs on whether there was actual controversy between the parties. She said to the Department of Justice, “I need a legal brief from you that tells me you are adversarial to the president, because I’m not seeing it, and I’m not going to sit here and collude to transfer taxpayer dollars to the president.” And so to get around that, to not have to do that briefing, to not have to have a judge meddle in their business, the president dismisses this lawsuit, and he does it just after something like 93 Democrats went to the judge and said, “You should dismiss this case with prejudice to refiling because all this is collusion to transfer wealth to the president’s allies.” And so he got in front of them, dismissed it himself before she acted, and it’s not 1.7 billion because the joke is on all of us. It’s 1.776 billion. 1776. See, isn’t this all hilarious? Isn’t this all a big liberal trolling exercise? More accurate than if we want to talk about it with people is to round up to 1.8 and to be a 10th of a billion dollars angrier about it.

[00:16:28] Sarah: Let me just say this. Since we’re all just agreeing to be in a death spiral, how much money is James Comey going to get? How much money is Jerome Powell going to get? You think this ends with you? You think the precedent that the federal government going after political enemies means that the taxpayers fund a slush fund? What is this? This is outrageous. Outrageous. No transparency, no congressional oversight, just payment. So not only do we have the bribes going into the administration, we’re a foreign government, we’re a crypto investor, we’re a political donor, we’ll give you money for your ballroom if you look the other way on these regulations. If MAHA can stand behind our new flavored vape, that’d be great. So not only do we have the bribes going this way, now we’ll have the bribes going out. We’ll have the bribes going out. We can pay people who maybe witness something, who maybe know where the bodies are buried. Let’s pay them, too, so that we’ve got the corruption flowing just as, all directions. All directions. And here’s what really set me off, Beth. This is enraging, just on its own. But I read it at the same time I finally read the New York Times par- report on the DHS, and how they are going after the families separated from their children during the first administration. They’re going back after them. So they are paying off people who attacked the Capitol and attacking people who were separated from their own children. Just when I think there are no words, just when I think it could not get worse, and he’s out there posting on True Social all hours of the night, just videos of him walking besides an alien, pictures of Joe Biden and Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi floating in sewage. We’re supposed to talk about this for a living, but I am running out of words. I really am.

[00:18:31] Beth: That seems like an excellent transition because however everyone else might feel about AI, this president seems quite enamored of it.

[00:18:39] Sarah: He loves it. Oh, Lord, he loves it so much. He loves all his AI images of him setting off nuclear weapons and I just... Deep breaths. All right, next up, let’s talk about AI. The other big headline this week was the OpenAI trial pitting Elon Musk against Sam Altman, which I’m interested in, but I think the most important takeaway is not whatever the jury recommendation is, whatever the ultimate decision is in the trial. I think it’s that these two dudes came to court, neither of them come off smelling like roses. They both look worse than when they started this, and this is not the time. They are reading the room wrong if they think this is the time to be perpetuating more negativity around this industry that they are both so fiercely competitive in. I just think the AI industry is so consumed with each other that they are not looking around and realizing that it’s getting kind off rough out there for you guys. I got to believe Sam Altman understands now that he’s had Molotov cocktails thrown at his home, but I don’t know. I just feel like they’re not really locking in on how much people hate this right now.

[00:20:02] Beth: So here’s a data point about that from the Silvers household. On Sunday we went to church, and then we went to see Suffs, and I was thinking about that song The Young Are At The Gates. And the young are at the gates in my house. I spent the ride home from church talking with Ellen, who is 10 and about to, thank God, finish fifth grade. Fifth grade is the worst, man. Ellen was very upset about seeing something that she believed was AI-generated at church. Just felt awful to her, and I was so fascinated by that and really wanted to interrogate why, and it was just the two of us in the car, so I had her all to myself to ask questions. And she ultimately said to me, “Mom, I just think AI is okay as an assistant, but not as a creator.” Which I thought was a really good summary, but we get home, and she tells her sister about it, and Jane loses her mind because Jane already hates AI. She hates that I use it for anything. She’s mad that I have Cowork downloaded on my computer. She just thinks it is the worst, and not really because of any of the things that hit the headlines. She doesn’t talk about the environment. She doesn’t talk about it replacing jobs. She just thinks it’s stupid and lazy and that people are giving their brains over to it in a way that doesn’t make any sense. So then I pull up the video of the commencement speaker who over the weekend said to a graduating class that AI is going to be the next industrial revolution and gets booed, and Jane was like, “Oh yeah, we’ve all been sending that around. I already saw that.”

[00:21:38] Sarah: It’s not one commencement speaker; it’s three commencement speakers. Gloria Caufield at UCF, Big Machine Record CEO Scott Borchetta at Middle Tennessee State University, and then Eric Schmidt from Google at University of Arizona. Three of them got booed.

[00:21:54] Beth:  The young are at the gates, man. That’s where we are.

[00:21:58] Sarah: That’s same in my household. And look, so Griffin and I have also had very many passionate conversations, and I’m pretty supportive of his what I would describe as a pretty reductive stance about AI. I wish the support flowed in both directions, but alas, it does not. Which is that he needs to protect his critical thinking. That’s where he’s coming from. I have to learn to think before it can help me think, and I think he’s 100% correct. I don’t usually support teenagers’ reductive conclusions, but I think that’s the right one. He’s like, “I know it’s everywhere. I try to avoid it.” He doesn’t really even like to use it as like a tutor or to help with that kind of stuff because he’s like, “I can’t formulate my own voice, I can’t formulate my own thinking if I start depending on this too early.” I think he’s 100% correct. Now, all three of them are kind off getting on my nerves because if something is highly produced, then all of a sudden it’s AI. And I’m like, “Okay, everything you’re calling out as AI, I do not believe is AI.” I understand some things, and you’re right, but it’s like it’s become this shorthand. It’s become like anything that’s produced at all is AI. And I’m like, I don’t think that’s quite it either. They’ve almost like over-corrected. But look it is wildly unpopular among particularly young people, but they’re using it. They’re saying they hate it, but they’re using it. And it’s definitely got a worse reputation among younger people. But it’s a cross-generational bipartisan situation here where people are like, “It’s going too fast.” Again, to me these tracks are what we used to think when you started a conflict, people would wrap themselves in the flag, and we’ve shown that’s like completely not been true. And I think if you had asked us like six months before ChatGPT came out, you and I would’ve said “Oh, people love to adopt a technology and be positive and ignore the risks,” and that’s also been shown not to be true this time. It’s such a different reaction than I expected.

[00:23:52] Beth: I think about the different age groups and how they’re reacting to this because I do think that Trump is quite representative of older people. Older people do seem to be amazed by what can be created. And I get that. If you see this rapid development of sophisticated technology in your lifetime, I understand how some of what gets created with AI blows your mind and feels like wonder and awe. Our kids don’t feel a lot of wonder and awe. Everything seems possible to them and obvious to them, and way overdone. And I wonder sometimes when my girls, who do the same thing as your boys, when they’re saying like, “Oh, that’s AI,” if they’re just using that as a shorthand for “God, I’m sick of everything. I’m sick of everything in this world of slop and marketing, and I think there’s an agenda behind everything that I see,” which is something we’re going to talk more about later this week. I just wonder if that’s their shorthand for it. I feel like people closer to our age kind of riding the middle of those two groups have both pieces to us. We see that technology often can make life a little bit easier, and that it can often make life a whole lot worse. So I feel like if you’re sitting around with a bunch of people in early midlife, you’re going to hear more bitching and moaning about two-factor authentication and passwords, and another app because this team can’t use the same app as that team. We’re just in the muck of the annoyance of all this technology, and we can’t imagine going back to a different way of communicating, like a paper coming home from school to give me a calendar. I just can’t fathom that anymore.

[00:25:40] Sarah: Yeah, I think it’s worthwhile to talk about our own usage because it mirrors a lot of what we heard in the chat when we asked on Substack, how people were using it. Some are enthusiastic users. Some are still skeptical. There’s a couple that are just refusing because they feel like it short-circuits their own analytical processes, which I think is right. I will say that my usage of artificial intelligence has exploded. I’m just going to be really up front about that. The first thing and I’m saying this only half-joking because I do think it’s like reflective of the way it shows up, and then you’re like, “I’m not going back.” I just spent a whole lot of my life, probably like for 15 years, writing blogs, working on this podcast, working on the News Brief, filling in hyperlinks. I don’t really want to look back over the last 15 years and think how much of my wild and precious life I spent selecting text and right-clicking and saying, “Add link.” But it was a lot, okay? And I don’t have to do that anymore, and I am not sad about it, and I don’t want to go back to adding hyperlinks ever again. But it’s crazy in the production of the News Brief, from literally a year and a half ago how I would spend so much time finding the stories, adding the link, creating this. And it was, like, not even a good written show notes. It was just literally four or five links to the stories. To now using, AI to say, “Okay, here are the stories I want to cover. Take my transcript, put the links together.” I’ve created such a better product and something that took me or used to take me like an hour and a half, and now it takes me, I don’t know, four minutes. So just that so much of our work is taking an enormous amount of information and trying to make it digestible to people, and I have found that AI is just really good for that. Like, when you’re looking at analytics and you’re looking at like instead of scrolling back and forth from a spreadsheet and trying to figure out what it says or taking a bunch of... I would just dump notes. Like when I would prepare for the News Brief, I would just dump notes or clips or quotes or analysis that I thought was really interesting, and then I would have to spend time reading trying to decide how to put it in a way that I could read it quickly through the video. I don’t think it made the News Briefs any better for me to do that sort of like just organization intention, because I’d already read all the information. I knew what I wanted to talk about. Having AI just summarize it and put it together for me has really changed my work process in a positive direction, for sure.

[00:28:12] Beth: I also use AI every day now, and that became true for me when Anthropic released Cowork. So I was not impressed with what any kind of large language model chatbot working on the web could do for me.

[00:28:27] Sarah: Yeah, no, I kept trying to go back to it, and it just wouldn’t do anything worthwhile.

[00:28:31] Beth: No, it just doesn’t work. But Cowork is the thing that I have been wanting since large language models came onto the scene. I want to be able to build Bethapedia. Okay? Take my work that I have created and tell me what all I’ve made because we’ve been doing this for so long now. And the product that I create by myself for our premium members, More to Say, I have done so much extensive work that all exists in a database. Just searching through that database is a really clunky, time-intensive process. So I love being able to have Cowork Access that database. And I tell it, “Do not go outside this. I don’t want you doing research, I don’t want you on the internet using other people’s work, I don’t want you thinking your own thoughts, okay? I want you to look at my work and tell me what I have told people about this.” Just as a really concrete example, I was thinking about an episode on Cuba, and so I said, “Tell me every time I’ve talked about Cuba, and give me a summary of what I said so I understand what knowledge I’ve already communicated and where I need to start to pick up and move on to the next iteration.” And that’s just extremely valuable to me, and I don’t feel like I’m outsourcing creativity. I don’t feel like I’m stealing someone else’s work.

[00:29:57] Sarah: Yeah.

[00:29:58] Beth: I feel like I am just employing a tool in service of expanding what I’m capable of offering to people.

[00:30:06] Sarah: Yeah. I think the expanding what I’m able to offer to people is really what AI offers small businesses. I just think there’s just so many tools and a level of-- I wouldn’t call it expertise, but just a sort of head start. How often have I just wanted a shitty first draft of a marketing plan? And I could hire a marketer, but we don’t have the budget for that. We’re a very small team. We can’t have a full-time publicist and a full-time marketing expert and a full-time brand expert. That’s just not reasonable. It’s not within the plans for Pantsuit Politics. And being able to say “Does it make sense to go on YouTube? And if we are going on YouTube, what should we put in the show descriptions?” Yeah, I could spend eight hours watching YouTube videos explain YouTube show descriptions to me and what I should be looking for, but I find just asking Cowork “Act as this expert and just give me the high-level one-on-one on what we should be doing.” It’s just really accelerated what I can do as far as the business of the show. Which because we’re churning out two shows a week and the News Brief and Spicy and More to Say there’s just not a lot of time, even if we had all that staff, to meet with them. And I think I can see this for a lot of small business owners. I want to expand. Help me make a plan. I want to write an email to my customers. Just write a first draft. Even if I hate the first draft, just having a first draft there is really helpful.

[00:31:43] Beth: And my use might be Very unique to our business, because the other thing about Pantsuit Politics is that you and I have to wear all of it. It is an extension of who we are, and what I have liked about using Cowork is that I spend the bulk of my time with it telling it who I am. I update my instructions for it constantly, because I want it to understand. I don’t want generic advice about what to post on YouTube. I want advice that feels like me. I don’t really want it to adopt my voice. Even as it tries to do that, it never gets it right. It... No.

[00:32:22] Sarah: No, it doesn’t. It just uses y’all a lot, which I find insulting.

[00:32:28] Beth: Anytime it tells me, “That’s a real Beth move,” I give it the middle finger. And so those are, like, some of the guardrails that I put in place for myself, too, because I don’t want to think of this as an affirmation machine. I don’t want to think of this as an expert. I want to remember that it’s a tool, and so sometimes if it is giving me feedback on a draft, I’ll write my whole More to Say, there’s no use of AI for me until I have a draft of More to Say. I do all my own research. I do all my own writing. Then I stick it in to Claude, and I have told it, “Here’s what I’m looking for.” So it coaches me, but only around the things I tell it to coach me on. And sometimes when I’m reading that feedback, I’ll picture it in a really bitchy voice, because I do want to remember, these are my decisions. I don’t need to change that because it told me to change it. It’s just a prompt for my own thinking, and when you work alone most of the week, a lot of my week feels like I’m sitting in a library by myself, and I love that. I’m not complaining. But it is really valuable to have on demand something to bump up against. And something that has no feelings. So if I ignore everything it says, it doesn’t matter. But it helps me get clearer on what I’m trying to create and why. When I get challenged on something, even if I say, “No, I’m going to leave it the way it is,” I go through a little questioning process that’s valuable to what I ultimately am making.

[00:33:57] Sarah: And I just think what’s so different than if you’re talking about a student. Some of this, my journey, especially the last few months with using AI, feels a lot like social media. You start using it, you’re using it all the time, and you’re like, “This is amazing. Look at the possibilities.” And then all of a sudden you’re like, “Why do I want to cry? Why do I feel like crying?”

[00:34:16] Beth: This is exhausting.  it’s annoying.

[00:34:18] Sarah: It’s exhausting, because Claude can churn out those plans, and then all of a sudden you’re like, “I have to do all these plans,” and the plans are so long. And then you start looking at the plans and you’re like, “There’s a lot of filler in this plan.” You know what I mean? It can feel overwhelming in that it can churn out an enormous task list for you very easily as a small business owner. And I think that felt like in the beginning days of Facebook marketing. When I was running my campaign, it was in 2016, in the very early days of Facebook marketing. It felt incredible and it also felt like I could be doing it all the time, which is definitely how AI feels, too. I notice this flow of figuring out. And it’s more intense because the cycle has been faster. This cycle of experiencing it, being overwhelmed by it, has been way faster than social media, which probably took place over five years, as opposed to this taking part over five months, right? But if you’re a student and you don’t have the life experience to understand this flow, and I think their definitive experience as young people has been the... And I think this is true across generations, but particularly for young people, it has been the negative experience of social media, the sense that all it does is take. And so any part of that they recognize from that previous experience I think just gets amplified. This is extractive, it’s only going to take. So that’s why you have somebody standing up and saying, “It’s a tool, it can be really powerful,” and getting booed. Because I think their experience as digital natives in a totally new way than we were. They don’t have the life experience of, to see that sort of whole life cycle. Or if they have seen it, it’s been a primarily death cycle of this killed things, this killed my friend group. Especially in COVID. It killed class, it killed college, it killed... it just was so negative. So it doesn’t surprise me that particularly the younger you get, they can’t recognize or maybe they’re right. I don’t know. There is going to be so few neg- so few positives and only negatives.

[00:36:11] Beth: If you and I feel burnout by a lot of technology, imagine using it at school from the beginning of your school career to the end. Part of the reason fifth grade has been so miserable for both of my daughters is Dreambox, this math program that they have to do so many lessons of every week. It is rolled out to them as these are your goals for the week, and those goals are a certain number of lessons that get harder and harder, and for both of my girls eventually bypassed the curriculum for their grade level. So they’re having to complete these lessons without any instruction on how to do it, and they hate it. We’ve had the most intense hatred of Dreambox in this house with both of them.

[00:36:56] Sarah: And the other thing I recognize in this pattern of the negative reaction to tech, the negative reaction in the life cycle of social media, is the promise of productivity. I’ve sat in front of Cowork, and I have had the same exact reaction and the same feeling in my body that I used to have in the early aughts when I would download like six different stupid to-do list apps and just know that the next one, when I really locked in on the tagging and the filing, it would be the answer to all my problems. I do think that this is a totally different thing. I get that an agent versus a productivity app is light years apart. But it takes so much work, and it’s so frustrating to set up, and it’s never quite right. But I can feel myself falling for that cycle, too. That’s the promise of it’s going to change your life and make everything more productive.

[00:37:42] Beth: I constantly have to tell myself when I’m using Cowork just because you can doesn’t mean you need to. You’re not failing if you’re not moving at this pace because this isn’t a thing. As much as they try to make it sound warm, it’ll say, “Beth, that was genuinely funny.” And I’m like, “No, that’s not a thing for you. Stop that. Stop patronizing me. I hate it.” So I have to remind myself that this is here to help me, not to put pressure on me.

[00:38:09] Sarah: It’s hard for me to stop that cycle. It feels like an enormous amount of pressure.

[00:38:13] Beth: So I understand why people avoid it. I understand people worrying about the ethics of these models being trained on people’s work without their consent. Our books are in there. Our podcast transcripts. Nobody asked us. Nobody paying us. So I fully appreciate people who are worried about that. I appreciate people who are worried about the environmental cost. I am curious how you think about this, Sarah. I’ll tell you that I made an episode of More to Say probably a couple years ago now about the cost of a Google search to the environment, and it really helped me remember what I already know, which is that everything has an environmental cost. Everything. And There are ways in which I can get myself into a space of guilt about that, that are actually destructive to the cause of trying to care for the planet in a healthier way. I could make the argument that we should all work from home so that we avoid all of that traffic on the road and all that fuel burned, and I just don’t think that’s right. So I don’t feel guilty about using AI. I do try to think about whether I would want a data center anywhere near me, and where my hypocrisies lie around that because I think there are some concerns about these things going into communities without community consent, without clear agreements about where the power is coming from and where the water’s coming from. And I think these data centers need to be approached the way any other economic development needs to be approached, which is not just this is a gift to this community, it is also a burden on this community, and how can this be mutually beneficial and agreeable to all of us? But I’m curious how you’ve been thinking about that side of it.

[00:40:00] Sarah: I think that the most likely path for artificial intelligence, assuming, some model doesn’t come out that empowers bad actors to take out the species. Big if, but I’m counting on us surviving. The most likely scenario for me... what’s frustrating is, I’m going to say this, understanding that we have literally no one in a position of power within the Trump administration who is keeping an eye on this, thinking about this, trying to get us closer to this, but they won’t be in power forever, is a utility model. I think if it’s a utility model and it got trained on all our work, that doesn’t bother me. If it’s a utility that every American gains access to, and I think that’s a different issue. I think if it’s a utility that every American gains access to, the issues around energy consumption and resources become a different analysis, a needed one, and I think that we have built a narrative that we can continue to progress without costs, that we can build a process where everybody has a voice and a veto, and we can continue to improve everybody’s lives. That’s not true. I don’t know how to say it any more clearly. It’s just not true. To improve people’s lives has costs. It just does. There’s no utopia in which we expand housing, and healthcare, and small business development, and education, and improve the quality of people’s lives without some cost being extracted from certain communities, certain populations. I’m not talking about oppression. I’m not talking about exploiting populations. I’m just saying you don’t get change without some people not liking it. You know what I’m saying? Change comes at a cost, and the status quo is not going to sustain itself. No, there is no such thing as a static situation, and that’s what I just try to remind myself. I feel like people just want to stand still when it comes to AI. That’s just not a thing in human history. We just aren’t going to stand still, and there will be costs and benefits. And I would like to elect people and to have people in charge that are making thoughtful, wise decisions when it comes to that. I think we’ll probably get there eventually. But we’re not there now, and that’s why everybody’s so angry and freaked out because instead of saying “It doesn’t have to be a war for resources. It doesn’t have to be the kings of AI become rich like gods, and all the rest of us are scraping by on the bottom.” There is a path forward in which this becomes, like I said, a public utility or a public good and can maybe help us solve some of the problems. I can see that. I can’t see us getting there with the current leadership, but I can see that in front of us if I squint.

[00:43:03] Beth: I feel like I’ve been all over the place on this, and I may be in a totally different place the next time we talk about it because I do feel a sense of humility. I have no authority on this topic. I’m trying to learn. I recognize that I am also operating from this deep psychological fear I have of becoming obsolete in a number of dimensions. So I’m just trying to share kind of my experience. I was pretty hair on fire about this because I felt like it was happening to us instead of for us and that there was no agency around it. I’m so glad that there are people who are saying, “No, I don’t want any part of this.” I’m so glad that young people are completely unimpressed by it. There’s friction in the process now which gives me more confidence that we might get to that place where we’ve decided, for the most part, how we want this to be used, and for what, and by whom, and to what end. And that is a real shift for me, just in the last few months even. Because before that, I did think the attitude, and the flow of money, and all the market signals were like whether you want this or not, it’s a tsunami that’s coming for you. It’s going to change everything. Doesn’t matter how you feel about it, and today I feel a little bit more agency. And a little more everybody’s learned. We’re learning how to adapt to these tsunamis that are going to keep coming from technology, and we’re learning that we can stand up and say, “Wait a second, this seems wrong. This hurts too many people. This cost is not worth the benefit. And here the cost is well worth it.”

[00:44:45] Sarah: And also the product is crap. I just think sometimes it’s going to change the way people write. It already has. And then people are going to go, “I don’t like this,” and so people are going to change the way they write again. The music’s going to change. It already has, and then people are going to go, “I don’t like this,” and it’s not going to sell, and then that will change. These companies that are churning out 4,000 podcasts a day or whatever that crazy-ass reporting is. Like they’re going to do that. They’re going to spend a lot of money doing it. It’s not going to produce any real market share outcome, and they’re going to go guess we won’t do that anymore. Again, the sleepwalker bias, I think, is what we have to be really careful about. It will change things, and then people will decide if they don’t like it. Or if it creates consequences they’re not okay with. Even to the Trump administration, they were going to be hands-off remember? Hands off, full steam ahead, AI gets to do what it wants. Now they’re coming out with executive orders saying, no, they have to have new models approved by the federal government. You can see the changes even with them in real time where people go too much, too fast, don’t like the outcome.

[00:45:47] Beth: One of the ways that I use AI is to push my own writing. After we record our episodes, my post-production job is to write a little blurb on Substack about the episode. I built a skill in Claude for Claude to do that for me, and what I have discovered is that gives me an example of exactly what I do not want that note to be. Because it is super generic and feels like AI wrote it and feels like marketing speak. It’s cringey. My kids would say it’s cringey, and that’s great because then I look at that and go, “Okay, I got to do better than that. It is my job in this world full of slop to produce something much better than that and something that’s distinctive, something that only could be written by me about this episode that I helped create with you.” So I love having that yardstick of this is the average, and I don’t want to be average. I, again, kind off worry about that for my kids and for young people in general who haven’t had enough life experience to develop their voice before this tool came out.

[00:46:55] Sarah: Yeah.

[00:46:56] Beth: There’s always something to worry about, though.

[00:46:59] Sarah: There’s always something to worry about is an excellent conclusion for a conversation about artificial intelligence. Up next, we’re going to talk about the summer. So Beth, we have America 250 Summer. I have an RV trip across America planned with my family, so I’m really leaning into the theme here. I got kids going to camp- several different camps. It’s pretty tightly scheduled. I’m going to Philly. I’m going to lean into America 250 there. But I have it all so tight, and I’m excited about all these things. But school ends on Thursday, and I’m looking at my calendar, and I feel like summer’s already over. Why do I feel that way?

[00:47:49] Beth: I can’t tell you why you feel that way. I can only claim solidarity, even though I have an entirely different summer than you do. I’m not going anywhere this summer.

[00:47:57] Sarah: So it’s not the fact that mine’s scheduled. That’s not it then.

[00:48:01] Beth: I think it is the fact that it’s scheduled, and I think that no matter what the schedule is, the schedule can create that feeling. I’m not traveling this summer, but my summer is very scheduled because Jane is working. Jane can drive with me in the car, but not without me now. So many of my days are going to be about taking Jane to work and then going back to get her at the end of her shift, while Ellen is doing a variety of day camps and programs and hanging out with friends. Both of them, I said, “This is hangout summer. We’re going to hang out a lot more, okay? I want you to be with kids more.” Because I was with kids so much more than they are when I was a kid, and I think that those days on a trampoline, at a park, at the pool, watching movies, whatever, are so important, but that is a lot of transportation for me. And I told them-- because at one point I think I kind off hurt their feelings. Chad and I were talking about how intense it is to get them everywhere they’re going, and I said, “Look, I love this time in the car with you. We have such good conversations. I think everything you’re doing is wonderful. It is just the schedule it is the feeling that I have to have you to a place and back at a certain time, and that means that there’s this teeny window for me to do every everything else that has to be done.” And when you look at the summer and the camps and the birthday parties and whatever milestones, the trips, whatever is on there, I really approach it all as this big chunk between school years, and it’s like everything has to happen in this chunk of time, and it’s that sort of scarcity of creating a window like that makes me feel like there’s no time for anything.

[00:49:47] Sarah: It used to be summer filled me with such dread because it felt Long and unscheduled, and I had all this time where I had to figure out what people could do and where they could go and what they were doing, and filling them with random day camps, and pickups and drop-offs, and all that. And it’s the opposite of now. Griffin’s going to be a counselor at camp. He’ll be gone for a month. Amos has four weeks of camp scheduled. Felix has four weeks of camp scheduled. They’re hanging. I don’t have to drive them anywhere, which is my favorite part about that. But I went from one extreme to the other, to where it felt like it was too unscheduled, and I dreaded it and it felt too long, and now it’s too scheduled and I feel like it’s already over. Where’s the happy medium? Where’s the Goldilocks summer? Where is the Goldilocks summer?

[00:50:30] Beth: I would like to hear from people who feel like they’ve experienced a Goldilocks summer. I think some of this too just depends on what else has to happen in that window. When I am not working in the summer, we take a break, and during that time, I feel about Goldilocks. I love running them to whatever they have, and reading a book, and doing chores around my house, and puttering. I love to putter of my own hanging with friends. Those feel like Goldilocks days to me. When we’re working it’s brutal. So I think the age of the kids makes a difference. Your obligations make a difference. The weather makes a difference. A rainy day in the summer is a long day. If people feel like they have achieved a consistent Goldilocks summer, I’m interested in how they’ve done that.

[00:51:21] Sarah: It sounds like they were independently wealthy and they don’t have to work, to me.

[00:51:24] Beth: That must be it.

[00:51:26] Sarah: Maybe there’s other solutions out here. We’re all ears.

[00:51:28] Beth: I’m sure that if Elon or Sam were here, they would tell us that’s what AI’s going to give us, the Goldilocks summer. That’s the promise.

[00:51:34] Sarah: Yeah, I look at their lives and think they look real Goldilocks to me. Yeah, definitely what I’m picking up from those two bozos. All right. That’s it for today. Quick reminder, the Minneapolis hotel rooms and conference spots close June 12th. The link is in the show notes. Whatever your summer holds, I do know that this event in Minneapolis will be an excellent finale, so you should join us. Plus, make sure you’re a member of our paid Substack community so you will get all the America 250 fun we have coming your way in the next few weeks. Thanks for listening to Pantsuit Politics. We will be back in your ears on Friday, and until then, keep it nuanced, y’all.

Show Credits

Pantsuit Politics is hosted by Sarah Stewart Holland and Beth Silvers. The show is produced by Studio D Podcast Production. Alise Napp is our Managing Director and Maggie Penton is our Director of Community Engagement.

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