Womansplaining AI — Episode 20

Shadow Daddy ChatGPT

Yes, you can build an AI product without a big team or a funding round. Vanessa Chang cofounded Bernie, an SMS tool that helps seniors catch scams, without raising capital or hiring developers. Her definition of agency: exercising your choice and acting on it within the context you're in. Intention without action isn't agency.

Vanessa Chang calls herself an unlikely AI startup founder. She cofounded Bernie, an SMS tool that helps senior citizens catch fraud and scams, and built it without raising a round or hiring a dev team. Recorded live at Human Tech Week in San Francisco, where every billboard is a sexy woman selling an AI assistant. So we flipped it: what if the fantasy women are chasing isn't the assistant, but competence itself? Enter Shadow Daddy ChatGPT.

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In this episode

Questions this episode answers

What does agency mean in the age of AI?

Vanessa Chang defines agency as exercising your choice and acting on it within the context you're in. It goes beyond intention, since intention without action isn't agency. Freedom to choose is only a shade of it, because we always operate inside constraints of time, role, and circumstance.

Can you build an AI tool without a technical team or funding?

Yes. Vanessa cofounded Bernie, an SMS tool that helps senior citizens detect fraud and scams, without raising a round or hiring a dev team. She calls herself an unlikely AI startup founder, and the episode treats it as proof that agency exists on the builder side, not just the user side.

What is Shadow Daddy ChatGPT?

It's Vanessa's flip on the sexy-female-AI-assistant image on every San Francisco billboard. The real fantasy people chase isn't the assistant, it's competence itself, and proximity to competence that makes you feel competent. The point isn't 10x-ing your chores, it's being partnered with.

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Guest: Vanessa Chang (Bernie)

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Welcome back to Womansplaining AI. I'm Logan Currie, and this is the last interview that Mara and I recorded at Human Tech Week in San Francisco this spring. The whole event is built around one question. What does it actually look like for people to flourish in the age of AI? So big thanks to Nicole Bradford for making a space that made that feel very hopeful. If you want to go next year, registration for 2027 is already open. And I saved this one for the end on purpose. Vanessa Chang, who many people know as V, is a friend of mine. We actually met on TikTok. I've had many, many conversations with her. She's one of the sharpest people I know on any of this, many of the topics that we talk about. She is the co-founder of a startup called Bernie, which is an SMS tool that helps older adults spot fraud and scams. She calls herself an unlikely AI startup founder, and her whole thing is helping people think with AI and not like AI. If the other Human Tech Week conversations were about what agency means, this one is kind of about what it looks like when you actually go and build something. So here's V. Vanessa or V, we are asking people at Human Tech Week here what agency means to them. And, you know, the theme in some ways of this week or this event is around optimism and where you find, where are we creating optimism for ourselves? Where are you finding it? If you don't mind, maybe just sharing a little bit about what you think agency means. I feel like it's a little bit of an empty word in some ways these days are very trendy. What does it mean? Yeah. There are a lot of words that have come up since AI has come onto the scene that we have suddenly had to pay attention to. And I don't think we've ever really fully thought through or understand what the definition is before launching into the discussion. So I appreciate that question. I think critical thinking is one of them and agency is definitely one. And I've actually had this discussion where I've asked people, what does agency mean to you? Because I was trying to figure out what does it actually mean to me, especially. And there's this framing around freedom, right? Having the freedom to choose, you know, kind of whatever you want. And I find that limiting in the sense of freedom sort of being nebulous versus what is the freedom within the context that you're in. We as human beings rely on context, relationships, connections to create meaning, right? And to be oriented, physically oriented, but also emotionally, intellectually, I think, oriented. And so agency simply as like having a freedom of choice, yes, I think is a shade of that definition. But the true definition for me, agency is exercising sort of your choice and acting on it within the context that you are in. You can ultimately decide to pursue sort of the highest form of agency where it's just like F everybody, right? I'm going to do what I want to do. And if that's you, you do you, that's great. But ultimately, it is about how do I leverage where I am right now to get to the next point? It goes beyond intent. I think a lot of people talk about intention and we need that intention. But intention without the action, that's not agency, right? So what can you do? And we all operate within constraints and limitations by our choices, our socioeconomic sort of position, our jobs, our times, like our roles within communities and families. That that all needs to be taken into account because that's how we operate. And so for me, that automatically translates into hopefulness and hope because you wouldn't act if you didn't think you could do something, right? Or you could move somewhere or pursue something. So the TLTR, very long answer, is agency is that intention plus the action within whatever situation that you're in to get somewhere else or to be somewhere else or to feel something else. It's like movement. It's like forward momentum in some way. Correct. Agency doesn't come from standing still. So here's, that's a really good point. I know. That's a really good point. And so my question to you is I speak to so many women who say that they feel like AI is being done at them, which to me smacks of a complete loss of agency. Right. So how do you, and it takes people like where people are taking themselves out of the game because they're so overwhelmed. And this is something that I talk about a lot is, and we talk about it together is like, what I want people to do is come out of their poles of being either I'm totally pro AI or I'm totally against AI. We don't like the binaries. We don't like the binaries as we've established. We don't like the binaries. I think that part of the reason why people go to the binaries in this moment is because there's so much change happening. And it's like, if you're not in a role where it's absolutely mandated for you to adopt this, you can kind of ease, make a decision quickly and then choose a lane. I'm anti, I'm pro. Right. So how do you encourage women in particular out of the binary and see that this, they can reclaim their agency at this moment when they're so busy, they're working, you know, incredible hours. They're taking care of children or their parents, right? The brain space like does not exist for this. And people say that it feels like a second job. So how do you encourage people out of those corners? I feel like that's catch 22 for everybody because we're so overwhelmed. We could use the cognitive offloading, but we're so scared to cognitively offload, especially as women. And so it's then. Because it costs. It does cost. Because it bites us in the ass. And it's just determining and I guess measuring where that feels safe for you and where that is of benefit to you versus where is it a detriment, where it doesn't serve you anymore. And that's such a highly individualized answer that we actually, we as women, that's another thing we're asking ourselves to do is actually take the time to figure out or determine, okay, I feel good with this. And so if I go back to that definition around the context, right, where yes, okay, agency could be, I choose to participate and not to participate, right? There's the binary. Or it's this calculus that you can do in terms of, I don't have the time. I'm kind of getting a signal of ick from this, right? It doesn't feel good either way, but is there a way that I can at least leverage it to my benefit? You don't need a hundred percent apply it everywhere, right? That's probably impossible. But, you know, again, within that context of being so busy, of kind of feeling like you're pulled in 20 different directions, is there one way that you can utilize the tool and determine, okay, that was great. Or that was absolute garbage. I don't need this in my life at all. Like that is hype. And I think it is realizing that agency like comes in various scales. Like we have the acute application of like at work, I don't want to cognitively offload this. I want to keep this versus something in various different applications or at scale. Where it's lower risk. Where it's lower risk. Or where you find it fantastically boring. Yeah. And I think it is even just starting in one aspect or one place and having that repetition. And because that repetition is turning around like a good answer or a positive impact, and then you eventually trust it. Yeah. This idea that AI should take over everything and anything in our lives, that appropriately should be met with suspicion. 100%. Yeah. 100%. But if we can find one use case where it's genuinely helpful to us, and I want to invite this perspective to women especially, I find with the women that I talk to who are at this cusp, they don't want to go there because then they feel like it's not cheating. Or that it is cheating. 100%. 100%. I hear that all the time. And that bears out in the literature as well. That's right. Or there's some nobility into the suffering in a way where it's like, it's not a while unless we suffer. Yeah. And I agree. Friction is necessary. We love that necessary effort, but not everything needs to be suffering. So I would say that would be my entree to people. What is something that doesn't need to be suffering in your life that you can't offload to AI and maybe that'll make it feel a little less ick? Gosh, I know that. Because we don't, we, I mean, we suffer enough. Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally. Mm-hmm. Okay. My maybe last follow-up question here is when you, because I think you're so thoughtful in how you decide where to have friction. And where you decide what to kind of offload, like, what does that look like for you on a day-to-day basis? Because I know for me, at least, it's very much sometimes I'm like, yeah, I want to do this. And other times it's a, it's a moving target in some ways. It's not going to be, oh, here's a hard and fast rule. But maybe talk us through what your thought process is at the moment in terms of like what you want to be suffering for versus what you want to offload. I think this is where women particularly excel. We're exceptionally good at triaging. Like we are, we are, you know, everyone talks about the pit. That is a woman's mind. Like we are triaging anything inbound and everything where it's, I would say whatever comes inbound and what is sort of the most serious for me or, you know, and sometimes also use AI to be selfish. Or it's like, what is it something that I genuinely don't want to do? Yes. I find that I am, I am primarily selfishly motivated when it comes to AI of like what I don't want to spend my time on. And a lot of it is inspired by you, Logan, with the administrative back office stuff with around chief of staff, right? Like how much of that can I offload to where I have established as a goal for me? I want to spend more time doing certain hard things like the reading, like the researching, like the writing, spending time face to face with people that, okay, if those are my priorities and that is like, you know, for this week's schedule, you know, what is on the agenda? What can I use with AI so that I protect that time and be selfish in addition to being helpful? I mean, I think for women, letting go of that idea that I have to suffer to make it worthwhile, letting go that I can't be selfish, like I can only use AI to be helpful. We love that we can use AI to be helpful, but also what can you use AI to improve your life, not just someone else's life and finding it in a way that is meaningful to you. Meaning, what are your, what are your priority? What are you valuing? What, what factors do you have in your life? Is the only way to make it stick versus, I know we talked about this, Logan, everyone wants a roadmap, right? It's like, just do this. But that one size fits all often doesn't land with a lot of people, right? They have to figure out a way to personalize it. Because one size fits men. I love that. One size fits men. Men are the default humans. Invisible women. Everybody read it. It's the best book ever. But yeah, that's what, that's what comes from her book. One size fits men. But okay, beyond, I think I see that. And I don't think, I don't even see men, I mean, to a certain extent, yes, they are prescribing a roadmap or whatever. But I think, I think that it's the, it's more of a collective experience. In some ways, I'll push back a little bit because that is how we are raised. This is, this is our education system is here is a, here is the, here's what is perfect looks like. This is a hundred percent, you know, and we, there is no mechanism for any of us who've grown up in kind of traditional education systems to learn what failure looks like, to learn what 70% looks like. And I think that it's always been externally presented to us. This is the rubric. This is what good looks like. And this is what you need to learn. And so I think that in many ways, the reason that this is so individual, which cuts both ways, you need the friction, you need the time to be able to design your own system. But at the same time, that's where it's really fucking cool because that is so personalized and it is very much driven by you. And it's not about reverse engineering from a goal. It's about forward planning and saying like, where do I want to be? Let's throw a dart at the wall in the next like three months. Where do I want to be from now? And I find that that terrifies a lot of people, women in general. And if that's one thing people ask me, like, what's your takeaway from AI? It's actually not a technical skill. It's this idea that it really forces you to know the shit out of yourself. And if you haven't had the time or bandwidth or even wherewithal to say, okay, I know enough about myself that I want to do this or that I need to do this rather than just kind of being reactionary, which feels like daily life for everybody, but women especially. It's really daunting because you can't personalize something that you're not really sure about that. It is kind of just throwing spaghetti at the wall, which can be fun if you have the bandwidth. But if your time is limited, you're like, where do I, where do I even start? Can I, can I, is anybody here read Akator? Sorry? No. Give me all the fairy smut. You haven't read A Court of Thrones and Merza? Oh, she will. She will after this. She will. She will. Okay. Do you know how, I'm going somewhere with this, I promise. I'm here for it. The Venn diagram is going to be strong on this one, I feel. So you know how Feyre has to look in the mirror? And it, and it basically, one of the main characters in the series. For those of us who have no idea what the fuck you're talking about. Okay. Let's orient everybody. Okay. There is a very, very, very popular series by Sarah J. Moss called A Court of Thorns and Roses. Okay. Akator. A.K.A. Akator. It is many people's entryway into the larger world of romanticy. Romanticy. Yeah. A.K.A. fairy smut. Fairy smut. Whatever you want to call it. So this is where my, my, my, my AI, my AI circle and my book talk circle are really Venn diagram. But so in the main, the main character, and I'm making this reference because so many women have read this book. Um, and it, and for good reason. It's very good. Um, so Feyre has to, there's like a challenge where it's, it's, she needs this, this artifact to kind of get this, somebody to help them in a war basically. But she, everyone's terrified of it because everybody up until this point has looked in this mirror and gone insane. And what happens is that you look in this mirror and it shows you all of your deepest fears and everything that you're ashamed of. And all of the things. I feel like that's my every day. Every single day of my life. Just as I live, but go on. It's relatable, but, but I think, and she ends up doing it because she's gone through so many trials and tribulations and the book that she's like, I know myself and I, I, I'm not, I'm not ashamed or I don't have, I can face within that mirror. And I think we always talk about how AI is a mirror. And, and I think that to your point, V, you have to know the shit out of yourself, the good, the bad, and the ugly, in order to really use these tools in a transformative way that is anyway. So I think that there's a, it's the mirror of like, it starts with an O or a bar. It's, it's something fantastical sounding and I know exactly what you're referring to. Something, something, yeah, no, that I, a hundred percent. It's this idea that it requires introspection in a culture that does not give us the time or space for introspection. That also is so loud with self-judgment around, and you and I feel this all the time around like AI tools. And we talk about this in our circles too, where it's, I can't keep up with everything. I don't know enough, like, and I think that prevents a lot of women from speaking about, especially their AI journey. I actually know a lot of, we talk about shadow adoption in business and enterprise. There is shadow adoption in women because I will offer the ugly side of people opting out of AI is that women get guilted into, into not like, oh, you use AI? Shame. Yes. Totally. Right. It's like, how dare you? Like, you know. Lean and just did, nope. Chief, lean and just did research about this. No, it was lean and it was lean and research chief did other research that's related, but lean and just did research that women get penalized more for using generative AI and get praised less for using generative AI. I believe that. And I think it's true. Like, I think that dynamic with women amongst women, we definitely saw that with the Reese Witherspoon sort of example. I mean, it's, you know, regardless of who said it, I think it's, it's really indicative of the fact that we feel sheepish about using it. Maybe we don't even know to get started. And then, yeah, go back to that, the, the primitive, the primary unit here. It's yourself, right? Operating and living as a woman. The odds are kind of stacked against us, right? To adopt it. I, okay. I'm going to draw another. Romanticy connection. Bring it. Because it was a great, I don't know if it was in the New York times or the cut, but. So this is an AI romanticity mashup. Exactly. I actually, I did, I did, I did a post in January saying the way that I feel about Claude Code is the way that I feel about heated rivalry. Yes, in a sense that I am like a Jehovah's witness. I'm just like, have we talked about the word of the Lord? The, the feel. Have we talked about heated rivalry? Have we talked about Claude Code? It's a bare witness. No, I, I will follow that up with. Yeah, yeah. I, the, the way I binge Claude Code sessions, I end up feeling the same way at the other end of it, the way I feel after binging Bridgerton or anything else. Okay, so follow me along here. There was a great article about how, uh, the trope in a lot of these romanticity books is about the much older people. older, like main love interest. So the MMC, the male main character, typically it's very gender normative in some ways, um, is often like 300 years older than the, the protagonist. And so the FMC, yeah, very much older, but there was a big, um, I forget, I'll, I'll try to find the creator who made this video, but she also wrote an article about it, about how the, the porn, the, the, the fantasy here is of competence. Wait, what? What do you mean? What? What do you mean? Meaning why are women so drawn to reading these stories of the main female character falling in love with this very self-assured, very understanding, but very, very clear decision-making somebody who's 300 year old man. And it's because it's the fantasy of competence because we are so approximate to competence. Then you're competent. It's somebody who's just kind of like, let me, let me help you figure this out. And so, and so I've read a lot about the, the womanification or like how, you know, Silicon Valley, we're here in San Francisco right now. Every single billboard is a, is a, is a sexy woman who's your AI assistant, but I'm like, how can we turn this on its head? And like, instead of sexy woman AI assistant, it's shadow daddy, MMCAI, it's shadow daddy, chat GPT. I love shadow daddy, chat GPT. I, that is, I mean, that is the runway to trust, right? Because it's competence. It's how can I externalize? It's not about, and I think that's where so much of it feels. And so much of the criticism that we read around essentially kind of like the name calling, if I were to say that, or the internecine warfare of what's happening with women right now is, oh, you use AI. Therefore, you're not wanting to think for yourself or you're trying to rob the creative class. It's about the environmental impact, but it's like, if we present the alternative and say like, okay, well, what, what are the good things? It's not just, oh, I can 10X myself because I'm sorry, no woman has a fantasy of being more productive in their life. I can't 10X my laundry or my dishes. Are you kidding me? It's what are, what are the ways in which I can be partnered with? We opened this conversation before we started recording of, I want a wife. You want a wife. I love a wife. You want a wife. And it's, and it's, how can we, and it's so many of there's, there's a there there in terms of like this fantasy of competence. And how do we tap into that? I love that framing. I think that is, I need to sit with that for a second. That is so good. No, but I mean, it's, so my hot take is we, you know, we allow that shit to be too hard for ourselves sometimes where if there is something that will make life easier for us, like why not take it? This is women avoiding an epidural. No, like people who are like, are you going to have an epidural? I'm like, am I alive? Like, am I? Do I use the internet? Do I wear hair? I'm going to have it like three months. Yeah. No, I mean, it's the same framing where, I mean, again, that bringing in that shame aspect to it where it's like, oh, you feed your kids frozen food or take out. We just had an episode about this where it's like, tell me you have never fed your kid a lunch bowl without telling me you've never fed your kid a lunch bowl. It's like, yes, I did. They are fed. They have calories. And by the way, they are loved and they got to school. Like, you know, I mean, so sue me. It's almost where AI is seen as that shortcut or that judgment of like, oh, you didn't grind your wheat from scratch to make sourdough bread for your family. Yeah. There's a trad wife. There's a trad wife thread there for sure. There is this pathway between like this purism, this intellectual and like emotional purism, purity versus like, you know, oh, you know, I did everything from this sort of from scratch. Therefore, it shows love and my merit as like a woman and a kingkeeper and a wife or whatever is just such BS. Do you know, do you know, do you know that you may know this, that when brownies were originally marketed? The CPJ psychology effect. Yes. Do you know this? They had to add an egg to make it feel like it was worthwhile. You used to be able to just put the brownie mix in water and then bake it and get a brownie back. And women didn't like it because they were like, I'm not putting in any effort. Yeah. I feel like I didn't do anything. I feel like I didn't do anything. And this feels like cheating and like I'm not really providing for my family. So they added the fucking egg. So that was the step was originally it was launch was just add water, minimal, convenient, but consumers didn't like it because it felt like it was cheating. So the one step was, okay, we'll add one egg and you made one egg is always the thing that I can't. My kids are like, let's move bake brownies. Well, we're going to skip that experiment. So I, I, now I'm seeing an alternate future where I'm like, oh, I could have. Okay. That's so interesting. It's so interesting. I think there, I think there's a, they're there. Yeah. Yeah. M M C A I M M C A I. There's a big, I think, I think it needs to start. I'm going to design you your romanticist syllabus. We're going to start. We're going to start late. I was going to say catch up on a guitar. I have you, I haven't even taken you to love struck. When you come to Boston, one of my close friends, love struck is so great. Opened, opened a romance bookstore in Harvard square and Rachel Cantor opened it. And it's phenomenal. I mean, coffee shop, wine bar, like enormous space. And it's a big, it's amazing. Yeah. Hashtag sponsor us. Hashtag love struck. Hashtag your next live event. There you go. Oh, we should do that. I'm going to message Rachel. I would fly in for that. I would fly in for that. Okay. Okay. Okay. Excellent. All right. Thank you, V so much for all of your- Should we ask V who she is? Oh, yeah, please. V, who are you? Hi. Hi. How are you contributing to the protopia, which we've established yesterday means? What did it mean? It's not a utopia and it's not a dystopia. It's like the best that we can do under the circumstances and given the constraints that we have. It's practically best. It's not a fantasy. It's not a nightmare. It's what is the best version of reality that we can create. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm V. Think with V. Logan and I met as TikTok friends and now we are connected through our intellectual circles. I just started talking about AI to learn about AI. And my thing now is to help people think with AI and not like AI. So not about the cognitive offloading, but also all the aspects that make us each who we are. And how does that thing manifest in a startup that I understand that you have? That's right. It helps with the fact that I am an unlikely AI startup founder. I created something called Bernie with my co-founders, which essentially helps senior citizens detect fraud and scams through an SMS platform. And it helps people like me or anyone who has parents that they worry about and wanting to make sure that they stay safe. So if you had said three years ago that you would be talking about AI and that you have a startup that is, you know, engined by AI, I would have said that that is utopian, not protopian. But that made it possible and it really is this idea that you do not have to be, you know, this true leader for AI, but that you can use AI in a way and still love it enough to call it out for its BS. Which is why I appreciate connecting with you two and other women that we've met in the space where we are finding these practical uses for it to not just improve our lives, but collectively kind of seeing what the opportunities are while it's also still holding space. And holding accountable the creators of the technology and, by the way, the government that is supposed to be regulating some aspects of the most egregious aspects of it. That's another conversation. That's another conversation. But yes. Well, I think just to end with that, and I think what you're building with Bernie is such a phenomenal example of a solution that in some ways I think, might I venture, is so purely like a female solution. Does that make sense? Where it's like, and I know you have your co-founders, but I think that this is, to me, so representative of the protopia future that I'm really hopeful for because it's an indication of you see a problem, you're coming up with a solution, and you're able to build that solution without needing to raise $100,000 of capital to hire a dev team. And it's like, no, no, no, you're doing the thing. You're doing the damn thing yourself. That's awesome. We can pick it up and run with it and let it take off from there. Yeah. Thank you, Bea. Thank you, Bea. Thank you both. This is so fun. Great. Okay. Okay. Okay.