📜 AISW #082: Mia Kiraki, Romania-based founder & CMO at Yahini and content creator & strategist

Written interview with Romania-based Mia Kiraki on her stories of using AI and how she feels about AI using people's data and content as founder & CMO at Yahini and a content creator & strategist

Introduction -

Mia Kiraki 🎭

This post is part of our AI6P interview series on “AI, Software, and Wetware”. Our guests share their experiences with using AI, and how they feel about AI using their data and content. (This is a written interview; read-aloud is available in Substack. If it doesn’t fit in your email client, click HERE to read the whole post online.)

Note: In this article series, “AI” means artificial intelligence and spans classical statistical methods, data analytics, machine learning, generative AI, and other non-generative AI. See this Glossary and “AI Fundamentals #01: What is Artificial Intelligence?” for reference.

---

Interview -

Mia Kiraki 🎭

(1) I am delighted to welcome Mia Kiraki from Romania as my guest for “AI, Software, and Wetware”. Mia, thank you so much for joining me for this interview! Please tell us about yourself, who you are, and what you do.

Thank you so much for having me, Karen! I love the community you’ve created 🙂

In a nutshell, I’m the founder of an AI company called Yahini, which is a strategic AI content platform, and the proud author of the newsletter ROBOTS ATE MY HOMEWORK. I also occasionally build AI workflows and automations for SMBs [Small to Medium Businesses].

On my background… I hold three degrees: one in Film, one in Marketing, and one in Security & Diplomacy. So, my brain is this collision of a screenwriter’s obsession with narrative and a diplomat’s eye for complex systems. I wish I could say I’m a good detective and that Holmes would be proud of me, but that’s unfortunately not the case haha.

That’s a neat background, Mia - three distinct degrees! I’m looking forward to hearing how those backgrounds have influenced how you use AI and what you think about it.

(2) What is your level of experience with AI, ML, and analytics? Have you used it professionally or personally, or studied the technology, or built tools using the technology?

I’m both a user and a builder. Basically, I train AIs and LLMs for a living.

Yahini started as an internal tool built out of sheer frustration with AI in content. My entire professional life now revolves around not just using AI, but bending it to a specific will. I’m obsessed with making it a tool for strategic thinking.

I’m always curious about how people learn AI. Did you ever have any formal education or training in AI, as part of your 3 degrees, or are you self-taught?

Self-taught! I actually hadn’t come across any formal AI training, so I’d be curious to know if there are any worth pursuing. I have a strong conviction that AI needs to be played with, not taught. You need to build things, break them, and learn from what happens. Plus, I graduated back in 2017, so a loooong time ago, when AI was probably some obscure NPC [non-player character] in a cyberpunk mobile game 😀

Do you use any tools with AI features outside of work purposes?

Yes, constantly! For multiple things:

Stock market analysis to identify red flags, compare trends…

For nutrition, optimizing micros and macros, analyzing ingredients, creating new recipes…

And probably my favourite, when I’m looking for new books or films, I use it to do a lot of research, asking for new recommendations, all the fun stuff!

And what I like most about these is that I’m not asking for one thing - I’m actually having back-and-forth conversations where I refine my understanding. Like with macros, I’ll go from “Here’s what I ate” to “How can I get the same nutrients with better bioavailability?” to “What’s a realistic meal plan that accounts for my workout schedule?”

As someone with a degree in film, have you ever tried any of the video generation AI tools?

Actually, no! But I’ve played around with animating old family photos :)

(3) Can you share a specific story on how you have used a tool that included AI or ML features? What are your thoughts on how the AI features [of those tools] worked for you, or didn’t? What went well and what didn’t go so well?

Reference for this question: “But I don’t use AI”: 8 Sets of Examples of Everyday AI, Everywhere

Absolutely :) The story of the tools I build (including Yahini) is the answer to this question.

Back when I was running my boutique content agency, I tried to integrate the early gen AI tools into our workflow. And it was a bit of a disaster. We were drowning in fluff. It was creating more work, forcing us to spend hours rewriting and adding “humanity” to it.

Something went well too, though. It was a fantastic lesson in what NOT to do. It pushed me to say “Okay, this is a sin against good content. What’s the opposite of this?”

I started building my own systems and instead of replacing thinking, I aimed to structure it.

This whole process revealed to me that most AI tools were built for people looking for shortcuts. And shortcuts are boring!

Can you give a specific example of one of those frustrating incidents that prompted you to found Yahini? Like, what’s one of the tasks in your boutique content agency that you were trying to use genAI for? Which tool did you try to use? What did it do SO badly that you decided you needed to become a founder to solve it? 🙂 And how does Yahini solve that problem now?

One of the best examples was when clients kept asking how we could integrate AI into our workflow, which honestly basically meant “Can you please charge less and just use AI to write it?” 😀 That obviously wasn’t working because the output was terrible.

We tried to use generic LLMs (since back then there weren’t many content AI tools, maybe copy.ai and that was about it) to help with content creation. But, as every person familiar with AI knows, the final output was generic at best.

I realized what the problem was… we were using these tools to try to replace the writing, but what we actually needed help with was with the strategic planning, research, organizing, everything. And that’s what no tool was solving.

Now, Yahini thinks like a strategy first. It learns your business, combines that with live market analysis and applies expert-level content frameworks. You get a complete, prioritized content strategy with detailed briefs and AI agents that help any writer (human or AI) execute well.

(4) If you have avoided using AI-based tools for some things (or anything), can you share an example of when, and why you chose not to use AI?

Oh, constantly. I never, ever use AI for the initial, core idea.

The first moment of creation is messy, human. Fueled by a weird combo of what you had at lunch and a half-remembered dream :D AI can’t do that. It’s a brilliant synthesizer, collagist. But it has no lived experience.

I use it mostly for research, expansion, reframing, and challenging structures.

I’m also noticing that the vast majority of AI tools lack the in-depth prompt engineering needed to make creative work creative, instead of a bland template of something else.

When you use it for research, how often do you find that the results you get can be trusted to be accurate?

About 70% of the time if I use it raw, with no prior training. I always double check the sources and there are tons of instances where the AI simply interprets the results.

(5) A common and growing concern nowadays is where AI and ML systems get the data and content they train on. They often use data that users put into online systems or publish online. And companies are not always transparent about how they intend to use our data when we sign up.

How do you feel about companies using data and content for training their AI/ML systems and tools? Should ethical AI tool companies be required to get Consent from (and Credit & Compensate) people whose data they want to use for training? (the “3Cs Rule”)

Required! It’s not even a question. It’s the only ethical way, and anything else is digital stripmining.

‘Digital stripmining’ - what an apt description!

My parents were art dealers; I grew up with the concepts of provenance and authorship. Who made it, where did it come from, etc. We should apply this in digital too.

At the same time, I like to be realistic. Even before AI, the internet allowed you to repurpose content from others, use stuff as inspiration, and a lot of things were going uncredited. This is, unfortunately, the reality we live in.

That’s certainly true - as humans, we all learn and draw inspiration from each other. And as you point out, flagrant plagiarism is not new with AI. Generative AI just put it on steroids and made it easy for anyone to plagiarize, perhaps without even realizing it.

(6) As a user of AI-based tools, do you feel like the tool providers have been transparent about sharing where the data used for the AI models came from, and whether the original creators of the data consented to its use?

Not quite… “transparency” is a bit of a buzzword for many. But also, who’s ever checked the full terms& conditions, let alone the privacy policy!

True, over 90% of people don’t read them, but when they are 20 pages of legalese, who can fault them for not reading?

If you’ve worked with building an AI-based tool or system, what can you share about where the data came from and how it was obtained?

Yahini is a strategic AI content platform that helps you build a ‘brand brain’ from your own unique expertise, which then acts as a strategic director for all the content you create.

You are in complete control of the source material. It learns from your public-facing content, like your website URL or articles you’ve published, and it uses that information and only that information to construct your brand’s unique POV (point of view: audience insights, use cases, pain points, unique selling propositions).

That sounds great, that users have full control of the source material. Do you train a custom GPT [generative pretrained transformer] for each user with RAG [retrieval augmented generation] to create the brand brain, or how does it work? (If that’s not revealing any proprietary or confidential information about the company)

Very good question! It’s not a custom GPT. We use RAG combined with AI agents to generate unique brand intelligence profiles for each project. It’s never a one-size-fits-all approach.

Yahini then checks that living knowledge base and consults it for every strategic decision it makes. So, basically, it never memorizes generic patterns, but actively understands what makes your business special.

(7) As consumers and members of the public, our personal data or content has probably been used by an AI-based tool or system. Do you know of any cases that you could share (without disclosing sensitive personal information, of course)?

I think biometrics are a good example (e.g. TSA facial recognition system).

What’s interesting to me, as someone who’s studied security and diplomacy, is the trade-off we’re presented with. We’re offered a tiny bit of convenience in exchange for participating in the normalization of biometric surveillance.

Can you talk a little more about that tradeoff?

I guess what I wanted to say was that, if you think about it, what we’re really doing is participating in a massive social experiment (in this case, where the perceived benefit is saving 30 seconds at airport security).

From a security and diplomacy perspective, that means we’re accepting “convenient” solutions. Which is both a good and a bad thing, if you ask me.

(8) Do you know of any company you gave your data or content to that made you aware that they might use your info for training AI/ML? Or have you ever been surprised by finding out that a company was using your info for AI? It’s often buried in the license terms and conditions (T&Cs), and sometimes those are changed after the fact.

Yes, plenty of AI tools do these, especially those that you can use for free. I use these with caution and prefer to rely on my own trained systems / workflows, and using paid plans with whatever LLMs I choose to access.

I’ve never come across / found out about a company using my info for AI without consent (yet!)

There was quite a fuss about LinkedIn last September where they opted all of us in for generative AI training, by default, if we weren’t protected by GDPR. But being in Romania and the EU, hopefully you were protected?

Definitely protected! (but you never know… 😅)

If so, did you feel like you had a real choice about opting out, or about declining the changed T&Cs?

Always checking, always opting out if that’s the case and I don’t want my data to be used for training.

Did you opt out of AI training on Substack? How about other social media?

Didn’t opt out on Substack, because I want to be discovered by the AI search engines. But I try to opt out when I can and when it doesn’t benefit me in a meaningful way.

(9) Has a company’s use of your personal data and content created any specific issues for you, such as privacy, phishing, or loss of income? If so, can you give an example?

N/A

(10) Public distrust of AI and tech companies has been growing. What do you think is THE most important thing that AI companies need to do to earn and keep your trust? Do you have specific ideas on how they can do that?

Honesty!

1. Translate T&Cs into plain English and be transparent with them on your website’s footer, without burying them. Be blunt, let people make a choice.

2. Explicit and granular consent - if it’s not clear from the beginning that your company uses AI, you can ask separately on sign up: “Can we use your data to improve our service?”

3. Prove your provenance, and if your AI is trained on data, show me where it came from (data you’re using, APIs, etc.)

All great suggestions. Do you have any thoughts on how we can motivate the companies to actually do these things?

There are a number of suggestions I can think of, BUT I think the most important thing is the pressure that comes from the consumer…

We’re way more likely to buy from transparent companies. And when transparency actually becomes profitable, companies listen. I guess we need to vote with our wallets!

(11) Anything else you’d like to share with our audience?

I’d just like to leave people with this thought: we’re absolutely not passive victims in this. It’s easy to feel powerless against systems designed to be “opaque”. But the most effective thing you could do is out-think them.

My mission is to try to reduce the slop online and the only way to do that is to teach people, and by extension, their AI tools, to think more strategically. This is my purpose with the tools and workflows I build.

We can definitely build a smarter, more culturally-rich world, but it requires that we stop looking for shortcuts and start using our brains again. It’s a radical idea, maybe. If you’re interested in that fight, you can find me on my Substack, ROBOTS ATE MY HOMEWORK.

Until next time! :)

Love that you’re encouraging and supporting people in using their wetware with AI, Mia. Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts on AI with us!

Interview References and Links

Maria-Christina Muntean on LinkedIn

Mia Kiraki on Medium

Mia Kiraki on Substack (Robots Ate My Homework)

---

About this interview series and newsletter

This post is part of our AI6P interview series on “AI, Software, and Wetware”. It showcases how real people around the world are using their wetware (brains and human intelligence) with AI-based software tools, or are being affected by AI.

And we’re all being affected by AI nowadays in our daily lives, perhaps more than we realize. For some examples, see post “But I Don’t Use AI”:

"But I don't use AI": 8 Sets of Examples of Everyday AI, Everywhere

We want to hear from a diverse pool of people worldwide in a variety of roles. (No technical experience with AI is required.) If you’re interested in being a featured interview guest, anonymous or with credit, please check out our guest FAQ and get in touch!

6 'P's in AI Pods (AI6P) is a 100% human-authored, 100% reader-supported publication. (No ads, no affiliate links, no paywalls on new posts). All new posts are FREE to read and listen to. To automatically receive new AI6P posts and support our work, consider becoming a subscriber:

---

Series Credits and References

Disclaimer: This content is for informational purposes only and does not and should not be considered professional advice. Information is believed to be current at the time of publication but may become outdated. Please verify details before relying on it.
All content, downloads, and services provided through 6 'P's in AI Pods (AI6P) publication are subject to the Publisher Terms available here. By using this content you agree to the Publisher Terms.

Microphone photo by Michal Czyz on Unsplash (contact Michal Czyz on LinkedIn)

AI, Software, & Wetware Interview List

Books

Credit to CIPRI (Cultural Intellectual Property Rights Initiative®) for their “3Cs' Rule: Consent. Credit. Compensation©.”

Credit to

Beth Spencer

for the “Created With Human Intelligence” badge we use to reflect our commitment that content in these interviews will be human-created:

If you enjoyed this interview, my guest and I would love to have your support via a heart, share, restack, or Note! (One-time tips or voluntary donations via paid subscription are always welcome and appreciated, too 😊)