Introduction - Jeanette Bronée | PauseOnThis
🫛 This edition of AI, Software, and Wetware features an audio interview on ethical AI with Jeanette Bronée, a 🇺🇸 USA-based 🇩🇰 Danish culture thinker, executive strategist, keynote speaker, and the founder of Path for Life, Inc. Jeanette is also the author of the book The Self-Care Mindset and writes here on Substack. We discuss:
Distinguishing our worry-load from our work load, and using Power-Pausing to get ourselves unstuck & keep attention on what matters
Being a lifelong early adopter of tech and using AI to help her edit her writing
Why she refuses to use AI tools like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini to help her write LinkedIn posts, and dislikes AI-generated pictures (including of herself)
Concerns about data privacy from wellness tools like Oura rings and 23andme and her “gossip standard” for what should & shouldn’t be shared
Insisting on human intelligence for her outreach to people she wants to talk to
Nuances on who she would & wouldn’t mind using the contents of her book (The Self-Care Mindset) without compensating her
Why she believes AI is scaling a broken system when it could be building a new and better interconnected system for us all, with humans in the lead, not just humans in the loop
and more. Check it out, and let us know what you think!
Audio length: 47:51. Reading time estimate: 40-45 min.
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 works.
This interview is available as an audio recording (embedded here in the post, and later in our AI6P external podcasts). This post includes the full, human-edited transcript. (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 - Jeanette Bronée | PauseOnThis
Karen: I’m delighted to welcome Jeanette Bronée from New York as my guest today on “AI, Software, and Wetware”. Jeanette, thank you so much for joining me today! Please tell us about yourself, who you are, and what you do.
Jeanette: Thank you for having this conversation. I’m curious where it takes us. Yes, my name is Jeanette Bronée. I am Danish, born in Denmark, and live in America. I am now a keynote speaker and culture strategist, or maybe should say culture thinker, because I help organizations rethink how they build a healthier, stronger, better culture from the inside out. I used to be in the fashion industry, so it’s very different, but I think of it as I still design something. I design the conditions for people to work better in the workplace and help leaders create a good relationship between human and AI, in this day and age.
Karen: Yeah, I think what caught my eye initially was when you wrote something on LinkedIn about keeping the humans first in AI, and that’s very much what this series is about. So really look forward to hearing your insights on that. And I think you’ve also written a book, right? You’re an author?
Jeanette: Oh yeah, I have written a book called The Self-Care Mindset. Thank you for remembering that.
Karen: Can you talk a little bit about what prompted you to write the book? You’ve obviously got a lot of experience at working with people. What made you say, “Okay, I need to write a book about this”?
Jeanette: Yeah. So I think in systems. And when I wrote the book, it was because I had been working with finding a pattern in how people change over the years of coaching. I was coaching people through change, like, started with nutrition, and then became more like burnout prevention and all those kinds of things. But it all comes down to one thing: what do people need so that they can create positive change in their life? So I wrote the book based on the frameworks that I had come up with, that were like a process for having a way to self-reflect, in a way that wouldn’t get us stuck, but rather move us forward.
So it’s actually more of a mindset book than a self-care book. It’s really about understanding how our minds work, and how we can’t separate the mind and how we function and the neuroscience of that, from our emotional intelligence and our habits. So I’ve always thought of it as a sort of process that was, how do we think better? How do we engage better with ourselves? By understanding our emotions, not judging them, but really understanding how it’s information. And then, how does that help us move forward, get unstuck, and have some practical steps in a way to move forward? Not that I’m giving people the practical steps, but I’m helping them understand it themselves. So I tend to say to people, “It’s not a book of answers. It’s a book of questions, questions that you can ask yourself.”
Karen: Wow, that’s a neat summary. AI is obviously a big disrupter nowadays. Is there anything specific in the book about the special effects that AI is having? Or these are just principles that apply whether or not anybody chooses to use AI tools?
Jeanette: Yeah. You know, when I wrote the book, I didn’t have AI in mind in that sense. It was just work pressure, and I think of it as the worry-load that we have, not the workload that we have. And so part of what I teach in the book is Power-Pausing, and Power-Pausing to me isn’t just, “Oh, you need more breaks”, and so on and so forth. You do, but it really is a process of understanding where are we getting stuck and how we’re asking questions. And so I feel like this book is even more applicable now, because we tend to get stuck asking the same questions looking for an answer; when really, so that we can change and grow, we need that creative, constructive, critical mindset that really creates more discernment in how we ask questions and from that place of curiosity, and really prompting ourselves to go deeper. Well, that’s what we need to do with AI as well. And that’s why I find that there is curiosity for me about how can we cultivate a better or healthier relationship with AI where we’re not actually looking for the answers. We’re looking at it as a way to prompt ourselves to think deeper, and therefore be more creative and constructive. I hope that we can use AI for that and not just be, you know, another answering machine.
Karen: An answering machine, I love that. Yes. Thank you. So tell us a little bit about your level of experience with using AI and machine learning or analytics, if you’ve used it professionally or personally, or if you’ve ever studied the technologies.
Jeanette: First, I’m actually not a tech person or an AI person, but I call myself a Boomer with a Gen Z mindset, because I have always loved tech. And so I’m always the first one with the latest tech. I remember when the PalmPilot first came out, I would sit in the subway and write with my little pen on the phone, and people would be looking at me like, “What is she doing?” Or I would be out sailing on a Monday, and people would be like, “Why are you working on your time off?” And I was like, “I don’t have time off. I’m working because it’s my office and I’m working from a boat.”
So I’ve always loved technology in that way. AI sort of became, at first, basically for me an editing tool, because I have a hard time editing myself after I write, partly because I’m Danish and partly because I write the way I speak, which is very long sentences. And so I started using it as a tool for that, and then also as a research tool, looking at how can I dive deeper into things that I’m not spending hours looking on Google or looking things up. So in that way, it’s been helping me to do that. There’s also parts of me now that know that it’s embedded in everything we’re doing, and it’s slowing every website down at this point. So I’m also getting frustrated with it.
Karen: Yeah. Are you referring to all the browsers that keep popping up these AI overviews, and they sit and spin for a while before they’ll actually give you any search results?
Jeanette: Yeah. Yeah.
Karen: Yeah. Did you know there are actually ways to get around that? I can drop you some links, but there’s a way, for instance, in Google to make it not do those AI overviews.
Jeanette: Oh, interesting.
Karen: Yeah. I get annoyed by them too, so I looked for that early on. A lot of times I know exactly what I’m looking for. I don’t need an AI-generated answer. It’s just wasting compute cycles to try to come up with one.
Jeanette: Yeah. You know, I’ve worked with teams through keynote speaking, and had conversations about their ability to focus on what they need to look for. So it’s more been about teaching them Power-Pausing as a way to keep attention on what matters versus getting sucked into the worry-load of everything that might go wrong. So it’s not like I’ve sat with cybersecurity teams to help them figure out how to be a cybersecurity person.
But I find this idea that we have to constantly look for somebody that is trying to hack us or trying to get into our things or trying to do something wrong, I find it horrifying and terrifying that we have to really assume that people will do something bad, like malware, for example, and things like that, right? So when I’ve been working with teams in cybersecurity, we’ve been discussing how Power-Pausing can allow us to not get sucked into this worry-load of everything that can go wrong and actually really be able to hold both. Hold both the ‘what can go wrong’ and ‘what is the possibility that we need to focus on’, in terms of creating something that is safe and secure. So I love the idea that there are people out there that are keeping us safe, let’s just put it that way. The idea of that is actually something I appreciate very much. Or fraud detection and all that kind of stuff. Like, “Oh, thank God there’s full-on teams that are worried about this 24/7.” That actually makes me happy, if you can call it that.
Karen: Yeah. It’s comforting that they’re taking care of it and worrying about it so that all of us don’t have to, right?
Jeanette: Yeah. Yeah. And I also don’t think that that makes us necessarily not have to pay attention ourselves, but yes. At first, I was like, “Oh, cybersecurity team. Oh, that sounds interesting.” And then I realized there’s cybersecurity teams everywhere, almost in every company. And I was like, “Wow, this is crazy.” It’s a little concerning.
Karen: Yeah. Yeah. You mentioned using AI yourself for helping edit your writing. Can you talk a little bit about that? I’d like to hear specifically when you’ve used a tool that had some AI features, maybe something that worked well for you, and maybe something that didn’t work so well.
Jeanette: Yeah, I’ve actually been playing with the different platforms. I don’t know if I’m supposed to name names here?
Karen: Oh, you’re welcome to. Not required, but yeah.
Jeanette: Okay. All right. Yeah. So I use Perplexity for research, because I feel it’s very, in a way, factual. Like, it’ll find the things I’m looking for. It’ll give me options, and it’ll give me resources. And I use ChatGPT and Gemini to come up with ideas and help me formulate things. And I look at the two and I see a difference between how it comes up with answers and ideas for me. But most of the time, what I do is, I actually just write something as if I’m writing a document, and I do that in Notion instead, and then I really just add it, ask it to check my grammar. I will then, once I’ve been happy with it, I will go over it and say, “Is there something here missing in the argument? Is there something here I should build on?” So it becomes like I would be working with an editor. So I try to keep it in my voice.
I have also tried to do LinkedIn posts and things like that with ChatGPT and with Gemini, and I find it very AI-ish. Personally, I feel like somebody’s yelling at me, just throwing words at me and throwing statements at me, and I’m like, “I, I can’t.” Like, this is not how I write. And even when I try to make it, say, “Sound like a human, sound like me, sound like this, sound like that.” I would need it to be more narrative, because I’m more narrative. Then it comes up with this whole thing, “Well, I’ve been thinking about this lately.” I’m like, “Okay, no, this is not working for me at all. This is not how I write.” So I have not been able to teach it to write like me in a way that is productive at all. And at the same time, I also have to say that a lot of times when I write, things come to me as I write. And that is my creative process. And so I think for me, it’s important that I still do that, and then I can use it just to check my grammar and my extra-long sentences and put an extra period where it needs to be.
Karen: Yeah. You mentioned using ChatGPT to try to help you write on LinkedIn. Have you ever tried the thing that’s built into LinkedIn where it says, you know, “Let us help you write with AI”?
Jeanette: Yeah.
Karen: Have you ever tried that? I have not, because it just kind of creeps me out.
Jeanette: Yeah, I have tried that. It was like, “Give me a suggestion,” and I’m like, “Oh my God, I don’t sound like that at all. It’s extremely not me.” And so I just go back to what I wrote. And I also am slightly dyslexic, so I do swap some letters and words around and will make typos and stuff like that. So in that way, I’ve found that it gives me a little bit more confidence when I use AI to edit me. But I also do recognize that it makes me almost a little bit more lazy in terms of checking myself and trying to edit, in a way ... like actually go over what I’m writing.
So I’m arguing with myself what’s better in terms of me almost having word blindness to certain things where I just don’t see that it’s not correct, and therefore AI is helping me trust that what I write doesn’t sound like a complete mess. But at the same time, I’m also trying to balance it in terms of I’m actually writing it and sounds like me.
Karen: Yeah.
Jeanette: Yeah. And I look at all these photographs that people are uploading as well. They almost look like they’re just excessively photoshopped. And having been in the fashion industry for many years before I started coaching and now working with leaders around culture and strategy around that, I’m looking at these pictures, I’m like, “This is even worse than these excessively photoshopped pictures that we were completely rejecting for years”, where we were like, “These people don’t look like real humans. They’re excessively skinny.” Or they don’t have a single wrinkle, or whatever.
I don’t want my wrinkles removed, because that means I don’t look like myself. I have wrinkles, you know! I’m 63 years old. I tried to make an AI image of myself off a photograph, and I just said, “Just make an AI image of this photograph.” I couldn’t recognize myself in the photograph.
Karen: Oh, wow.
Jeanette: Because it had made everything equal. Not my crooked face, because everybody has a crooked face. Between not having wrinkles and everything, I was like, “This doesn’t even look like me.” And it brings me back to how things were so excessively photoshopped in the fashion industry. Pictures didn’t look like the real thing. Now products don’t look like the thing you actually receive. So I stopped shopping online, unless it’s a company that I actually know, because I can’t trust that the fabric that they’re showing is actually the fabric that’s going to be shipped. So I think it’s biting itself in the butt, or the snake biting its own tail – ouroboros, yeah. Because we’re sort of trying to make it more effective and efficient, and it becomes less so, because we have to do it over, or we can’t trust it, or we don’t know what we’re actually getting.
Karen: Yeah, I just discovered recently that you actually are writing on Substack as well, and one thing that I learned when I first started writing on Substack is you have to have a post image. There has to be a picture that goes with it. And people talk about branding their newsletters. A lot of people are using AI for that. I’ve been kind of avoiding that and sticking with handcrafted images. But have you ever tried image creation tools? Or do you go to one of the open, truly public domain sources, like Unsplash? What do you do when you need a picture?
Jeanette: Yeah, I mostly use Unsplash, partly because I used to be married to a photographer, and so I honor the fact that people actually know what they’re doing when they’re taking a photograph. So I normally use Unsplash. I recently did a presentation where I really wanted to express... it was around mental health and how culture and mental health needs to blend together. And I actually did some AI-generated images because I wanted it to be little beings. I didn’t want it to be identifiable humans because I wanted it to express emotion, in a way that I couldn’t basically get photographs that would do that. So I made these drawing type of little beings, not photorealistic, but little drawings of it. And short of having had an illustrator sit and do that, yes, I did use AI.
But again, I have a lot of friends that are creators and I feel that their skills need to be valued, right? And I have to say, it took forever to make these little AI things, because it comes up with a new version. Like, “Why did you change what we were doing? You all of a sudden decided to make it a different color? Why?” You know? Or it constantly got the proportions wrong. So it felt like I was almost wasting power, not just time and energy, but also power. I could see the electrical usage and whatever power usage. I felt like I had a little meter running in the background.
And it made me feel more and more horrible about it, to be honest, because I’m concerned with what’s going to happen to our water resources because of all of this, to be honest. I used to be in the resource sustainability arena. I would talk a lot about sustainability and agriculture and food resources and food sources. So for me, regenerative agriculture and all those things are important, so here I am using AI and a lot of water to cool down a data center.
Karen: I know. Yeah. Yeah, the whole sustainability aspect is something that I think doesn’t get as much attention as it deserves, but we are starting to hear more about certain regions of the country and different areas where they’re already in a drought, and the demand for people wanting to build new data centers just makes that worse. Some areas of the country are getting hit pretty hard. I’m not sure how it is up in the Catskills where you are?
Jeanette: Well, we have water. Actually, we are the watershed for New York City, so we supply the water to New York City, so I’m assuming we’ll stay out of data center focus. But that doesn’t mean that the world isn’t running out of water, and I care about that, too. It’s not just myself. I do think that we’re missing the point with a lot of the AI in that sense, because we’re trying to so-called create a better future. But what we’re doing right now, we’re just creating a future that’s about technology, not one that’s about a better future. So I think we’re missing the point a little bit about what AI is for, to be honest.
Karen: Have you ever tried any of the tools that create music with AI?
Jeanette: I have not.
Karen: Do you listen to...
Jeanette: Yeah. I listen to music. But again, I do prefer the real thing. Like, there is something about that human element to things that make it come alive. I feel AI is making everything very generic, right? It looks generic. It sounds generic. It’s like it’s using the same way of saying things all the time. You know, I can tell how many people say the same thing in LinkedIn posts, and I’m like, “That’s an AI way of saying it.”
And so I feel like we’re losing. It’s a little bit like everything becomes a supermarket, if you know what I mean. So I feel like we’re losing some of that touch. And the techno part of it – as much as I love technology, technology has to have a purpose for me. But I do recognize that it’s in the background of everything. Like, I have an Oura ring on. I’m sure there’s AI calculating the data of my sleep patterns, and sending it back to me.
Karen: Yeah, I’ve looked at the Oura ring. I don’t have one. I’ve been wearing a Fitbit watch for a while, but I’m actually about to look at getting something different. I’m concerned about the privacy of my data.
Jeanette: Yeah.
Karen: What I’ve read about a lot of these products, I don’t know that I can trust them with my data. And sleep data, it’s very personal, right?
Jeanette: Yeah, there’s a part of me that says, well, if my name isn’t on it, and they’re using it to figure out what happens to people at a certain age, be my guest, in a way, like, if it’s meant for research. But if you’re selling my data and using my data to feed me back something, we’re talking a whole different ballgame. So there’s a part of me that’s like, listen, if you’re using it to improve the world – again, I’m a little bit like a naive idealist, right?
Like, make the world a better place. Use AI for that, which was the argument when we first started, I think, with AI, right? Make the world a better place. And so I think if it can help that, like for example, I was part of 23andMe when that first started and got my data. I did erase it and cancel it after the whole situation around them selling the data and selling the company. But listen, I got a lot of good information out of having that data given to me in a way that I could use it and figure out, what do I need to support my body best? And so in a way, I appreciate that we have access to information like that. But at the same time, yes, if it’s not secure, and my name is on it. And somebody’s going to be like, “Oh, so that’s what’s going on with her. She has that gene and she has that gene,” yeah, then it’s a problem because then I’m no longer private. I’m public domain, so to speak.
Karen: Yeah. Like you said, AI is everywhere in our daily lives.
Jeanette: Everywhere!
Karen: It’s in our phones and it’s also in the fraud detection algorithms that we’re so happy that we have. So it’s there for both good purposes and for not so good purposes.
Jeanette: Yeah.
Karen: But you mentioned different tools that you use. Are there any specific scenarios where you do not use AI tools at all, for any specific cases? I’m wondering when, and why you would choose not to use AI for that.
Jeanette: Yeah. I was thinking about that and there’s almost part of me that thinks that it’s embedded everywhere even when we don’t know that it’s there. So even when I write a regular letter, document, email, it’s still running in the background of all of it, you know? Even if it’s just a regular spell check. So I’m not sure that there is a tool per se that... Well, yeah, I have an analog, a good old rowing machine. There is no digital anything there other than a clock and a meter that figures out how far I went. Yeah. But it doesn’t tell me anything else about that. So that would be something I use.
But I don’t think there’s other tools that I necessarily use because at this point even just going on the internet and looking for something, AI’s there. You know? I don’t think I can think of anything that – even on our Zoom call here, right? AI’s in the background of that. I used to say no to having an AI being part of it because I didn’t need it for anything. I just needed the ability to talk to somebody and see them. But I don’t think I even have the option anymore to not have that be AI-driven. So I don’t know that I can find a tool that I don’t invariably use, but I don’t on purpose use. Does that make sense?
Karen: Yeah, I mean, I use the transcripts. I use it to tell me if I’m mumbling my words. I can see if my own words are coming out right or not.
Jeanette: Oh, interesting.
Karen: So I use them for those kinds of purposes. And we use the transcripts, obviously, for publishing these interviews.
Jeanette: I constantly get people reaching out to me and saying, “Hey, we can help you get more business, and we have this amazing tool, and we can...” And then I say, “Well, are you going to reach out on my behalf, or are you going to have AI reach out for you on my behalf?” And they’re like, “No, no, no, no, no. We’re real people.” And then, three days later I get the same email from them saying the same thing. And I’m like “Is this still a real person reaching out to me, or is this just automated outreach now? Because you promised me it was a real person, and here I’m getting the same email, so it sounds like it’s not the same person.” And so then they’re like, “Well, yeah, we use AI.”
So I refuse to do that because my whole point is the human intelligence in an AI world. And if I can’t even use my own intelligence to reach out to people that I want to talk to and be discerning about that and reach out, I don’t think I’m actually trying to form a relationship. I’m just trying to be a sales bot. That is the one tool I will not use. I will make my own phone calls and shoot my own emails out there and write them myself and all that kind of stuff. I might edit them, but I will write them myself. Yeah, yeah. That’s a good point, right? Because at this point, I have no clue if I’m talking to a bot when somebody’s contacting me.
Even on LinkedIn now, these days, people are reaching out and I ask them, “Am I having a conversation with a person or a bot?” I ask because I don’t want to answer if it’s just an AI tool that I’m talking to. It’s a waste of my time. And to be honest, I find it almost – I wouldn’t say rude, because I know it’s a tool people use, but I find it inauthentic if people are reaching out, and they have all these “Oh, I noticed this, I noticed this, I noticed that.” I was like, “No you didn’t. You had AI scan my document.” And I know that they haven’t actually looked at my profile when they reach out, depending on what they say. Because if they say, “Oh, I see you’re an executive coach,” I’m like, “No, that’s not actually on my profile. It’s further down on my profile, but it’s not actually the top line on my profile, so you didn’t actually read my profile.” And so I know that it’s just an AI bot. And I find it sad. I understand that we’re doing it, and I find it sad that we’re doing it, because it’s not about human connection and actually creating relationships. At the end of the day, business is about relationships, especially in an AI-driven world.
Karen: Yeah, really good point. Thank you for sharing that. Yeah, I’ve noticed that too on LinkedIn connections. The vast majority of my career was in software development and being a manager and director and hiring. And I’ve been a full-time writer now for a couple years, and I’m very clear in my profile: I’m not hiring, and I’m writing. And I’ll still get people saying, “Hey, we’ve got a team of developers; can I send over...” And, like, no. You clearly did not read my profile at all, or you wouldn’t even be asking that question.
Jeanette: Yeah.
Karen: Yeah. And even if I knew somebody who was hiring, I wouldn’t want to refer them to these people, because they’ve just left that bad taste in my mouth from it.
Jeanette: Yes. Yeah.
Karen: So it’s really not as helpful as maybe they think it is.
Jeanette: Nope. Nope. And I understand all of these sales funnels and everything people do, we can’t send out 200 emails a day and hope that one sticks. I get it. But I find it just another version of spam.
Karen: Exactly, yeah. Yeah. So I want to go back to something you had said before. You mentioned that you had been in a relationship with a photographer, and you know a lot of creative people, and a lot of writers as well. You’ve got a book. So a lot of these AI systems, they have trained on people’s books, people’s artwork, people’s photographs. And the companies are not always very transparent about where they got the data, whether or not they have gotten the rights to it, if they respected copyright. Most of them, frankly, have not. And so I’m wondering what your thoughts are about the way that these companies get the data for training their tools. You had mentioned, if it’s research and not attached to you, that you feel okay about them using it. But do you think in general that they should be required to get consent from people for using their data? Do you think people should be credited and compensated if their writing or their photograph or other artworks are being used? Or how do you feel about that?
Jeanette: Yeah, for sure I think that credit should be given where it’s due. If somebody’s using a quote from my book, I would appreciate it if they say it’s a quote from my book. And the same thing with photography. If you’re using somebody’s photography, at least give them the credit for it so that if somebody likes it, they can go back and find it. And if it’s AI-generated, it obviously doesn’t look exactly the same anymore.
But yeah, I think we’re in a territory where it just becomes about consumption, not about art. Again, we’re just making everything into a supermarket. And just a bunch of things. It becomes like a plastic world, right? It becomes this very artificial situation. So that’s one thing.
And the other thing is that for a long time there’s been a conversation in the art world about people stealing each other’s stuff and pretending it’s theirs, right? There are people that hear something somewhere, and then they use it and pretend it’s their own model for something, or their own theory. And you could at least say that they inspired you to develop this theory or whatever it is, right? There’s real art out there that inspires us all the time. And I think it would be beautiful if we could be a little bit more generous and give credit. If they directly use somebody’s photograph and don’t give credit, it’s basically unethical to me.
Karen: Yeah, so do you have any idea whether or not your book, or anything that you’ve written, or keynote speeches that you’ve given have been pulled into AI tools?
Jeanette: I don’t know. I have checked. There was a way you could check online if your book had been uploaded and being used for AI, and I did, and it wasn’t among them. But at some point, I’m sure that there is an AI version of it online somewhere, or excerpts of it and summaries of it.
So in that sense, again, I hope if somebody did a summary of my book that they would at least give me credit, because it’s my book. And in that way, I could say, “Well, at least more people get to know the tools and get to learn something.” And at the end of the day, that’s my goal with my book. I didn’t write a book because I thought I was going to make a lot of money on that book. I wrote a book because I wanted people to have the tools and be able to get tools that I’ve been using coaching people and developed over 10 years of coaching people. And thought, “You know, if I can give this to people, they can work up with themselves and on themselves.” And I still think that that’s the way to go. But if somebody else is going to go and take the tool and pretend it’s theirs, I would be pretty upset. And let’s face it, people do. People do. And AI tools do that as well.
So again, it’s this very tricky answer, because people have been stealing people’s stuff for a long time before AI did it, you know? And there was copyright on things, yes, but there’s a lot of people that ignore that out there, and it’s hard to chase down. I have registered trademarks, and still people are very close to using one of my trademarks. And am I going to spend a lot of money chasing them down? Or am I hoping they will respect it if somebody has trademarked it? It’s a method that I’ve trademarked, and if they start calling it the same thing, it almost makes them look bad. It’s a very tricky question-answer situation. I don’t think there’s a hard yes and no, but I do think credit is needed where credit is due. AI or other people.
Karen: Yeah. And like you mentioned, people plagiarizing other people is certainly not new. Companies collecting and using our data for purposes that we never approved, that’s certainly not new. AI adds a new dimension to it. It amplifies it. It scales it a lot faster. It scales phishing attacks a lot faster, so it’s a magnifier, but it didn’t really create the problem.
Jeanette: Right ... certainly, yeah. Scaling a broken system, basically, is what AI is doing right now, instead of building a better one. That’s my big beef with AI. It’s scaling a broken system. It’s not building a new one. And I really think that AI could have given us the possibility to build a new and better system, but we’re just not even pausing for long enough to ask: what it’s for, why does it matter, and to whom. We’re just building it to win the game, you know, to win the race. And I think that’s the part where it’s concerning for me, because we’re not discerning about it.
Karen: Yeah. So as someone that has used AI tools, do you feel like the providers of those tools have been transparent about sharing where they got the data, or whether the people consented to their data being used?
Jeanette: You know, listen, do we ever read those long pages? Again, that’s been part of the internet for a very long time, it’s been part of all of these purchasing agreements and wherever else we’ve been signing up for, for a long time. We get, like, five pages, agree to this. I was like, how many people actually read through that?
Again, I feel that there is this mindset of lack of transparency and honesty, and it’s just about, let’s just hide what we can hide, and if we get caught, “oops” – you know? It’s feeding this distrust that’s growing, and that’s a concern.
I personally think of it as: if I’m concerned about somebody knowing something about me, I just won’t share that. Because at this point, I almost feel like I’m not sure any of it is private enough. I do hate that my phone number is out there to the point where I get, like, six to 10 scam calls a day.
Karen: I know. I’m glad my phone has a feature for rejecting unknown numbers because I get them all the time. I’m not even sure they know it’s my number. I think they’re just dialing numbers, sometimes.
Jeanette: Yeah, and you know, the same thing goes on, like, dating apps and all of these things, right? It’s like it’s not even real people half the time, and there’s so much fake stuff going on to the point that I don’t know if the blowback on that’s probably going to be something like we’re going to reject AI completely. And so again, we’re missing the plot, so to speak, right? Because if machines are talking to machines, then what’s it for? And, I think that’s where we probably need to make some decisions about how we want to shape the future, rather than just trying to keep up with it.
Karen: Yeah, very good point.
Jeanette: Yeah. I think of it as: if I don’t want somebody to repeat it, then don’t say it, right? In gossip, if I don’t want somebody to say to somebody else what I just said, then don’t say it. And I think of these things as that. If there’s something you want to hide, and you don’t want anybody to have access to, don’t upload it, don’t share it. Just keep it to yourself or whatever that looks like. Also don’t say something that you don’t want somebody to tell you back. If you can’t own it, just keep it to yourself. So I think of this whole digital footprint and data and safety around all of that a little bit the same way.
I know that the minute I buy something online, I’ll get all the different ads that are similar, which is also interesting, right? Because if I just bought it, why are you now sending me all the ads for something that’s similar? I don’t need another. The logic is a little bit lost on me, right? Like I could understand if I bought a mattress, so instead of sending me five other mattresses, you start sending me sheets and comforters. That’s smart, you know? Because you can assume that I want new bedding if I bought a new mattress. That would be smart marketing.
I hope I didn’t give somebody an idea now. Oh yeah, let’s build a new marketing by association type of thing. Like lifestyle stores, right? Back in the day you would look for X, Y, and Z, pants or clothing or whatever. And you could go to another store and look for your skincare. And you would go to another store and look for this. So I was in retail, and one of the things I thought of back in the, I don’t know, ‘80s – again, I own my age – was like, “We should make a lifestyle store so that if people walk into a store, they have a certain style they like, and if they go into this store and like this style, they would also like house goods that has this style and lifestyle”. And now that’s normal, right? Websites are the same way. Everything is built that way. And so there’s a part of me that also appreciates that my data is being used to find something that I can associate, so I’m not wasting my time getting all kinds of spam-type advertising, because I can’t avoid the advertising. So I’d rather have it tailored for me rather than just arbitrary marketing. So there is that.
Karen: Yeah, that makes sense. So your philosophy about treating your data like gossip makes sense for when we have a choice, but we don’t always have a choice. Sometimes as consumers or just members of the public or operating under government systems, our personal information gets used in ways that we don’t necessarily control. Do you know of any examples of that?
Jeanette: Well, that was the whole 23andMe, right? That was where you thought your data was safe, and then all of a sudden, it was like, well, maybe it’s not safe. Maybe it’s being sold. And then they were like, “Well, we strip it from details about who the person is.” And I was like, if that’s truly true, and you use my data to help prevent breast cancer, okay. But if my name is attached to it, it’s a problem, because now it’s a whole different ballgame.
And that’s where the transparency is missing, right? It’s like you don’t know what part of the information they sold and to whom and what they’re going to use it for. And that I think is one of the biggest conversations, right? If you don’t know where our health data is. And we’re not living in a country where healthcare is free for its citizens. If that was the case, well, maybe it wouldn’t matter as much. But there’s still a sense of privacy around it, right? Nobody needs to know what’s right and wrong with me, because I wouldn’t post on LinkedIn what I’m going through. And if I don’t want to post on LinkedIn what I’m going through, nobody else needs to know either, right? The gossip part. Like, if I’m not sharing it, you can’t share it either, you know?
Karen: Right. Seems like a pretty reasonable standard to me.
Jeanette: So yeah, that is a concern for me. And I’m Danish with an American citizenship, which means that I’ve gone through fingerprinting and biometrics and a background check and all that kind of stuff to, first, get a green card, and then become a citizen. So the US government has all the information they need on me, and they just need to put my name in and I’ll come up because there’s nobody else with my name probably. So I also am very real about the fact that I can’t really hide in that sense. I know that we walk down the street and there are cameras everywhere. Part of me feels like if I get abducted, it’ll be easier to find me. And if I don’t do anything wrong, I’ll be fine. But again, for example, if we’re looking at different marches and protests and stuff like that, you see people wearing face masks because they don’t want facial recognition and then end up being, you know.
Or if I donate to something, I don’t want anybody else to know what I’m donating to necessarily, because it can be used against me, depending on what kind of government we have. So we know that from other countries. And I think it’s very important that we protect ourselves from a similar type of government overreach. If we can.
Karen: Yeah. Yeah, if we can, hopefully. Yeah. So have you ever gotten data breach notices? I know I get multiple per year nowadays. But have you ever been notified of a breach, or has it ever created any problems for you? Privacy problems, phishing, loss of income. Anything like that?
Jeanette: I’ve never been scammed in that way or had my identity stolen in that way. I have a different password for every single account, so if somebody breaches one account, well, you know. And it’s never the same password for something arbitrary like shopping, whatever, as it is on my financial stuff. So that is something. Plus I have all kinds of firewalls and all kinds of things set up. So I’m certainly protecting myself in all kinds of ways that I can. And I have gotten numerous emails from people saying, “Hey, just update your information,” and I never click on the links. Absolutely never click on the links because I don’t trust them. Even when it looks as if it’s coming from that, I always check the address it’s coming from, and I always go to the website. Like, if my bank texts me or sends me an email saying, “Hey, you need to update your information,” I will go on the website instead, log in, And see if there’s a message. And if there is no message, I’m assuming it’s somebody just trying to get me to do it.
I did, one time, receive a phone call that said something about your account, and we need you to log in while you’re on the phone with us. And I knew that they were trying to hack into it. So I played along with it for a little bit, so I could learn something about it and try to figure, what are they actually doing and where exactly will it go wrong? And the moment they said, “Can you do a screen share?”, I was like, “No, I can’t do that” and just left. And I said, “I think I know what you’re doing. Do you really want to do that?”
But there was another time too that somebody pretended to be a friend and said, “Hey, look, I want you to help vote for me, on my Instagram. I’m gonna send you this code. You’re gonna log out and then log back in after I give you the code,” or something like that, right? Yeah. “And you’re gonna turn off double whatever for a moment, and then give me your phone number and I will set you up so you can vote for me.” And at first, I started the process, and then I was like, “Something’s wrong here. Something’s wrong.” And if it said turn off your two-factor verification, I was like, “Yeah, I’m not doing that.” And I constantly get, “Did you try to change your password right now?” I was like, “Nope, didn’t.”
So I do protect myself as much as I can from all of those kinds of things because I know that they’re constantly trying. And I find it sad. I find it sad that we’re living in a world where people are trying to steal from other people in that way, especially from elderly people who think that something is wrong and they’re like, “Okay, okay, thank you for helping me,” you know? Though I do love the phone call that comes from the hacker that says, “We have all your passwords.” And they say, “Thank you. Can you let me know what they are, because I have lost them?” That’s a way to get back at them, right?
Karen: Yeah, I’ve heard of some people that deliberately string them along to waste their time so that they have less time to attack other people. I don’t do that, but I can respect people who do.
Jeanette: Yeah. I’ve done it where I need to find out what is the process actually, what are they actually doing, to figure out where is it that it sort of goes wrong, because then I can tell other people and stuff like that. But yeah, I hate the fact that we have to be so vigilant with everything right now. I really do.
Can you imagine? It just adds so much stress and so much worry to everything. You can’t even open an email that you think comes from your bank anymore. Or a friend or family member or anything, yeah.
My cousin sent me an invitation to her 50th birthday, and it was PDF format, and she sent it to me over Facebook. I texted her separately on another chat to find out if she was truly the one. She said, “It’s safe. It’s just my birthday invitation.” But look at it. It was from a family member, right? I was like, “I don’t know that this is real.” Come on. Seriously. What kind of world are we building here, you know?
Karen: Yeah. You mentioned distrust, and the public distrust has been growing, and certainly you have seen that as well. Is there one thing that a company should do first to have a shot at you actually trusting them? Or do you not even think that it’s possible at this point? Do you think that none of them can be trusted?
Jeanette: It’s a very interesting question, because I research a company when I am asked to speak for them, right? Because I want to understand what kind of culture they have and if they actually live their values. So I try to understand if I’m standing there and I’m speaking on behalf of their values to their people, because I always try to have my tools overlap in a way that they can overlap with how they are living their values every single day. And so if I see that they have these values, but I hear that they’re not actually living them, I will feel inauthentic if I’m standing on stage saying, “This is the values you have, and this is why you’re X, Y, and Z.” And if that’s not actually the values that they live, and you find out they have a toxic culture, I will feel inauthentic speaking to their teams not knowing that, right?
So I think that’s part of that. Do you actually do what you say you do? Are you who you say you are? And to me, that is more needed than ever. Because I do think that we’re living in a world where we also can’t hide. And everything becomes transparent in terms of how we treat people. So in that way, that’s a good thing.
So if I’m just buying something from a company, I’ll read the reviews. I read all the bad reviews first, and I will read how somebody was treated as a customer. Like I recently bought something and I love what I bought, but they didn’t ship everything. And they keep telling me that they put it inside the package so it is in there, and the pillows I received actually had the pillow cover already on it. I was like, that makes no sense. And so they insist that that’s the case, right? And it’s like, “You’re lying. You’re basically lying for $20.” And I find that really strange, like that you can’t trust that they have my best interest at heart.
So I think it’s a very difficult situation also for companies. But, you know, that’s where customer service comes in. And if that’s a chatbot, I don’t know. If I can’t get a hold of a real person and actually talk to anyone, I don’t really want to shop.
Karen: Yeah, that’s fair. I wanted to kind of bring this back to what you were saying before, about your book and thinking about the systems and how we can operate within the systems. Do you have any final words about that that you’d like to share with our audience? Or if someone wants you to come and give a keynote at their company and tie it to their values, how would they go about getting in touch with you?
Jeanette: Yes. To answer the question about systems, I do think we have to start thinking of ourselves and each other as an interconnected, interdependent system. Because we’ve been taught that we’re living in these silos behind our computer screen, and we’re not affecting each other. But every single action affects something and someone.
And so I do think we have to start having what I call personal accountability and shared responsibility. I do think we need to think of it that way, especially in an AI-driven world that also needs to have human in the lead, not just human in the loop, as far as I’m concerned. I do think, as far as systems goes, if we could think of ourselves as an interconnected system of relationships and an ecosystem of relationships, including with AI, I think we would build better systems. I really do. Because we have a very siloed mindset still in much of the way we do business.
And yeah, if somebody wants to talk to me more about: how do we build a better culture where people care, and how Power-Pausing can help us recalibrate and build the inner conditions for outer breakthrough and impact, feel free to get in touch. I’d be happy to talk. You can find me at jeanettebronee.com. That’s my website. And my name, I’ll be anywhere, like social media ... can’t hide!
Karen: Yeah, I’ve just found you on Substack, and so I’ve subscribed there, and I’m looking forward to keeping up with you there and on LinkedIn. I love that you and I both don’t write AI-generated comments. I think that human connection and, like you mentioned, the human relationships, that’s what I’m in both places for. And I really value when I find someone else who feels that way.
Jeanette: Yeah. Yeah, and I appreciate you saying that, right? Because again, with LinkedIn, to me, that’s a place where we start conversations, not just throw comments at each other. Because then it’s just clickbait and algorithms, and we’re going to lose the plot, right? But if we have a platform where we can cultivate conversations, in Substack, where we can cultivate conversations that actually drive something forward together, again, we’re part of the same system, I think we have a much better chance at shaping a good future with each other, not just for ourselves.
Karen: Thank you. That sounds great. Well, Jeanette, thank you so much for joining me for this interview today. I really appreciate it, and I’m looking forward to keeping in touch.
Jeanette: Thank you for your care and attention, and likewise.
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