AI Secrets Every Woman Needs to Know & How to Use Tech to Fight The Patriarchy with Dr. Nici Sweaney
Freya Graf:
This program is brought to you by Pussy Magnets.
Dr. Nici Sweaney:
Welcome, welcome, my lovely lumps. Or should I say, lovely labs. I'm so thrilled to have you here in the Labia Lounge. We're going to yarn about all things sexuality, womanhood, relationships, intimacy, holistic health and everything in between your legs. Ooh, can't help myself. Anyway, we're gonna have vag loads of real chats with real people about real shit. So buckle up. You're about to receive the sex ed that you never had.
Dr. Nici Sweaney:
And have a bloody good laugh while you're at it. Before we dive in, I'd like to respectfully acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land on which I'm recording this. The Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation. It's an absolute privilege to be living and creating dope podcast content in naam. And I pay respect to their elders, past, present and emerging. Now, if y' all are ready, let's flappin do this. Oh, my God. Is there such thing as too many vagina jokes in the one intro? Whatever.
Dr. Nici Sweaney:
It's my podcast. I'm leaving it in. Don't panic. You're not broken. Your sex education was a piece of shit. Get your flaps out and pull up a couch. It's the Labia Lounge. Hey, gang, just before we jump into this episode, I wanted to offer you an opportunity to access my new mini course for free before I start charging for it in future.
Dr. Nici Sweaney:
It's for people with vulvas and it's quick to complete. It's all about demystifying the female body and pleasure anatomy and getting some basic fundamentals to understand your body better. It's called Pussy Pleasure Roadmap to Bedroom Bliss. You can grab it on the freebies page of my website or in the show notes. It's a great little free resource to kind of dip your toe in or act as a bit of a taster for my work. So if you've ever been curious about this sort of thing and you just don't know where to start, or you want a really quick, easy, accessible, non threatening way to get the ball rolling and start working on this stuff, this is a great place to start. Hello, hello, my labial legends. Welcome back to the lounge.
Dr. Nici Sweaney:
Today's chat is going to be positively fascinating because we're going to be Learning all about AI from an incredibly amazing, intelligent, impressive woman, Dr. Nikki Sweeney. And Nikki is a global voice in ethical AI and feminist leadership. Which is the reason that out of anyone I could choose to talk about this topic that's such a hot topic these days. I thought Nikki would be so perfect for the Labia Lounge. With two decades of experience in science, strategy and systems thinking, she's helped over 60 organizations navigate AI adoption with clarity and care. As a founder of AI Her Way and senior fellow at the AI for Developing Countries Forum, Nikki works at the intersection of innovation, equity and governance, making AI not just powerful, but purposeful. Her mission to ensure technology empowers includes and uplifts especially for women and underrepresented voices.
Dr. Nici Sweaney:
Hot damn. That just like, that just gave me goosebumps. I'm so fucking pumped to talk to you, Nikki.
Freya Graf:
I'm so excited. I was just about to say, I was like, damn, that's a good bio, isn't it?
Dr. Nici Sweaney:
Yes.
Freya Graf:
Thanks so much for having me on the show.
Dr. Nici Sweaney:
No worries. I could put the bios in like in post production, but I always read them out on the live call in front of people because one, it makes them feel a little bit awkward and it's hilarious. But two, it just really gases you up before we get started because it's like, yeah, I did all that.
Freya Graf:
I know, it's like it's not even fake.
Dr. Nici Sweaney:
Do you have a little bit of imposter syndrome sometimes?
Freya Graf:
Oh, gosh, yeah. I mean, doesn't everyone? I. I mean, I secretly kind of hate the phrase imposter syndrome because I think one is being human and I think two, it unfairly gets weaponized against women as another thing that we have to overcome and fix about ourselves. But yeah, I mean, you know, my life is my life. I don't necessarily clock those moments. And yet then you have things like people reading out your bio and I have this little voice in back of my head that I'm like, if I heard that about someone else, I'd be like, well, she must know some stuff.
Dr. Nici Sweaney:
Exactly. It's a good little, good little stock take. So, yeah, really pumped to get stuck into this topic. It's a huge one and there's so much nuance and complexity and it's such a kind of quickly changing landscape. I am not an expert. I'm like, honestly, kind of on the end of the like, spectrum where I would almost. I'm a self proclaimed Luddite. I basically, I don't even know if that's how you say that word, but I'm like pretty tech.
Freya Graf:
But I'm one of this.
Dr. Nici Sweaney:
Yeah, I'm one of them. I'm one of them. I'm not very, not very good with this stuff and I'm dragged kicking and Streaming and screaming into, like, this sort of new age of, like, modern technology just out of, like, sheer necessity. And, you know, I run a business and a podcast, so I kind of have to. But I'm not happy about it. And I take forever to adopt new technologies. Like, literally changing over devices is like fucking pulling teeth. I think I owned a Kindle for about three years before I actually adopted it and started using it regularly.
Dr. Nici Sweaney:
Like, it just takes me forever. I'm a grandma. So I'm really glad I've got your brain to pick about this. And I sort of love the way that you have this really inclusive, empowering, feminist lens with which you're approaching all of this. And I want to just, like, start with talking about how you often speak about making AI purposeful. What does that mean for you? And how does that differ from the way that AI is currently being developed and deployed more often than not in the mainstream?
Freya Graf:
Yeah, look, I think for me, I mean, I'm excited about AI not because it's a tool or it's tech. I'm excited about AI because of what I think it offers in terms of the societal uplift and particularly what it means for women. So what I mean by that is, you know, obviously everyone's excited about AI. It's like the most overused term of the last two years. It's in every headline, it's on every newsreel. You know, if you're like me, it's definitely flooding your algorithms online as well about all these tools you should be trying. And it's kind of like, sold as a silver bullet, solvable to every single problem we've ever had, ever. Right.
Freya Graf:
I don't necessarily think it's that, but what it does do is it gives people access, access to resources that notoriously may not have had access to those sorts of things. So when we think about women, for example, we know here in Australia, women register more than 50% of new businesses, and yet a very small portion never make it to six figures, let alone seven figures, let alone employ anybody else. Right. And that's not because women are not good at business. It's because we often don't have access to resources and funding in the same way that men do. And I see AI as a platform to kind of level the playing field, because all of a sudden, you have limitless options to create, really, your own support network and your own staff members to enable you to scale your dreams and your ideas out there into the world, because that's where they really belong. And that's true of every minority group. It's certainly not just women.
Freya Graf:
But that was my first kind of fire in the belly about why I wanted to start AI herway and who I wanted to serve. I feel really satisfied that I get to serve people that I think are contributing to good outcomes in the world. And I see AI as a gift to those people. I don't necessarily want AI in the hands of everybody. So my whole mission is to empower people that want positive outcomes for themselves, their families, their communities and the world to have access to the resources to make that more achievable. And I think that's going to create awesome outcomes for everyone. Right. And yet power in the hands of women only makes good things preach.
Dr. Nici Sweaney:
Absolutely. And I, I guess the resistance I have, which is similar, every time a new, a new thing comes out, I'm like, overwhelmed by it. It's like, sure, I'm now being told as a business owner that this can completely solve all of my problems. I don't have to hire anyone. I can use AI for this, this, this, this, this. And if I'm not using it, I'm an idiot because why wouldn't I be utilizing that? It's easy. This is, you know, and so it all just kind of piles up and feels like a big, insurmountable, tricky realm for me. And I know a lot of people feel quite daunted by, okay, another new thing.
Dr. Nici Sweaney:
I have to learn how to use. And yes, ultimately it would make my life easier, but only if I know how to utilize it. So, like, I don't know, I think it feels really abstract and really overwhelming for a lot of people. What's like one really small everyday way that it could, like, show up in our life that maybe might surprise listeners.
Freya Graf:
Even, like, small everyday ways. So, I mean, firstly, when we talk about AI, that's a really, really big subject. And it's not even just generative AI, but let's, let's take for granted that most of the time we say AI, most people think of ChatGPT, right? Which is large language models. So ChatGPT, Claude Gemini, copilot, they're all in the same realm of these big, huge text generators. And when we think about what we actually do with them, they are really overwhelming because they're a blank slate. You open them up and they don't like, prescribe use cases to you. They don't automatically know who you are in 10 ways. They could help you.
Freya Graf:
They're just there. And that's a really weird product. So. So don't feel Bad about being overwhelmed because it really is overwhelming. The first place to start is you could do something as simple as describe yourself and who you are. So like, I'm Nikki, I live in Australia, you know, I've got four kids, a little bit of kind of background. What are 10 ways that I could be using this tool to help me in my day to day life? Right. Or can you ask me 15 questions about myself and my life and the things I spend lots of time doing and then help me identify ways that you can automate that for me or take it off my shoulders? So we can leverage these tools to actually help identify ways to use them.
Freya Graf:
But what I tell people is write a list of the things you do often. So at least once a week, this can be work or life. And then get out a highlighter and if you feel like you could explain it to somebody else. So like if you had a fresh, you know, a really bright 17 year old shop and you do step tomorrow and be like, I'm desperate to be an intern for you, you know, even if that intern is like writing your grocery list, you've got to be able to explain something clearly to them. So get out a highlighter. If you think you can explain it clearly, just pick one thing off that list and that is the thing that you then explain to a large language model and you talk to it as if you do have a very fresh face, 17 year old sitting across from you that's never met you before. You introduce yourself, you give it some context, some background. This is the thing we'll be doing today.
Freya Graf:
This is how I've done in the past, this is what I like, this is what I don't like. Here's another example. Now you're going to go forth and do that thing for me. And if I just use the grocery list example. For 4 months I had chat GPT plan out all our meals in our house. So I said, look, this is me, this is our family, this is what we like. We don't like. We shop at Aldi, you know, we are eating leftovers for lunch the next day.
Freya Graf:
We need school, snacks for the kids. It wrote out the entire grocery list, every single meal that we were going to have, all the recipes for all the meals. And then I went to the checkout and for four months straight it was in $5 of our budget every time I went to the checkout. Right. That's an awesome example about how to describe a nice discreet task. And you get to offload the mental load associated with thinking about what the hell everyone is going to eat. Which is probably not your zone of genius. I mean, lucky you, if it is, it's certainly not mine.
Freya Graf:
So I offloaded that and that enabled me to just practice talking to these tools. And it's a lot like practicing being a boss. You get better, you're able to delegate more complex ideas, you kind of go higher up that hierarchy of, of a quote unquote organization. Whoa.
Dr. Nici Sweaney:
See, I wouldn't have even thought to do something like that. Every time someone describes a new way that they've been prompting or using ChatGPT, I'm like, like, it's like my brain doesn't even like work like that to think, you know, I'm just so used to doing everything myself. Yeah. And then, you know, the mental load of figuring out how to use it is outweighing the mental load that it could be saving me.
Freya Graf:
Exactly. And you know, part of that is being a little bit intentional about it. Like it's not Norma until it is normal, just like anything. Right. You know, I often think about how awkward it felt to learn how to drive a car. Like, do you remember that feeling? Like I remember being in there with mum or dad and just overthinking everything and I was like, oh my God, how the hell do you change the gear stick while steering, while putting on the brake? Like this is insane to me, let alone at 60Ks an hour. So it's kind of a bit like that. Whereas now, you know, most of us can drive a car while putting on lip gloss or something else that we're not meant to be really doing while we drive.
Freya Graf:
It is like that. I would say the learning curve is very, very short lived though. Like, you know, I've been using this stuff daily for almost three years now and I often tell people that I actually don't remember what it feels like to do something anymore. I have so many AI agents and systems and automations operating in my business that most of my day is spent making decisions about stuff that's already been created or actioned for me by AI systems. I approve it, I edit it, I provide revisions, I extend some thinking. But I don't do anything from scratch anymore. And that's a really, really short time until I got to that point. So it is totally available.
Freya Graf:
But while it's a bit abnormal, you know, just putting a challenge in your calendar to say, okay, in this hour, once a day or even just once a week, every task that I was about to do, I'm going to think about, could I explain this to A large language model, and I'm going to have a go at that. And that's one less task you ever have to do from scratch ever again.
Dr. Nici Sweaney:
Well, holy shit. All right, well, I don't really have an excuse now.
Freya Graf:
Now I know what you're going to do after this recording.
Dr. Nici Sweaney:
So you're like a really big believer that doing something that you're deeply passionate about can ripple into other areas of your life. Especially for women carrying really heav heavy mental loads. You've turned AI into this like, purpose and passion for yourself. And I know your experience as like a single mom and survivor of domestic abuse is a big part of what sort of shaped your lens on, you know, things like power, resilience, systems. Can you please speak more to this?
Freya Graf:
Yeah, look, a big driver about why I do what I do. And I think it's the same of a lot of women in business. I believe that. I'm going to say most women in business start businesses from a place of purpose or wanting to right or wrong or wanting to fill a gap that was a lived experience for them. They rarely ever start businesses just because they see something profitable and go, oh, I'm going to have a crack at that. Right. And it was the same for me. I mean, as I said, I don't see AI as the tool.
Freya Graf:
I see it as this reimagining of systems and the way they work and a lot of what drives that is providing women with choice and autonomy and power. Because I think that that really solves a lot of the issues that exist out there in society. And yet, being a survivor of domestic abuse, I mean, I'm really lucky to come from a really loving, secure family scenario. So when I was living through that situation, I knew that if I needed to, there would be people there for me. But as most abuse survivors will know, it's very hard to name it when you're suffering from it. And it's also very hard to elect for other people to come and help you. Right. Like you.
Freya Graf:
You do a lot of victim blaming that you can fix it, that you can change it. And I often think that in that moment, you know, I had two really small children. I relied on my partner financially, and if I had autonomy to be able to choose, like, maybe I had an apartment waiting for me somewhere, or I had options that I had three months of savings in the bank, or I had options that I had access to my own credit card, then the decision, well, God. And in the end, it wasn't even my decision. He left me. But. But but the decision to actually protect myself might have come a lot easier because I wasn't. I wouldn't have to weigh up all those other things.
Freya Graf:
So for me, a big driver of wanting to make her way successful is not only wanting to serve communities around me, but also wanting to set up a legacy for my children. I've got two daughters and two sons, and a big motivator is. Is being able to create enough wealth that particularly my daughters always have choices about what they do in life and where they go. And yeah, I think living in that passion and purpose, it does bleed out into every area of your life. You know, I often joke with my. My best friend, but you can really tell when women feel empowered just by the way they walk into a room and by the conversations they have and by how they greet you. And I feel so much more settled and confident in myself because I know when I walk into a space, even if I'm around people I don't know, or I feel a little bit uncomfortable or out of my depth or a bit nervous, I have this kind of inner grounding that, yeah, I've done real things for real people and it actually matters to me. And even if you don't think I'm perfect or if you think I've done something wrong, or if you don't like the way I approach matters less when you really feel like you're living in alignment.
Freya Graf:
And I think that's a really beautiful feeling that I wish every woman could have.
Dr. Nici Sweaney:
Oh, my God. Same. Yeah, I really wholeheartedly agree with that. And yeah, it's interesting because I feel that feeling with my work and what I've achieved and what I'm putting out in the world in certain circles and then in other circles that don't really understand what I do or value it. For instance, a lot of my family, I'm just like this weird black sheep hippie that's gone off and massages vaginas and talks to people about sex and they're like, what the fuck? It's almost embarrassing for them. So it's so funny. I just have a completely opposite. In some circles, I feel completely seen and appreciated and valued and worthy.
Dr. Nici Sweaney:
And then in other situations, I have to just remind myself that all of that is still there. That's just not how these people see me and therefore kind of treat me and make me feel. So I gotta really just like, self generate those.
Freya Graf:
Those feelings of worth, you know, that's a beautiful part about being out there in the wider world. And, you know, all those positive Outcomes of like social media and larger communities is that you can find those safe spaces. Because I'm not necessarily out there talking about, you know, sex and labias, but I very much put myself out there as a feminist thinking AI woman that talks a lot about gender equality. You know, I post about gender inequality in relationships, I post about the damage that it does to women's ideas. I post about, you know, women staying small and in service to other people and that kind of really limiting your opportunities in life and your sense of joy, all of that kind of stuff. You know, even in my own relationship when we had baby number four, who's now four years old, but I went back to two to work two weeks later and my partner stayed home for the first two years full time because I was just done saying no to opportunities. And he loves babies. Totally worked for us.
Freya Graf:
But just. Yeah. I similarly face judgment in various rooms. I similarly have been advised that maybe I shouldn't talk about feminism so much because, you know, you don't want to be that girl. You know, maybe people won't want to work with you if you're harping on and on about this kind of stuff. But I just reply with, well, then I don't want to work with them. And there's enough people out there, I can be enough of a success working with people that are very happy getting advice and consultancy services from a feminist AI system strategist, right, that is worried about the ethical, responsible use of this stuff, that wants you to think about the environmental cost of AI, that wants you to think about who will potentially be damaged by this, that wants you to think about how to reskill your people. If you want other stuff, there's plenty of other people out there.
Dr. Nici Sweaney:
Yeah, absolutely. Oh, I love that. I just love that. Yeah. And I mean, we're very similar in that way. We're disruptors. There's something quite rebellious about the way we're going about business and feminism that is really disrupting some pretty long standing patterns. And I guess that sort of segues into my next line of questioning, which is around how AI and I don't understand this very well, but as far as I'm aware, AI systems frequently reflect the biases of the societies that they're built in.
Dr. Nici Sweaney:
So like, you know, if these systems are built by men in a patriarchal system and basing their kind of answers on a shit ton of content on the Internet, that's, you know, very patriarchal and misogynistic. Like, from your perspective, what are the most sort of urgent risks for women and underrepresented groups. If AI continues to be developed, you know, without more diversity and built and based on and in systems designed by.
Freya Graf:
The patriarchy, I think we are at massive risk, if I'm really honest. And again, that's part of why I do what I do. Because I think right now we are headed down a path to do real damage to this kind of very short lived fight that we've been fighting, right? Like it's, it's a, it's a blip in historical moment where women have really kind of started to take up any space or even suggested that we take up space. I feel like that's kind of, that's kind of the era of time that we're in. We haven't quite taken up the space, but we're talking about the fact that we would like to take up some space. So we stand to kind of erase that. Because, you know, right now, just as you said, the way that large language models work, and they are the huge models that underpin most generative AI tools out there, is they're consuming lots and lots of information from the Internet, which is mostly male, skewed, mostly produced by men, you know, has lots of patriarchal and misogynistic messaging in there. And then it's looking for patterns in that data to give you answers.
Freya Graf:
So for example, whenever I do workshops, I always show an example of gender bias in these tools. And you know, if I say, hey, make me a picture of a CEO, I'll get some like chiseled Jack, six foot two, white dude. You know, if I say, can you make me a picture of a doctor? I'll get like 25 different varieties of middle to older aged white dudes. If I say like, yeah, make me someone that looks really, really successful, that owns a multimillion dollar company, I get a white dude. So it's just the way that these tools and they're not trying to make us feel anything, but they've just gone, all right, I really like to please you. So you've said, can you make me a picture or write me a story or help me with a cv? I've had a look at all the data I have about that and that's my best guess about what you would like based on all the information I have and without injecting more diversity in there. So without injecting a correction saying no, this is actually what I want. Because remember, AI is learning from us all the time.
Freya Graf:
If we're not injecting that diversity or those corrections, we're raising an AI baby, and if we're not gently correcting it or gently encouraging it to look at other perspectives, or if we're not exposing it to different worldviews, then we raise a certain type of adult, right? And I don't really want that adult as the AI overlord. That probably will. I mean, there is really kind of big and really scary and overwhelming suggestions that at some point AI will be above us in the pecking order, right? We will be subservient to what AI decides in the world order that day is most likely going to come. And I want to look at that day and be like, man, we did a good job raising the AI baby because it didn't wipe us all out and it didn't perpetuate the patriarchy. And, you know, it has this, like, lovely holistic worldview where it takes in different perspectives and it's looking at what the best outcome is for as many people as possible and all that kind of good stuff. So women really need to have their voices heard. You don't need to do anything amazing to have your voice heard. Just using these tools, providing your perspective and remembering to correct it, or ask for different points of view, different perspectives.
Freya Graf:
Make sure that your femaleness is heard and seen in these things to try and correct that. Because otherwise. Yeah, again, at the moment, a whole huge proportion of kids are asking tools like ChatGPT for career advice. If you have a girl's name, it is four times more likely to suggest that you go into work associated with domestic labor than if you're a boy. If you're a boy, it's also more likely to suggest things such as salary, such as career, such as profession. So it reiterates back to you that you're allowed to be the boss if you use a large language model to help negotiate for a salary raise. If you're a woman, again, it will suggest that you ask for about $15,000 less than a man. If you're a woman asking these large language models for medical advice, it will misdiagnose you, it will misrepresent you.
Freya Graf:
It will often reiterate back to you that you're probably being a bit dramatic. Whereas if you're a guy, it will urge you to go and seek medical attention. There are so many layers of it. There's some really fantastic research out there. This stuff is real. You're not imagining it. It is actually how these systems work. And that's why, as women, it's a call to arms that we have to be involved.
Dr. Nici Sweaney:
Holy shit. Yeah, even more hectic than I thought. I mean, sorry to break it to.
Freya Graf:
You, maybe bad, but now it's different.
Dr. Nici Sweaney:
I knew it was bad, but like, God damn. Because like, I mean, yeah, it's it. And it's so wild to me that there's still fucking dudes who are trying to get in my face telling me that gender inequality doesn't exist anymore. That's imagined. And I'm like, wow, it's like you only have to use AI to just have it shown to you. It's shining a spotlight on all of the inequality and the biases and stuff, and then it's reinforcing and amplifying that, which is kind of terrifying because I hate to say it, but if you look at the whole freaking state of the Internet and the content that it would be feeding off and learning from, we're already kind of patriarchy has a big head start. And then, you know, even just looking at STEM kind of careers versus, you know, what's the non stem, the other.
Freya Graf:
People, the other people that are like, you know, humanities. Do you mean like stem?
Dr. Nici Sweaney:
Yeah, yeah, I guess so. And there's just way more like men in STEM careers and stuff in tech and so probably more using AI, knowing how to utilize AI, blah, blah, blah. More, you know, men in all these sort of corporate roles that would be utilizing AI. So like, is it about like, you know, each time someone's using it and we're highlighting the female perspective, is it about the sheer kind of quantity of like, is it a ratio thing? Because in my mind, just, it seems like we're kind of, we don't really stand a chance because not as many women would be using it and swaying it compared to men. And men already had a huge head start. Do you know what I mean?
Freya Graf:
Absolutely. And that is very much a factor. So you know, when, again, when I give talks, I kind of, I often talk about these five dark horsemen of the AI apocalypse. And so one is that women aren't building it. Less than 30% of machine learning workforce are female. Two, the data is biased against us already because it's scraping from 30 years of the Internet and largely kind of Eurocentric. And we know that even content on the Internet is largely created by men. Three, we're not using it as much as men.
Freya Graf:
So even in Australia, men are still about twice as likely to be using it in workplace settings compared to women. So they're the ones that are getting noticed. They're the ones that have the efficiency, the productivity, you know, they're getting the Raise, they're launching and getting VC money because they've done such a good pitch deck, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Globally, women don't use the Internet as much as men. They don't have as much access to it, so they aren't able to achieve that uplift. Right? And then all the malicious intent. So we haven't even talked about like deep fakes and AI pornography and all of the malicious content that takes pictures of real women and girls and repurposes it on AI generated quote, unquote companions that are available for purchase. So this big kind of dark side of AI that is often victimizing women again.
Freya Graf:
So, yes, we have a lot stacked against us, but the more women that are involved in even using the tools. So we've got two choices. You can either put your money where your mouth is or you can be the Trojan horse. So put your money where your mouth is is like actually research and choose more morally aligned platforms. Right? So, for example, people may have heard of Claude. It's another large language model. It was made by two people that were originally at OpenAI that said, hey, OpenAI, you're not putting enough ethical guardrails around your large language model. We're going to leave and start our own large language model.
Freya Graf:
Claude performs just as well across creativity and intelligence testing. It's fantastic at coding, but they have much more safety guidelines. And if people have used both platforms a lot, what you may notice is that, you know, when chatgpt just tells you, or if you haven't used it very much, maybe you don't know, but ChatGPT often tells you how amazing you are, right? Like, great question or yes, that is an awesome idea. And if you correct it, it goes, oh, that's right, thanks for picking that up. Amazing. And it really puts you in a positive feedback loop. It's a bit like getting all your news from Facebook. You're only going to see the stuff you want to see.
Freya Graf:
Whereas Claude does a bit more work to try and push back a bit. It says, okay, before I start this, do you want this way or this way? Or have we thought about these things? And it thinks through a little bit more responsibly before it answers you. But the entire company has more ethical guardrails behind how it's defined that. And they were pretty much the only CEOs of a large language model that weren't behind Trump and the organization. So you can probably make some suggestions about where they kind of lie in that sort of stuff. So if that is Your moral compass, if that what is is, if that is what ethics looks like to you, you can make educated decisions about which tools you use. For example, one of the biggest image generators is called Mid Journey. There is a female operated image generator tool called Ms.
Freya Graf:
Journey that specifically tries to inject more diversity and representation and realism into their AI generated images of people so you can make educated choices. But that being said, I also think that the burden to do the right thing is, is unfairly felt by women because we're the ones that are trying to clean up all the mess. So if you want to use ChatGPT, there is nothing wrong with that because just by using it, you're also contributing to the data that is it is being trained on. So by having your way of speaking, it doesn't have to be anything amazing or special. You don't have to go on like feminist rants. Just by asking it questions in the way that you naturally ask questions, just by providing corrections, just by encouraging it to consider something from a different point of view, you're helping inject more diversity into these tools. So either way. But the moral of the story is that you have to be involved.
Freya Graf:
You can't just sit by the sidelines and then in five years time start complaining that these things really put us backwards. You have the opportunity right now. This is the only time this opportunity comes along.
Dr. Nici Sweaney:
Oh my God. I feel completely. I'm like, I'm pumped because I spend so much fucking energy trying to do this exact thing, but to real men in real life and I get a shitload of pushback. They're very defensive a lot of the time. Sometimes it's working, often it's just, just exhausting. But I could actually just be plugging it all into ChatGPT instead and probably you're great.
Freya Graf:
It's gonna make, you shouldn't think like that. We should not perpetuate the patriarchy. You are correct.
Dr. Nici Sweaney:
Oh my God. And I don't know, it just feels like that that is actually contributing and actually having an effect. And I know I am having an effect in, in the real world and stuff, but often it feels very fruitless and very, and a bit of a thankless task. But this feels like a very tangible, practical kind of thing that I could do. That, you know, also is just something that I'm going to be, I'm, I'm going to be forced to adopt it sooner or later.
Freya Graf:
So. And the thing is, it's like two birds, one stone, right? Like if you use this tool to, you know, like let's say, help edit your podcast that saves you from work, but just by asking it questions and exposing it to your podcast transcripts, you're also contributing to the data, being a bit more enriched with our perspectives, the things that you're talking about. So, like, it's a two for one. You get, you get the benefit. You're not just doing it for work. And it's scalable. The more women and the more minority groups that participate in these tools and just have their voices in them, the better off the world will be.
Dr. Nici Sweaney:
Fuck yeah. I love that. Okay, done. I'll just, if nothing else, I'll just plug my transcripts in there and be like, what do you think of this? And literally, just to get it in.
Freya Graf:
There, I've got a student that like, literally every time she opens ChatGPT starts off with like, women are amazing. Or like, or she does. Women are great leaders. Or, you know, the next president to be a woman, like, she'll just, she'll just insert a one liner before she starts any other task about something that's positive for women.
Dr. Nici Sweaney:
Oh, so good. Hey, baby babes. Sorry to interrupt. I just had to pop my head into the lounge here and mention another virtual lounge that I'd love you to get around. It's the Labia Lounge Facebook group that I. That I've created for listeners of the potty to mingle in There you'll find extra bits and bobs, like freebies behind the scenes or discounts for offerings from guests who have been interviewed on the podcast. There'll also be hopefully inspiring, thought provoking conversations and support from a community of labial legends like yourself. My vision for this is that it becomes a really supportive, educational and hilarious resource for you to have more access to me and a safe space to ask questions you can't ask anywhere else.
Dr. Nici Sweaney:
So head over to the links in the show notes or look up the Labia Lounge group in Facebook and I'll see you in there. And now back to the episode. All right, awesome. In your experience, personally and professionally, how has setting clearer boundaries helped you create the freedom and the self trust to shift the way that you mother and the way that you lead and the way that you kind of show up in your business and for clients. Because something that I have noticed people in particular women and underrepresented folk are sort of suffering from is a lot of conditioning around people pleasing and, you know, being told it's actually not okay for them to even have their own boundaries.
Freya Graf:
Oh my gosh.
Dr. Nici Sweaney:
And I know that you like to talk about this. So.
Freya Graf:
Yeah. Oh, gosh. Yeah. Boundaries. I feel like it is really hard for us to navigate and to set boundaries and to feel okay about it and to know how hard to enforce the boundaries. There's so much mixed messaging. I think probably, you know, again, going back to my past relationship and being in an abusive situation, I guess a big part of setting boundaries is knowing my place in it, right? Like, it wasn't just that this person did that. And I'm not.
Freya Graf:
I'm not victim blaming my. Myself at all. But what I recognize is that I said that those things were okay for a really long time before I started to say that they weren't okay. And at the start, I definitely suffered from cool girl syndrome. So I was definitely that girl that was like, sure, go out. Oh, you don't need to call. No. Oh, we just had a party.
Freya Graf:
You're too hungover to clean up. I'll do it all. Watch me go. Would you like me to host this party? I've done everything for three days. Plus, I'm fun, you know. Absolutely. You don't need to come along to that birthday party that you don't feel like, I'll take the kids. So that was definitely me.
Freya Graf:
And I took great pride in being that woman because society tells you that, you know, then you're the one that does it. All right? You hold down the house, you look fantastic, you keep yourself slim, you're fit, you never complain, you go out drinking, you say yes to being with the boys. Yeah, you eat a hamburger. Hamburger. But yeah, you run it off. Like, I was ticking all the boxes and being through that relationship and doing a lot of. Of self worth work afterwards and a lot of exploring about what relationship dynamics look like. And just even just like sexuality and different relationship structures, it really opened my eyes to this is not the only way.
Freya Graf:
The only way to be validated as a good woman is not just this. This is not the only ending to my story. And I distinctly remember when I first started dating my now partner and I was sitting in. In the house that I was renting, I had two small children. And I remember him picking up a basket of washing to go and hang it out of my washing, right? And my first impulse was to be like, no, no, sit down, I'll do it. And I physically caught myself before I said it. And I had to have this like, self talk to inside my head and be like, nikki, it's all right. You do plenty of things.
Freya Graf:
He's picked it up. No one's told him to. That's an autonomous decision. He's a grown adult. I don't have to save him from helping me because yes, yes, it's totally okay that he helps me. And I also don't have to be busy just because he is busy. I can continue to sit on the couch doing nothing and allow him to go and hang out the washing. And I didn't say it, and I didn't get up and also clean just because he started cleaning.
Freya Graf:
And that was a huge, huge moment. So that's now like eight years ago. And I just remember it because at least in a relationship setting, that was really my first time feeling like I set a boundary and enforced it. And it's not like I was enforcing it by yelling at anyone or saying like, no or being harsh or cold. It was just setting a boundary, like, I don't need to exert myself just to make sure I'm a good partner. And so that's a really practiced, practiced feeling. And what I think setting boundaries does is it enables you to feel like yourself. Right? I think too many people go around living their whole lives for other people and never giving themselves permission to discover who they are because they are scared that if they give themselves permission, that makes them a bad.
Freya Graf:
Mother, daughter, wife, partner, friend. And the scary thing is sometimes it does, because if you're in relationships or you have friends, or you have family dynamics where people expect that of you, then they will see it as really confronting, right? But the more and more that you show up as that person, the more and more that you'll kind of discard those relationships and you'll pick up up validating relationships that are like that as well. And then it becomes really easy because that's how everyone around you operates. Everyone around you is able to articulate their feelings. Everyone around you is able to say no calmly and politely and kindly. Everyone around you can have a discussion about what that means and how best to support each other without really degrading yourself. That's the place that I sit in now. But it is so different to the life that I had, you know, say, 10 years ago.
Freya Graf:
I. I didn't think that this, this existed. I thought that to be myself and to have boundaries probably meant being fairly alone in this world. And I'm very, very, very glad to say that that's not true in friends or relationships or family.
Dr. Nici Sweaney:
Oh, beautiful. It's. That was such a. Such a relatable example as well. Like, not only was it really confronting to just not stop him from doing the washing, but then to not make yourself busy at the same time because there's something really uncomfortable about you sitting or relaxing or doing something else. Not, not being seen to be productive or contributing while somebody else does work. Yeah, especially on your behalf. Like it's just, we've just really learned as women that you know, being, being seen as worthy and, and contributing members of society and household and a relationship is super conditional.
Dr. Nici Sweaney:
It's like only if we are doing that most all the time and the.
Freya Graf:
Most really well too. Like all of the things but also really well and also without complaining or showing any cracks.
Dr. Nici Sweaney:
Oh my God, don't even get me started. Cool, let's do this segment. Get pregnant and die. Do you have a sex ed anecdote for us? Don't have sex because you will get pregnant.
Freya Graf:
Don't have sex. Sex missionary position. Don't have, don't have sex standing up. Just don't do it. Promise. I think my sex antidote, you know, I was, I was really lucky. But my sex s antidote is that when I was four years old, so before I started school. So my mum is an ex emergency room nurse, right.
Freya Graf:
So she had seen all the things exposed to all the stuff has all the gory details and stories and I distinctly remember my mum sitting me down in the kitchen when I was 4 years old after all my older siblings had gone off to school and she got out of whiteboard and she drew all the bits and all the things and how they all interacted and she named them all correctly and she taught me then and there exactly what sex was, how it worked, who was involved. I mean it was probably looking back fairly biologically focused. There wasn't a lot of like talk about pleasure or anything but. So maybe that's not so appropriate for a four year old. But she explained it all and so my sex ed story is that I don't remember having sex ed at school. I know we did like, but I just don't remember any details about what they talked about. But what I do remember is that most of my friends came to me for their sex ed. So especially in kind of year six, year seven, those sorts of age groups.
Freya Graf:
I had so many girlfriends that we'd walk home from school together and they'd ask me so many questions because course my mum had spoken about it very early on and very consistently and you know, nothing was taboo. Everything was on the table to be discussed. I felt very comfortable asking her questions. So then I become that I became the kind of information holder for my 12 and 13 year old friends to tell them how everything works. And I'm really, really grateful for that because I don't feel a lot of shame about those things. I have never had to, which is really nice. And I carry that into how I speak to my children as well. So, you know, very early on I started talking about those things.
Freya Graf:
But I guess through my own experiences, I've also started very early talking about consent. I talk to them about different sexualities. I talk to them about open relationships. I talk to them about different models of being. I've talked to them about what I've done in the past. I answer any questions, like when we're watching shows and there's girls in a relationship with girls, you know, my 8 year old was like, how do they have sex? I thought you had to have a penis. And I was like, oh, well, there's like so many options. And then I started going through them all and when I got to about option six, she was like, yeah.
Freya Graf:
Was like, I. I'm cool. And I was like, all right, we could reuse another day. But I'm really, really grateful that that was my particular home life sex edge, because it meant that, yeah, I didn't, I didn't have a lot of these same kind of shame barriers and guilt barriers that lots of people do. And that's made for a much more enjoyable experience. Oh, my God, I fucking love that. That's incredible.
Dr. Nici Sweaney:
Oh, yes. So good. Go mom, go you.
Freya Graf:
Yeah, she's great.
Dr. Nici Sweaney:
All right, so it's going to take a little bit of a dark turn before we bring it back up, but I want to talk about some more of the sort of dangers or risks, things around this whole world of deep fakes, AI porn, the fact that legislation is really struggling to keep up and to protect us and kids from this stuff. I remember hearing a podcast with Dr. Catriona Wallace and she was sort of talking about, and I'll probably butcher the details of this, but she was talking about like when the metaverse sort of first launched or they were doing trials and you could have like a VR headset and go in and this woman got gang raped in VR. Yeah. And it was kind of like, well, obviously, because it's designed by fucking men. And they would never have even considered that. That's of course, something that's going to happen when you can go in there and be anonymous and have anonymous strangers with no account do whatever they want. So, yeah, I guess just riff on, on your thoughts with all of this and like, yeah, safety in that online space.
Freya Graf:
I think that it's a really, it's a really underplayed danger zone at the moment. Like I don't think we're hearing enough about it yet. And I think for the average person, because you don't have that intent, you don't realize what a market there is for that online right now. So as I alluded to before, one of the fastest growing uses of AI is in AI by companions, which are, which are deep fake pornography really. And most of that content takes pictures of real women and girls. It's not generating AI faces and I don't know why not. It's like this extra nefarious level of like, no, no, no, let's not use AI to generate a new face. Let's take a real face and just stick it on an AI generated body.
Freya Graf:
Because that does not add to the experience at all. But it just ruins women's and girls lives and feelings of safety. Also, when we think about having AI that does like real time updates or real time research, there's real ramifications and I've spoken on podcasts about this before, but real ramifications for domestic abuse survivors or people trying to escape family violence because you're starting to get access to real time updates on where people are or what's happening. So there's lots of layers of, of danger here. I guess the way that we can show up is talk about it. You know, we can write to our local members about our concerns around this. We can make sure that we're educated and what it is. I personally don't share any photos of my kids and haven't for quite a long time since being in this space.
Freya Graf:
And I certainly don't on my business and public accounts. People often ask if it's a particular business strategy to not share that. I have children. I talk about having kids. I don't just. Their faces don't need to be out there for the world because they don't have a choice. Most of us unfortunately have probably given up so much about ourselves online pre AI that all we can do now is kind of be aware and also start driving for legislation. So in Denmark they've just passed legislation that has given everyone the right to own their likeness.
Freya Graf:
So you own your face, right? And that's something that we really have to seriously start considering and, and bringing here as well. Because it's not just the fact that we want to protect against, you know, deep fake and pornography, you actually want to own your likeness. Because also remember in a few years time we probably have AI put inside of humanoid robots that are very much starting to be indistinguishable from humans. Like, right now, they are growing skin in laboratories that can respond to tiny electromagnetic pulses so that they can mimic the facial muscles of humans. Because we read lots of emotion and intent off our facial features, right? It's not just the words we say. So if you think you do that, plus you could get a photo of me and make the robot look like me and feel like me, and then you could take every transcript of every podcast and every media outlet that I've ever had and stick it inside a generative AI large language model and pop that inside the robot. Suddenly you have a second Nikki wandering around on Earth, potentially underneath someone else's control, right? Because then they then own that thing. So we really have to start seriously looking at that kind of regulation here.
Freya Graf:
Being aware that the regulation does exist in other places makes me more hopeful, because in terms of regulation, when it comes to AI, Australia is a little bit closer to the EU than it is to America. We're kind of somewhere in the middle, but just urging as many people as possible to care and to actually say something about it. I mean, it's the sort of thing I think should be in the news every single goddamn day, but it's not. But the more people that kind of encourage that to be something that we talk about, I think the better as well.
Dr. Nici Sweaney:
Oh, God, it's completely horrifying.
Freya Graf:
I can't even do it is. But, you know, like, on the flip side, I guess again, I'm in this area. I don't just go around talking about the negatives. I feel like I sit in this. Well, I think it's a special place between. I like to make people aware and educated of the negatives and then empowered to use it for good. Because if we say, oh, my God, there's all this negative stuff happening, and therefore I don't want to touch it, then the negative outcome is inevitable, right? But if we say, hey, there's all this negative stuff happening, if I partake, there is a chance that we can do better things with it and we can steer it in the quote, unquote, right, right direction. And what I also think is if women and other underrepresented groups use these tools to launch and scale our ideas, then even if we're not directly combating, you know, like, the fact that these tools do xyz, we might also make amazing things in general that make the world a better place.
Freya Graf:
And so there's a woman right now working on technology Where AI will scan our faces and retinas to work out if we're human or humanoid robot. Right. Because at one point will probably have to be able to tell somehow the difference between a biological human and a bot human. So she's making that, foreseeing the risk factors in who is an actual person and is entitled to certain things that, you know, presumably humans are only entitled to. But it's, it's women and it's these groups that are the victim of the bad side of all of this that will probably also make the solutions using this tech as well. So we do really stand a chance to solve gender inequality. We really stand a chance to increase food security. You know, we really stand a chance to solve climate change if we leverage tech to be able to help us get there.
Freya Graf:
And that's, that's a really cool thing as well. So there's lots of promise. AI is not bad, it's not good. It's just a tool to amplify and women have awesome ideas that deserve to be out there.
Dr. Nici Sweaney:
Yeah, yeah, I love that. And it is such a classic case of like it's a, it's, you know, it's a tool, it can either be used for good or bad. I guess the main worry is just that it's a tool that's in systems that are pretty problematic and. Yeah. Unequal. And that I feel like just the legislation is not being made fast enough to keep up with how quickly tech is developing. So are there any like, I mean, what are some, what are some kind of blind spots that you see that like maybe people are cottoning onto a little bit too late and the damage is sort of already being done because these products and AI is being integrated before we actually. I guess it's like being test run on humanity.
Freya Graf:
I know, right? I mean that's the thing. Like humans invent stuff because we can not, because we should. And now right now like Pandora's box is open, so we've got to kind of work out what the, that all means. I think some of the blind spots are just, just how few people actually know that this stuff is the way that it operates. Right. Like, I think there's a lot of, there is either a lot of oh, I don't use that, or there's a lot of oh, it's amazing. And I use it for everything without question. And I really think that we should be sitting somewhere in the middle.
Freya Graf:
We need to be more aware that these things operate on pattern recognition. They are just huge data churning machines that are looking for patterns in data. Right, Patterns in data. Look for what is the most common story here. And that often reinforces stereotypes until you know that you can't mitigate against it. Because it's very unlikely that if you go on to ChatGPT tomorrow and you ask it for help with a business strategy, you're very unlikely to then say, now give that to me as if I'm a man and see how it compares. Because you're not going to think of that. You're just like, oh, yeah, it did something great.
Freya Graf:
That's fantastic. Not knowing that potentially, if you phrase it a slightly different way, it would have said that your rate should be twice what it gave you advice on. Right. So there's a lot of. I think the biggest blind spot is people just. We're so enamored by AI and it's such a shiny object. I, I liken it to kind of special effects in the 90s, right. So I grew up watching Jurassic Park.
Freya Graf:
That was like my go to movie after school. Right?
Dr. Nici Sweaney:
Love. Yeah.
Freya Graf:
It's so scary. Like so scary. You know, the first raptor scene and like when the T. Rex is like chasing down the Jeep and it is so frightening. Now when I watch that movie, not the remastered version, but like the original version, you can see the animatronics, right? And it, it just takes, it takes the scare factor away. You know, I understand the suspense, but I don't actually feel like the dinosaur is actually coming to eat me because I can very clearly see that it's an animatronic head and it has this kind of like stiff, weird movement and its eyes are like Plasticine or whatever. I think we're in the 1994 stage of AI like we're looking at everything it does and we're saying, oh, it's amazing, or oh, look at that. Or ah, I see how amazingly it answered that thing for me.
Freya Graf:
It just spat out my business strategy on my content plan. Without being able to see the animatronics, we can't see the behind the scenes stuff that, oh, it's just giving us one answer of a possible billion and one different ways it could have answered this question. So it's not necessarily ever right. It's just a tool to think with. So the moral of the story is, don't forget that you're the boss, right? You're the boss. You're the one with the human brain. You're the one that gets to decide what is actually worthwhile. These things can be great tools to collaborate with, but they only ever work for you.
Freya Graf:
They don't work in place of you. And it's really important to never forget that they actually don't give a shit about you. They don't care if your business fails. They don't care if you drop dead tomorrow. They don't care if that thing is a huge flop. They don't care if you send an offensive email to a client. They're just a product that's designed to keep you using it. You're the one that has to stay in control.
Dr. Nici Sweaney:
Yeah, yeah. You can't take everything they say as gospel, which I think a lot of people do. Excuse this quick interruption. I'm shamelessly seeking reviews and five star ratings for the potty because as I'm sure you've noticed by now, it's pretty fab. And the more people who get to hear it, the more people I can help with it. Reviews and ratings actually do make a big difference to this little independent podcaster, and it's really easy to just quickly show your support by taking that simple act of either leaving five stars for the show on Spotify, or even better, writing a written review and leaving five stars over on Apple Podcasts. Or if you're a real overachiever, you can do them both. That would be mad.
Dr. Nici Sweaney:
If you're writing a review though, just be sure to use G rated words. Because despite the fact that this is a podcast about sexuality, words like sex can be censored and your review won't make it through the gates. Lame. Anyway, I would personally recommend doing that right now while you remember, just to get on top of it and let me know you're with me on this journey. Thanks, gang. Enjoy the rest of the epi. Yeah, and one thing, this is just a little side quest, but something that I've heard is that it's shocking for the environment every time you type something in and ask it a question. It uses several liters of water or whatever.
Dr. Nici Sweaney:
So obviously me being an empathetic person that cares about the environment are like, oh, you know, I'm not just going to be using it like all the time because of this. But then I guess that means that people who are caring about that stuff are using it less. And actually our voices are the ones that need to be influencing it more. What do you know about how we can use it in a more kind of like environmentally sustainable way?
Freya Graf:
Absolutely.
Dr. Nici Sweaney:
Yeah.
Freya Graf:
So, I mean, my PhD is in conservation ecology, so I grew up kind of wanting to save species from extinction. So I very much clock the environmental impact that this Has, I think on one side there is a little bit of a hyper focus on it because it's new, right? Like it's adding to the problem. It's not the worst thing that we've ever done or that we do, but it is adding to the problem rather than taking it away. So there was a great recent paper that looked at the water footprint of eating a beef hamburger and it's equivalent to about 120,000 prompts in ChatGPT is eating one hamburger yoga. So yes, it uses water, yes, it uses electricity. Neither of those things are ideal. It is not the worst offender that we have. And for me, if I can, which I have leveraged AI to get my business to the point where there I'm able to employ other women, where I have enough of an impact that I have now done over a hundred public talks on AI and the importance of gender equity and bias.
Freya Graf:
I think that adds a lot more to the world than me eating a beef hamburger. So if I'm going to make a choice, and we all make choices every single day, I'll trade, I'll trade that. Right? Likewise, just even saving my mental energy, giving me space to enjoy my life, not having to work 14 hour days in my own business. I get Fridays off with my partner. Again, I'm going to choose that over buying another new T shirt that I probably don't essentially need because of the water and energy consumption of cotton industry, for example. So one, we're all making choices every single day. Yes, it uses clean water and electricity. I don't think that every single individual has to, you know, say I'm never going to touch it.
Freya Graf:
Because of that, we can probably look at other things that we're already doing in our life and make a simple trade and still come out in the same kind of energy consumption layer that we're at. The other thing is there is absolutely a market need for greener AI. The catch 22 is we probably need AI to help us work out how to make AI greener because of how well it helps us consume and analyze data and do predictive analytics and to play out lots and lots and lots of different scenarios with millions and millions of data points. That is something that is only an option to us. Now that we have AI and that sort of computing power, we probably need to leverage that tech in order to create greener options for everyone to use. The good news is, yeah, there is market demand for greener options. So somebody will make it because it'll make them money, which is fantastic for all of Us that want to choose something that is better for the world and for the environment as soon as that's available.
Dr. Nici Sweaney:
Yeah, cool. And that really puts it into perspective too. Like it's such a clickbaity sort of thing when it's splashing into headlines that AI takes all of this water or whatever, but it's like, well, fuck, look at all the other things that we're doing. Exactly.
Freya Graf:
Like, it's not. Yeah, it's not that they're like lying. It absolutely does. And you know, they're. Right now they're building cloud storage centers in places that don't have a lot of clean water. And yes, it's unfairly using those resources. There's a whole nother conversation about how all the AI trash and infrastructure is getting planted on developing countries, but they don't get any of the productivity or efficiency from using AI because no one has access to the Internet, but they just have to deal with all the crummy stuff from it. So there's lots of conversations, they're all really valid.
Freya Graf:
But if you're an individual, again, using AI is, say you write something to ChatGPT that's about equivalent, depending on how complex it is, but anywhere kind of between 12 and maybe 20 Google searches. So I often say don't use AI for things that you can Google. Like don't ask it where your next best Italian restaurant is. That's very much a Google thing. However, if like just before I got on this call, I'm using AI and I'm saying, hey, I'm prepping for a client strategy session. I'm going to give you their surveys. I want you to act as a statistical analyst. I want you to research their surveys.
Freya Graf:
I want you to do all these stats and coding. For that, I'm going to give you a template that shows what our strategy report looks like. I want you to write out the entire report. Then based on the report, we're working Tomorrow together from 10am to 4pm, do my entire agenda, write out and plan all of the templates, templates and workflows, because we're building out a whole bunch of automations for tomorrow. And do an email for the client that lets them know that all this stuff is ready for their review. That is one prompt, right? And then a few files that I upload with that prompt. There is no way that I could do that in the equivalent of 12 to 20 Google searches. So for me, I make an educated choice that it is more energy efficient for me to leverage AI to do that than it is for me to use other things.
Freya Graf:
Sources.
Dr. Nici Sweaney:
Yeah. Epic. So good. This is like giving me so much clarity around all of this stuff. So thank you.
Freya Graf:
Pleasure.
Dr. Nici Sweaney:
And kind of on the developing countries stuff, I know, you know, as a senior fellow at the AI for Developing Countries Forum, you're very deeply engaged in that sort of global picture. How is the AI conversation different in the sort of global south compared to over here in the West?
Freya Graf:
Best. Oh, it's so much more about equity. I mean, perhaps unsurprisingly, but yeah. So I went over to the United nations earlier this year to speak at the AI for Developing Countries Forum. I spoke predominantly on what the risk factor was for women in developing countries and how we could kind of mitigate that. And my suggestions, but, you know, the entire. Always there for two days, three days, every single talk, every single panel kept coming back to these ideas about how do we ensure that as many people as possible get positive outcomes while mitigating as much as possible for all the possible negative outcomes. Because developing countries, and in that, you know, Australia is obviously not a developing country, but we don't own any AI, which is another story to come back to.
Freya Graf:
But for all of these other countries that aren't in control of these systems, there's a real acknowledgment that the more and more we become reliant on them, what happens when the countries that are in control decide that there's now a new goalpost for us to jump through, that there's now a new access limitation? They decide that there's now a new fee for things that developing countries can't afford. They decide that they suddenly just want to, you know, flick the switch off and cut everyone off. They then have total global power over who has access to these tools. And right now, that really is a kind of us versus China evolution about how many countries can we make reliant on our particular models and therefore who controls the global discourse and how everyone works? So there's a lot of onus from other countries outside of those areas to talk about data sovereignty, to talk about large language models housed on local networks, to talk about small language models that are much cheaper to make and run, that these countries can own, that don't have the resources and the money to go and make their own large language models. And just here, here in Australia, there are a few local large language models starting. I'm on the board of Advisors for Sovereign AI. They just launched as of, I think, the 8th of September. So that is the aim of that is to make a large language model that is owned here in Australia, with complete transparency over how the data has been trained, and also to give back some of the income to the people that choose to contribute their information.
Freya Graf:
So, not stealing from authors, not stealing from creatives, but if you want your book included in the large language model, then you get a cut of the profits based on your data being used.
Dr. Nici Sweaney:
Wow, that's so cool.
Freya Graf:
Yeah.
Dr. Nici Sweaney:
Oh, my God. So, like, roughly when can we expect to be able to use that?
Freya Graf:
I'm not sure when the whole, like, beta testing will be finished. So what we do have is we have some very clever technicians involved in it. We've ordered the chips from Navita, so they're being shipped over. And then we have the board of directors. And, yeah, it was launched on the 8th, so you can see there's an article about it in the Australian Financial Review, and I'm very happy to update you as we have timelines. I think we've got our first board meeting that I've been involved in early November, so I can. I can keep you posted.
Dr. Nici Sweaney:
Yeah, please.
Freya Graf:
Oh, it's all happening.
Dr. Nici Sweaney:
Okay.
Freya Graf:
Sick. So. Problems? It's fine.
Dr. Nici Sweaney:
I did say we were going to end on a happy note.
Freya Graf:
We've lifted it up again. It's good.
Dr. Nici Sweaney:
I'm back on board. I'm going to use it all the time.
Freya Graf:
Oh, God.
Dr. Nici Sweaney:
So, yeah, I guess on a more hopeful note, and this must be part of what's exciting you right now, but. Yeah. What excites you most about the future of AI? When it's done. Right.
Freya Graf:
Closing the gap. Right. The future of AI. To me, my utopian hope is that we increase access to power, autonomy, and choice for all the people that have historically not had those things.
Dr. Nici Sweaney:
And.
Freya Graf:
And in doing that, we make not only individuals better, but communities and families and the entire world. In the lens of just, you know, looking at women, we know that the more wealth that women have, the better the lives and communities and townships and societies are around those particular women. And even in my own experience, you know, I've had. I've had side hustles for, like, 14 years. Nothing has ever gotten to the point where I could quit my day job, let alone partially retire my partner, let alone start building out wealth for my children. Until now. And some people might be listening, going, well, yeah, because you're talking about AI, and that's like a hot topic. It's not so much that I'm talking about AI, it's that I used AI to support my business to a point that I could actually make.
Freya Graf:
Those decisions and I could hire more humans to help me execute my vision. That was the very, very real thing. There is no way my business would be here right now because I was working in undefined. I had four kids, I was commuting every week for work. You know, I had family obligations, I had friends. All of that mental load that women are managing, that's where I was. So there is no way I would have had capacity to scale a business to six figures to then quit my day job because I was the primary breadwinner, because my partner was a stay at home dad. So I didn't have the choice of quitting my day job before it actually replaced my day job income.
Freya Graf:
There is no way that it would be impossible for AI. So just in that tiny cosmos of just me as a person, that makes me so excited because think if every person that had a great idea now has access to resources that enable them to fully execute to the point they actually can make a decision about what they want that idea to mean to the world, that just opens up a whole bunch of really awesome opportunities for people that have amazing ideas and intent for the entire world. World. So my utopian future is that we totally take up the space that we deserve. That every woman has the right to execute their wildest dreams because they finally have the support to do so. And the world is a better place because of that love.
Dr. Nici Sweaney:
That love that. I can see it.
Freya Graf:
Painted full color.
Dr. Nici Sweaney:
So. So I've got like one or two more questions real quick, but before we wrap up, do you have a TMI story for us?
Freya Graf:
I think just like, I don't know if it's like a story, but it's a period of time. So I referred earlier to, you know, getting out of my domestic abuse situation. Then I had two very, very small children, like a 9 month old and a 22 month old at the time. And I was a solo mum all by myself. And I just went. I mean, I would have always described myself as a feminist, but that period of my life, I went hardcore into that area, right? Like every podcast, every book I was reading, everything I was listening to, every social media algorithm that was fully what I became absorbed in. And I read, I read the Ethical Slut, which have you read yet? So I read the Ethical Slut. Changed my life, changed my whole perspective on what relationships could look like.
Freya Graf:
And then in that period of time, I just did so much exploring about what different models could be like, right? And so I dated lots of different types of people. I had lots of different types of conversations, lots of different ways of exploring, you know, my own intent and how people operate. Um, I, I once I went to a swingers party in this like mansion in Sydney. It was like a full masquerade ball where everyone was like, anonymous. You weren't allowed to come if you're a dude, if you didn't have a woman supervising you, but you're allowed to come alone if you're a girl. And I just like, I don't know if it's a TMI story, but I think I wanted to tell a story because I want people listening. If you have ever wondered if there's anything different, like. Yes, there is.
Freya Graf:
There are billions of people on the planet that are living every sort of life you could possibly imagine. And if you were raised, you know, a CIS straight woman or guy, you often get prescribed so much about how we show up in the world and how we exist in relationships and the types of persons that we need to be in order to be approved of. And I would highly encourage people to just do a bit of exploring a tiny bit out of that box. Box. Because then you start to realize that, ah, you can actually be whoever the you want and you'll find someone that like loves it and digs it and wants to explore it. And I, hands down, I'm so grateful for that period of my life because yeah, it taught me a lot about myself, my boundaries, different ways that you can show up. And it means that it shapes all of those conversations for my children too. You know, like, like I say to my kids, I never talk to them very much about boyfriends or girlfriends or dating someone.
Freya Graf:
What I talk to them about is it's okay to like whoever you like as long as you have open communication and everybody is aware. And so that could be one person, it could be lots of people, it could be a couple, it could be someone the same sex as you. It could be someone lives on the other side of the world as you. It doesn't really matter as long as everyone actually knows your intent and your feelings and you are honest about yourself and how you show up in the world.
Dr. Nici Sweaney:
Yeah, preach. Love that. And I wasn't planning on asking this, but you talking about your kids sort of made me think, oh, is there anything that like parents should be kind of aware of? Yeah, deep fakes, porn being so accessible. Yeah. That that could be helpful for parents to kind of know about or be across or a little tip maybe that you do. Hey, me again. If you'd like to support the potty and you've already given it five stars on whatever platform you're listening on. I want to mention that you can buy some really dope merch from the website and get yourself a Labia Lounge Tote Tea Togs.
Dr. Nici Sweaney:
Yep, you heard that right. I even have Labia Lounge bathers or a cute fanny pack if that'd blow your hair back. So if fashion isn't your passion though, you can donate to my Buy Me a Coffee donation page, which is actually called Buy Me a Soy Chai Latte because I'll be the first to admit I'm a bit of a Melbourne cafe tosser like that. And yes, that is my coffee order. You can do a once off donation or an ongoing membership and sponsor me for as little as three fat ones a month. And I also offer one on one coaching and online courses that'll help you level up your sex life and relationship with yourself and others in a really big way. So every bit helps because it ain't cheap to put out a sweet podcast into the world every week out of my own pocket. So I'll be undyingly quite grateful if you support me and my biz financially in any of these ways.
Dr. Nici Sweaney:
And if you like, I'll even give you a mental BJ with my mind from the lounge itself.
Freya Graf:
Saucy.
Dr. Nici Sweaney:
I'll pop the links in the show notes. Thank you.
Freya Graf:
Later, you should start talking to your kids about deep fakes. So I think a lot of parents already talk to their kids about, you know, not everything you see online is real, but that is in a bit more of an abstract concept. Like, you know, her skin doesn't really look like that all the time. Like that. That sort of. It's not all real or it's just their highlight reel. We need to start shaping that conversation that is actually, hands down, not real. Just practicing with your kids.
Freya Graf:
It can be a really fun game. So I play with my kids, like, is it AI or is it real? So I find AI, generate images and then a real image and then get the kids to pick which one and then we actually dissect how you could pick it. And I've done this with high school students too. Like, I do a lot of work with students as well. High school kids are great at picking it up, actually. They'll look for things that even I don't look for until I've been trained to look for it. Like, you know, there's wind in that tree, but it doesn't appear on the water as well. Or like there's a splash from that droplet but there's no splash back or, you know, this person's shadows in a tightly, slightly different place than this person's shadow.
Freya Graf:
Starting to have those conversations. Also looking for validating information. Again, if you see a clickbait headline, doing some like reverse image searching to see if you can validate or, or dispute that article. It can be totally a fun activity with kids, but you need to start teaching them that critical thinking. We think that by next year about 90% of online content will be AI generated. It's not necessarily that all of that content will be misleading, but this, the floodgates for misinformation and disinformation are wide open right now. And until we start practicing and flexing that muscle, we're probably a lot more vulnerable to it as well. So that's conversation number one.
Freya Graf:
Conversation number two is very seriously, if your children are on social media or have an online presence with pictures of them in open spaces, I'd be really seriously considering stopping that and wiping that. It's not to make any parent feel guilty. We all share pictures of our kids because we're excited to share their lives. But the world is changing and you have good intention by posting those photos, but that doesn't mean that everybody that has access to those photos, photos has a good intention either. So I think those things really important. And on the other side, it is teaching your kids how to use these tools. They will be expected to leverage them when they go into the workplace one day. But I also think kids are going to solve really cool problems with them because they'll think about ways to use them that our adult brains can't.
Dr. Nici Sweaney:
Yeah.
Freya Graf:
So those are the three things that I think are really, really important. And then just. Yeah. Encouraging kids to, to have autonomy and to self reflect and to be able to listen to their bodies and their reactions to things, to navigate scenarios. I mean, that's just a general comment, but I think the more that we will get flooded with, yeah, AI pornography and disinformation and misinformation. There's this real leaning into our instincts as animals to help us navigate what's safe and right for us. That I think, I think we have, you know, responsibility to reteach our kids or re. Lean into it.
Freya Graf:
As adults, we often tell kids that, you know, they have to kind of grow up. Whereas a lot of things that make kids, kids are the things that make us animals. And I, I don't, I think they'll keep us safe.
Dr. Nici Sweaney:
That's really beautiful lens. I love that. Do you, do you know have there been any studies on how it's affecting? Because obviously this is a Labia Lounge podcast. How it's affecting people's sexuality, sexual expression, confidence, evidence, like relationships, anything like that.
Freya Graf:
I'm not totally sure about exact papers. I mean, I'm sure there are, I know kind of general, general kind of views on it as a, like a lot of this, there are pros and cons. So there are cons in that we have this whole kind of new age of sexism and the patriarchy and misogyny kind of filtering through everywhere and at scale perpetuated by this new tech. The pro side of it is that, that people are leveraging these tools a lot for mental health support and a lot for talking through advice. And the beauty of these tools being a bit of a positive feedback loop is that if you talk to these tools about your sexuality or, you know, questions that you have or things that you might want to try or like role playing or even health issues, their job is to kind of. They're designed as helpers. So their job is to kind of coach you through that. There's no judgment.
Freya Graf:
There's no like, oh my God, that's pretty gross that you're into that. You know, there's no, like, people feel really safe talking to these tools because there's nothing attached to the conversation. You can process a moment or a feeling or an idea and it's never going to pop up in three days time and be like, so Nikki, are you like, still interested in that? Because that was pretty weird that you mentioned that the other day. Like, it's not going to revisit. So there has been research that it can be really helpful to people in that sort of mental wellness space, which of course includes concepts around sexuality and, you know, for women as well. Of course, yes, we have a lot of judgment around these things and we're afraid of talking through these sorts of things. But even role playing, if you are in a relationship with someone that you want to have a tough conversation or a potentially confrontational conversation, or just what you feel like is an awkward conversation, role playing it with a tool like Chat, GBT or Claude can be so useful. Like, I've done this so many times.
Freya Graf:
I will set up a chat, I'll describe the person that I'm wanting to have the conversation with, I'll describe their personality traits, I'll describe what I'm wanting to talk about and my fears related to that conversation, and then I'll ask it to role play scenarios out and to be kind of really critical and provide really kind of. I call it like. Yeah, like, brutally harsh feedback on how I've approached this conversation and on their expected reaction to help me prompt prep for having that conversation in real time.
Dr. Nici Sweaney:
Wow. See, I would just never have even thought to do that. That's great. And that'd be so helpful, you know? Yeah. Anyway, I know we're way over time, but, God, thank you so much. It's just been fascinating. I have to get you back on for, like, a part two. I've got so many more questions that have just been.
Freya Graf:
I know. I feel like my brain taking that in, like, a whole bunch of different themes. It could have been, like, just a kid one. That could have been, like a sex education. Have been a deep fake one. It could have been like an AI for sexuality exploration.
Dr. Nici Sweaney:
We need to do it. We need to do it. Yeah. Because that's the tricky thing is, like, when, you know, when I have a new guest and that's a huge topic, I'm like, oh, do I go really specific or do I go broad? And I sort of chose to start with broad because I just know shit all about this. But now that we've got the foundations.
Freya Graf:
I would love to do is coming on. Yeah, yeah.
Dr. Nici Sweaney:
Oh, my God. Yeah. Let's get granular. All right, well, I'll put obviously, the links to your work and your resource and everything in the show notes. And I guess, you know, if people want just one practical step that they can take, literally, just following Nikki's content will start helping you understand how to integrate this into your life in a positive, uplifting, empowering way. Is there anything you just want to, like, leave listeners with? Maybe a tip, maybe like just a message? Anything that we didn't really cover that you want to make sure you drop in here just to start.
Freya Graf:
But, you know, I mean, I feel like that's the advice. With so many things, the only difference between you and someone that's achieved the thing that you want to do is that they just started doing it and didn't stop doing it until they did the thing. It's exactly the same with AI. You just need to start, pick one thing, try and distract yourself from all the noise and the shiny object syndrome. Yes, there is a lot going out there in the world, but even if you just use this tool to. To do your grocery list for the rest of time, that is still an advantage, that is still a positive outcome, that still makes your life a tiny bit better, that's still going to let you practice all the skill sets of providing direction to these tools in a way that gets you useful outcomes. It's going to tick all the boxes and you don't have to solve all the problems all at once. So pick one thing, write it down.
Freya Graf:
Stick a Post it note on your computer or something. The next time you do that task, ask, look at the Post it note and remind yourself that you are going to not start from scratch again. You are too good for that. You are too brilliant for that. You are worth more. You're going to leverage these tools and you also owe it to your children and the world.
Dr. Nici Sweaney:
All right. Love that. Really good pep talk. I'm getting my Post it notes out right now. Thank you so much Nikki. This has been really, really interesting and informative and practical and and yeah, love your down to earth approach. Definitely going to be in chats about the miniseries, but yeah, really appreciate your time today.
Freya Graf:
Thank you so much. It was such a pleasure.
Dr. Nici Sweaney:
And that's it, darling hearts. Thanks for stopping by the Labia Lounge. Your bum groove in the couch will be right where you left it, just waiting for you to sink back in for some more Double L action next time. If you'd be a dear and subscribe, share this episode or leave a review on itunes. Then you can pat yourself on the snatch because that's a downright act of sex positive feminist activism and you'd be supporting my vision to educate, empower, demystify and destigmatize with this here podcast. I'm also always open to feedback, topic ideas that you'd love to hear, covered questions or guest suggestions, so feel free to get in touch via my website or over on Insta. You can also send me in TMI stories to be shared anonymously on the poll. My handle is freyagrafthelabia Lounge.
Dr. Nici Sweaney:
If my account hasn't been deleted for being too sex positive, which is always a possibility with censorship. But just in case the chronic censorship finally does obliterate my social channels, I'd highly recommend going and joining my mailing list and snagging yourself some fun freebies for the trouble at www.freyagraf.com freebies.
Freya Graf:
Anyway.
Dr. Nici Sweaney:
Anyway, later labial legends. See you next time.