Ann Atkinson on Suppression of Free Speech on Campus

This week on Breaking Battlegrounds, Chuck is out of the studio but Sam is joined by friend of the show, former Arizona State Legislator Michelle Ugenti-Rita. Sam and Michelle speak to Ann Atkinson who organized a Health, Wealth, and Happiness program at Arizona State University which featured prominent conservative speakers and was met with intense opposition from the left. Later in the show, Christina Eichelkraut returns to offer a unique perspective on the impact of artificial intelligence.

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Ann Atkinson is the former Executive Director of the T.W. Lewis Center for Personal Development at Barrett, the Honors College. Ann is a Barrett alumna, entrepreneur, former public company executive, frequent public speaker, healthcare real estate expert, wife, mother, and triathlete. She has regularly volunteered for the Lewis Center, which has helped fulfill her passion to better prepare students for the challenges and opportunities of life.  

Ann earned a Bachelor of Science in Finance from ASU, where she graduated from Barrett, the Honors College and with honors from the W.P. Carey School of Business.  She was introduced to commercial real estate through her Barrett honors internship, which led to a distinguished 17-year career in healthcare real estate. She most recently founded and led a privately-held national healthcare real estate investment firm. Previously, she was an executive officer for a healthcare real estate investment trust listed on the New York Stock Exchange, where she led acquisitions and dispositions on behalf of the company. Formerly, she worked for Jerry Colangelo, David Eaton, and Mel Shultz of JDM Partners, specializing in commercial real estate investments. Ann started her career with a national commercial real estate brokerage firm, specializing in office and medical office investment sales. 

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Transcription:

Sam Stone: [00:00:10] Welcome to Breaking Battlegrounds with your host, Sam Stone. Chuck Warren out of the studio today and we are blessed to have the talented, too talented and lovely women in the studio with me today, Michelle Ugenti-Rita. Thank you so much for joining us.

Michelle Ugenti- Rita: [00:00:25] Happy to be here.

Sam Stone: [00:00:25] Former state legislator in Arizona. Lots of fun going on there right now.

Michelle Ugenti- Rita: [00:00:29] I know we could spend many segments on that.

Sam Stone: [00:00:31] And we will get to a little bit of that later in the show, folks, as well. We also have a returning guest, Christina Eichelkraut, joining us. She's going to be featured in the podcast segment. Christina is my friend who's a progressive Democrat and loves to argue with me so it makes for good radio. Stay tuned. Make sure you download that podcast segment. But first up today, a story that's kind of been breaking in the last few days here, personal for a lot of us here in Arizona with our education system, with what's going on, with the sort of intellectual intolerance that is creeping into so much of this country. We have Ann Atkinson, former executive director of the T.W. Lewis Center for Personal Development at Barrett, the Honors College at Arizona State University. She is a Barrett alumna, entrepreneur, public company executive, you know, health care, real estate expert, wife, mother, triathlete. Heck of an impressive resume. And she put together helped put together an event. And we want to talk about that because the repercussions of that have been astounding to me. I mean, disheartening and astounding. So, Ann, thank you so much for joining us on breaking battlegrounds this morning. We really appreciate having you here.

Ann Atkinson: [00:01:42] Thank you, Sam. It's great to be with you and with your audience today.

Sam Stone: [00:01:46] Can you tell us because a lot of people, you know, maybe some folks here in Arizona will know what we're talking about offhand. But can you lay out the background of this? What happened? You know, kind of the timeline and then where we're at with it today, Because this is really kind of a stunning, disheartening, but also all too predictable now occurrence in higher education. So go ahead.

Ann Atkinson: [00:02:10] Absolutely, Sam. At a very high level, the T.W. Lewis Center is a personal development center that puts on speaker programs and workshops and also has some honors courses for the students at ASU's Barrett Honors College. We put on a lot of programs. We had 40 just this last spring semester and one of those programs was entitled Health, Wealth and Happiness. This was a program where we brought in experts in those areas. It was optional and open to the public, and it took place at Arizona's home of Broadway at ASU. Gammage And in response to our organizing a program on health, wealth and happiness, the faculty at the Honors College, not the students, but the faculty, led a national condemnation campaign to chill and suppress and intimidate our right to bring these speakers into campus. They attacked the speakers, our donors, myself, the Lewis Center. And it was really just an incredible response, given what we were trying to accomplish with this program. And then finally, a big part of the story is that the Honors College participated in the attempts to suppress this free speech, even despite ASU's very strong policies on free speech. So they took down our marketing. They tried to limit what the speakers were allowed to say. They wanted me to read a warning statement to the audience at my during my opening remarks, and that is directly incongruent with the robust free speech policies that ASU should be providing to all of those community. So I'm here today. I appreciate the invitation just to share my story of of what what happened to to folks that put on an event that was consistent with the intent of their of their center.

Sam Stone: [00:03:59] Yeah. Not only consistent with the intent of their center but featuring some very well known national guests with high public profiles who have, you know, legitimately one of them were, for instance, talking about Robert Kiyosaki, who I consider a friend. Robert is clearly a very healthy man at his age, but he's also amassed a great deal of wealth by being a smart guy. Right.

Michelle Ugenti- Rita: [00:04:24] Who were the guests?

Sam Stone: [00:04:26] So, yeah.

Michelle Ugenti- Rita: [00:04:27] So I think that's important.

Sam Stone: [00:04:29] Go ahead, Anne.

Ann Atkinson: [00:04:30] Yeah, we had we had the panel is a two hour program. 90 minutes was a panel on health, wealth and  two-hours happiness. We had Dr. Rajagopalan, who's a renowned heart transplant cardiologist on health. We had Robert Kiyosaki, obviously, you know who he is on Wealth and Dennis Prager on happiness. And then during opening remarks, I spoke,our donor, Tom Lewis, spoke. And Tom had invited Charlie Kirk to share remarks as well on happiness and human enlightenment.

Sam Stone: [00:04:58] Well, and for folks who know them and on breaking battlegrounds here, we've had a chance. Obviously. Robert is a resident of Phoenix, so I've gotten to know him and a few other ways. But Dennis Prager has come on the program here. We've had a chance to meet him and talk with him. He's a happy guy. He lives a great life.

Michelle Ugenti- Rita: [00:05:17] But what was the criticism from the faculty? What were they so opposed to? I mean, these are speakers that have spoke in front of large and small audiences all over the country.

Sam Stone: [00:05:30] All over the world.

Michelle Ugenti- Rita: [00:05:30] All over the world. That's right. I mean, what specifically were they so offended by?

Ann Atkinson: [00:05:35] Well, and that's key here. So the 39 of the 47 faculty at the Honors College that signed the petition condemning the event claimed that the speakers focused primarily on on Dennis Prager and Charlie Kirk, but also on Robert Kiyosaki are purveyors of hate who have publicly attacked women, people of color, the LGBTQ community and institutions of our democracy. They decried ASU platforming and legitimizing and legitimating their views, describing Prager and Kirk as white nationalist provocateurs, antebellum slaveholder apologists. And they claim that these two would undermine the value of the democratic exchange by marginalizing the school's most vulnerable students. So the faculty decided they don't like these speakers. They proved their point by referencing media matters in their petition. Which Media Matters is a watchdog reporting organization that reports on conservatives. And they determined that the speak they don't the speech they don't like is hate speech, and therefore it's dangerous and unsafe for students.

Michelle Ugenti- Rita: [00:06:48] They're the ones I feel like that are a threat to democracy by shutting down free speech. But I think there's a big difference between describing and then actually pointing to. Actual things these speakers have done to justify their position. I mean very creative language used in describing why they were offended by these speakers, but I doubt they had specificity and could point to anything. Probably large, broad generalities, rather.

Sam Stone: [00:07:15] Well, one of them was was Dennis Prager's criticism of George Soros, which which for those who aren't aware, is Jewish on Jewish violence. I don't know how you call that hate in any sense of the word.

Ann Atkinson: [00:07:28] You know what's interesting, The faculty describe Prager and Kirk as white nationalist provocateurs, as I mentioned. But I also was pulled into a meeting with my leadership at the Honors College in an outside marketing firm and asked to defend what would stop the Lewis Center from inviting the KKK to campus. Because these speakers share some of the same values as the KKK. Now, the speakers that I invited. One is from Sri Lanka. Robert Kiyosaki is of Japanese descent and Dennis Prager is a religious Jew. Yeah. So I thought that these these claims not only from the faculty, but also in meetings with with leadership of the Honors College, were really surprising.

Sam Stone: [00:08:12] Isn't it, to me? And I think one of the sort of fundamental problems underlying situations like this is the idea that students are harmed by hearing views that they might not agree with or that they might find offensive. Isn't that minimalizing these students? Isn't that marginalizing these students to to first intellectually marginalizing them, but second, emotionally marginalizing them that they're not smart enough to separate an intellectual discussion from an emotional reaction?

Ann Atkinson: [00:08:50] That's a very important point. The faculty, by deeming this as hate speech and therefore dangerous and unsafe, are telling the students, we think it is our job to protect you from dangerous speech, when in fact, again, ASU is a big place. It welcomes all sorts of different ideas, and it's not our job as educators to tell anybody what what to think. It's to help them learn how to think. And I think that by characterizing this as dangerous hate speech by the faculty, using their classroom, teaching time and mandatory honors courses to these students, two freshmen, nonetheless, to condemn the program and say supporting this talk is dangerous, that I think they're really they're really insulting the students and undermining their intelligence.

Michelle Ugenti- Rita: [00:09:41] And if you mentioned that ASU has a very strong policy on free speech and they welcome free speech, how did the faculty members get away with this kind of conduct then? If you have ASU out there, you know, strongly supporting a multitude of different mechanisms of speech and and variety of guests.

Ann Atkinson: [00:10:02] You know, I'm perplexed. You know, again, a university so celebrated for those policies that this is what happens. And that's that's why I'm telling the story. Right, is that by bringing in speakers that someone doesn't like, this has been the reaction from the faculty and the staff and leadership of the Honors College.

Michelle Ugenti- Rita: [00:10:21] But what's the president what's what's Crowe doing about it?

Ann Atkinson: [00:10:25] I don't know. You know, I would I would love to know. I have a great amount of respect for him. I appreciated that when I took my concerns, all of these directly up to the very top and through all channels over the past several months that he took the time to respond and to encourage me and to schedule a meeting with the provost, Nancy Gonzales, so I could address these concerns with her. I don't I don't know what he's going to do. I'm sure he's well, I don't want to assume. But if if I were the president of a university here, I would be deeply troubled by the way that my community is undermining my vision.

Michelle Ugenti- Rita: [00:11:03] Yeah, but this isn't the first time they've struggled with this. We've had to pass legislation called free speech zones for our universities because they have struggled to to demonstrate that they actually have a very strong policy on free speech and care about a multitude of expressions and opinions.

Sam Stone: [00:11:19] And this actually worries me, Michel, because ASU has been one of the better ones, not what I would say. Good. I don't think anyone has been great at defending free speech in the world of higher education lately, with a very few exceptions. But ASU has generally been better than most. And this is this kind of thing is very troubling. And we're seeing an increase in these incidents at ASU specifically.

Michelle Ugenti- Rita: [00:11:42] It's a slippery slope, and if it's not course corrected now, I don't see it stopping. So I'm very curious. And I believe, you know, Ann is as well to see what President Michael Crow does. It needs to he needs to have a strong, swift reaction and there needs to be clarity.

Sam Stone: [00:11:59] Yeah, We're going to be coming back with more from Ann Atkinson talking about this this attack on free speech that continues in too much of our higher education establishment and happened here in Arizona at Arizona State University. We have about 35 40s before we go to break here. But obviously, Michelle, this is something that isn't going to go away. This is a battle that people need to fight. And I really appreciate people like Ann stepping up and not just meagerly moving on, because if you read a resume, folks, she's got an incredible resume, incredible background, and she could go on and do almost anything she wants to do And just, you know, that would be the easy route. Just quietly go away and let this happen. She has stood up. You're hearing it here. She's been on some other programs talking about this. It's important we have these discussions right now.

Michelle Ugenti- Rita: [00:12:52] Absolutely.

Sam Stone: [00:12:53] Breaking battlegrounds. Back in just a moment. All right. Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds with your host, Sam Stone and Michelle Ugenti-rita. Also in the studio with us today, Christina Ashcroft. As always, Jeremy in the booth, doing a fantastic job on all our audio fun. And Jamie here desperately hoping I won't force her on to camera or onto a microphone. She does all our digital work. So thank you to everyone who helps make this show possible. We're continuing on right now with more from Ann Atkinson, former executive director of the Lewis Center. We're talking about an incident where she helped arrange a program with some what are perceived as conservative leaning guests, talking about issues of health, wealth and happiness, and subsequently was terminated under some really sketchy conditions. And what was said about why they did it doesn't really match the reality. And I want to end to get into that. But also, she wasn't the only person who was damaged by this. So, Ann, what did the university say when when they terminated you and what are they doing here? Because because to me, some of their arguments just don't hold water.

Ann Atkinson: [00:14:17] Well, a part of what the university said was true is that Tom Lewis canceled his donor agreement. That's true. That happened this spring. And since then, I had brought new donors to the Honors College, excited to continue the mission of the Lewis Center. So their interest and enthusiasm was based around the intent of the Lewis Center, and that included things like traditional American values, hard work, personal responsibility, civic duty, faith, family and community service, and also entrepreneurship, career success, happiness, personal finance and so on. But when I.

Sam Stone: [00:14:55] None of that sounds bad to me, and to be honest with you, it sounds.

Michelle Ugenti- Rita: [00:14:58] Outrageous.

Sam Stone: [00:14:59] Yeah.

Ann Atkinson: [00:15:00] Well, I'll tell you what, that is the reason why I came to the Lewis Center and why I took a sabbatical from a great career in health care, real estate investment, and also a passion for the students. But that reason is why I think it's so important that we have something like that in higher education. And I was really excited to be able to deliver on the intent of the Lewis Center. Now, as executive director, my job is to fulfill the intent, including that language. So the dean of Barrett, who joined as the dean less than a year ago, expressed no interest. When I said, Look, I have new donors excited to continue this mission. I made that offer on multiple occasions. And then in my firing conversation or meeting on May 30th, when she told me this was purely a fiscal decision, I said it's not a fiscal decision because I'm telling you, I've brought new donors, a diversified group of funding to keep this program going so long as we keep our our normal and current intent. So that's the part of the story perhaps sees as a detail. But in the fact of it, that's everything. By the dean declining to maintain the intent, she dismantled the heart of what the Lewis Center is.

Ann Atkinson: [00:16:16] And I got to say on that point in particular, they're talking about the message that, for instance, this event would send to students from from having these speakers there. Well, as I see it and tell me if you see it differently, but as I see it, what they did in using this excuse that it's the money, when you had already raised this, it's cowardice, what they're teaching their students cowardice because if they were being honest, they would come out and say, we just don't want to have a center with these philosophical foundations here. And that's an argument they're not willing to have. And so they took a route that teaches students well, you just lie when you want to get out of an uncomfortable conversation. You just lie your way out of it. Am I wrong about that?

Ann Atkinson: [00:17:04] It's unfortunate, right? There's these donors were very excited to have that conversation and the dean wouldn't even have the conversation. So I think what this tells the students is that in the event you dare to represent values that differ from the prevailing orthodoxy, there will be consequences. And even with my meeting with with ASU leadership, the feedback I received was we allowed the speaker. But you then have to take the consequences. And that is to me profound because that is exactly what happened. So I think I think this sends the wrong message to the students. And further, the way that the Barrett faculty took these issues into the mandatory classes for honors freshmen, they're they're raised in an environment of fear and intimidation. Given the power dynamics of the faculty who controls things like grading and can grade objective topics like participation. So this this culture of the condemnation campaign really instilled a fear, a culture of fear in the students. I had students come up to me say, Anne, I really want to attend the Health Wealth and Happiness program, but I cannot be photographed at this. I cannot have my faculty member, my professor see that I attended this event and others were just outright afraid. They were afraid because their faculty, people that they trust that are their leaders that they've developed relationships with through their classes are telling them this is dangerous and they don't want to be associated with something that's dangerous. So it's giving the wrong message to students. And the students have probably also seen by by me speaking up that in the event you speak up, there will be consequences.

Michelle Ugenti- Rita: [00:18:50] Well, ASU Barrett College needs a consequence. And I think it starts with maybe an appropriation or a lack thereof. I mean, they feel like they can do this. That's that's my take away. They're not afraid. They're not afraid to have this negative press. They think it's going to they will weather it. They're not afraid of people speaking up, speaking out. And that's unfortunate because they get away with it way too often. And so we're probably going to they probably need to take it where it hurts, which is in the pocketbook, which is in their bottom line. I mean.

Sam Stone: [00:19:23] Well, it's interesting because, you know, I think one of the problems is they don't care that much about the public funding they get anymore.

Michelle Ugenti- Rita: [00:19:30] Oh, yes, they do.

Sam Stone: [00:19:32] Oh, they care about every.

Michelle Ugenti- Rita: [00:19:33] Dollar all.

Michelle Ugenti- Rita: [00:19:33] The time.

Sam Stone: [00:19:34] About money. Oh, yeah.

Sam Stone: [00:19:35] But but that is a standard tactic for every institution with public dollars. Right.

Michelle Ugenti- Rita: [00:19:40] If they didn't care.

Sam Stone: [00:19:43] One of the things I think worries me is that they they put the ideology over the welfare of the students, including potential funding. Right. I mean, that's that's what you're saying here. What they're saying is, hey, we're not worried about any consequences. It's more important to us to keep students from hearing an opposing viewpoint than to concern ourselves with that sort of end.

Michelle Ugenti- Rita: [00:20:04] Right. Because they've never felt a consequence.

Sam Stone: [00:20:07] Fair point. Ann one of the other elements of this I want to touch on is, is this didn't just impact you. We have about a minute and a half before we go to break. We can continue on in the next segment if you'd like. But but this actually had impact on on on at least one other person, right?

Ann Atkinson: [00:20:23] Yes. The events operations manager at ASU, Gammage Lynn Blake, was responsible for organizing this event on behalf of the venue on behalf of ASU. Gammage and she received tremendous pushback. After our event, she told me that she was berated by ASU Gammage leadership for coordinating an event that did not align with the values of ASC. Gammage And she's also has said that the leadership of Gammage asked her why she brought a white supremacist to their venue. She was also fired.

Michelle Ugenti- Rita: [00:21:00] Which was the white supremacist. Again, it's hard to keep track of all of their insults.

Ann Atkinson: [00:21:05] Is that maybe the the either the Japanese gentleman, the Sri Lankan gentleman or or the religious Jew? I don't I'm not sure.

Michelle Ugenti- Rita: [00:21:13] Incredible.

Sam Stone: [00:21:14] This is these stories are just amazing. And the fact that a lot of folks in the country won't ever hear about it because the news is is very selective. Also as selective as colleges are and their chosen ideology these days. But I mean, I, I really appreciate you standing up to this and and coming out. We're going to be following this story as we continue. And we will post that op ed on Breaking Battlegrounds website and on our social media. Thank you so much for joining us today. We really appreciate having you. Breaking battlegrounds coming back in just a moment. All right. Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds. This is Sam Stone in the studio today, Michelle Gente, Rita, Christina Kraut. Michelle, I really want to thank Anne for coming on and for being willing to talk about this, not just taking her firing quietly, which she could have done and would be in many ways the easy way out because she has a, you know, another option in her career where she can go back and probably make a lot more money than she's been making working at ASU. She was doing this for very good reasons. As you heard Michael Crow, the ASU president, he.

Michelle Ugenti- Rita: [00:22:38] Look.

Michelle Ugenti- Rita: [00:22:39] You can't be silent. And to your point that you made earlier on with Ann if this is how you really feel, then justify it. Yeah, you know, don't lie about it. Come out and say that. Yes, we're very particular about what ASU looks like they're condoning and and the perspective ideology we want to stand behind. This is not something we support.

Sam Stone: [00:23:00] Yeah. I mean, come out and say I refuse. We refuse to have conservative speakers and thinkers on our campus or have our students exposed to them at any ASU venue. And then let's go ahead and have that argument. To me, it is very cowardly and disingenuous. And Michael Crow again continues. You know, first I think he's he's primarily a developer, not not a university leader. I think his major interest is in in business, not education. But secondly, I think this happens a lot because he's totally let this university get out of control. For folks who don't know critical race theory die. Asu is one of the national homes, the the sprouting institutions for this. And this has happened under Michael Crow's tenure. And a lot of Republicans in Arizona continue to hold a higher opinion of Crow than certainly I do. And part of it is they don't know that this goes on and they don't know what he's done and not done. I am this guy is an embarrassment at this point. And if we get a Republican governor in there in a couple of years, he needs to be gone.

Michelle Ugenti- Rita: [00:24:03] Well, this.

Michelle Ugenti- Rita: [00:24:03] Is an educational institution that's and we've lost sight of that. This is all it seems like. A lot of times it's about propaganda. It's about putting the university's heavy hand on how students think and believe and total contradiction in what a university should be and ought to be, which is, you know, a melting pot of ideas and opinions. So it's disconcerting. And look, I wanted to touch on the fact that we have to have legislation that sets up little, little zones of free speech that's hardly congruent with a university that says that they support and excel at free speech.

Sam Stone: [00:24:44] You know, and I agree 100% it's free speech zones are an atrocity. They should never.

Sam Stone: [00:24:53] That's.

Sam Stone: [00:24:53] An absolute atrocity.

Michelle Ugenti- Rita: [00:24:54] Embarrassing.

Sam Stone: [00:24:55] It's a it's public land that's all free speech zone. Right. The only free speech zone on the planet should be private property. And that just means you're not allowed to stand there while you say it. Go out in the road.

Michelle Ugenti- Rita: [00:25:05] Right? Right.

Sam Stone: [00:25:06] That's what we're talking about here.

Michelle Ugenti- Rita: [00:25:08] But see, until they have a consequence, this is not going to change. And this isn't really an ASU predicament. This is happening all over the country. They are not afraid. So we're going to have to do something beyond just sharing the stories. I mean, they have to feel it. I think they have to feel it when it comes to their funding. That's the only thing they respond to is a former legislator. I can tell you that's the only thing they respond.

Sam Stone: [00:25:35] To their funding and jobs. So Ron DeSantis in Florida has taken very strong steps, right? He has replaced the boards. He started firing and getting rid of the DEI departments and the professors behind them, and they're throwing an absolute fit. And every time he just says, I don't care. And he's right.

Michelle Ugenti- Rita: [00:25:53] Because that's where the public sentiment is with with someone doing what Ron DeSantis is doing, not the reverse. You have to you have to push back on these bullies and realize that they don't have the public.

Sam Stone: [00:26:07] Yeah, I mean, one of the things, you know, if you're if you're talking about critical race theory in the confines of a class, right, and you're talking about it as an ideological pole and you're comparing it to others, that's a very appropriate thing for a university to do. But taking that one singular ideological pole and making it the guide star for your entire university, this is this is absolutely everything universities were designed not to do.

Michelle Ugenti- Rita: [00:26:36] That's exactly right. And it has to stop. So hopefully things like this bring larger attention and ASU and Michael Crow are on notice.

Sam Stone: [00:26:48] Yeah. I mean, look, we're going to have to this is why local elections matter. This is why your state legislature, your all your state seats matter. It's not just about your taxes, although those are important, too. But at the end of the day, there really is this huge push to eliminate free speech in in educational settings and to limit it. Someone it was reading a case. We only have about 45 seconds here. We can come back to some of this in the podcast if we want. But you know, a school in Massachusetts disciplining, suspending a student for wearing a shirt that said two genders. Right.

Michelle Ugenti- Rita: [00:27:26] Read about that. Right.

Sam Stone: [00:27:28] Like, okay, scientifically, that student's pretty much on.

Michelle Ugenti- Rita: [00:27:31] Point, right?

Sam Stone: [00:27:32] You can argue in an ideological sense, but it's absolutely ridiculous what's going on in our educational system. And it starts at the universities. Absolutely. People have to step up to stop it. Do what DeSantis is doing. Folks breaking battlegrounds will be back with more in just a moment. We've got a fantastic returning guest, Mark Skousen coming up, and then we're going to be talking education. Christina's here. Gritting your teeth, her her progressive teeth. Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds with your host, Sam Stone. Chuck Warren out of studio today. But in studio with us, the lovely Michelle Ugenti-rita and equally lovely Christina Ashcraft. Christina, thank you so much for joining us. We were going to have a mark Skousen on talking a little bit about Freedom Fest. Folks, if you haven't had a chance to check that out, go to Freedom Fest. I don't know if it's dot com or.org, probably both and it's a great time. I'm going to be there. So you can come to Freedom Fest and see me. Right.

Michelle Ugenti- Rita: [00:28:32] I think that should be the only motivation.

Sam Stone: [00:28:34] That should be the.

Sam Stone: [00:28:35] Absolute only motivation. I mean, I'm bringing, I'm bringing some other personalities along with me, but they don't matter.

Michelle Ugenti- Rita: [00:28:41] No, That's your team.

Sam Stone: [00:28:42] That's right.

Sam Stone: [00:28:43] So Christina has something interesting she's doing. She's a school board member at Ball School District. We've had her on to talk about that before. But I actually wanted to talk a little bit because one of our ongoing themes for a lot of our listeners has been AI.

Michelle Ugenti- Rita: [00:28:57] O.

Sam Stone: [00:28:58] And we're talking about AI, Christina actually is, is much more involved than I would ever want to be in the tech world.

Christina Eichelkraut: [00:29:07] And I'm still tangential.

Sam Stone: [00:29:08] Yeah. She's she spends a lot of her time wrangling tech bros.

Michelle Ugenti- Rita: [00:29:13] Oh well it sounds like a weekend fun.

Sam Stone: [00:29:16] It sounds like weekend fun. If I get a lasso and a barbed wire fence thrown in. So. But but Christina manages to do it. But she's also created a business. There's been a lot of talk about what AI is going to do to various areas of employment. One of those is writing.

Michelle Ugenti- Rita: [00:29:33] Exactly.

Sam Stone: [00:29:34] You know, So, Christina, tell us a little bit about what you're doing. Is AI going to overtake human writing?

Christina Eichelkraut: [00:29:41] I think it definitely has the potential to, but that doesn't necessarily render humans irrelevant. So as you know, my background, I spent nine years as a community print journalist and then I started a digital marketing company. So when AI and ChatGPT came out, a lot of the groups that I'm involved with with copywriting on LinkedIn were like, Oh my God, you know, because it's already an oversaturated market, you're already dealing with the perception that it's a hobby, not a skill that's not helpful. You know, there's a lot there already. So ChatGPT three comes in and people are like, Oh, you can get all this like quality content. But the fact of the matter is, the majority of my clients right now, I'm actually editing AI generated text and that's actually something. And I'm really marketing hard that, you know, I provide human generated content because a lot of what I do, even in the industrial and technical fields, is not going to be able to be done through autocomplete. So what I mean by that is what people don't understand about AI generated text is that it's using the corpus of knowledge from the past. It can only look past, not forward. So in certain things, if you're developing a new biomedical software, for example, or if you have a blog that's going to rely on emotional appeal for marketing to get users, to get buyers ChatGPT it doesn't use syntax well, it doesn't use colloquialisms well, and it certainly can only autocomplete things that are already known. So in industries, both industry and software where you're having innovation and it's new things looking forward and oftentimes that does lead to new etymology, new words, new you know, you'll have new like portmanteau words, things like that. It can't do that. It's going to autocomplete based on the past.

Sam Stone: [00:31:16] So and see, Christina just used at least three words that no one else in the history of this program has ever used. Yeah.

Christina Eichelkraut: [00:31:23] Yes. Grammarly is always telling me I use unique words, so I do think there are certain writing functions. There are certain boilerplate things where ChatGPT can be useful. I will point out there was a school district that sent out a condolence letter in another state about a student who died and then one of the parents ran it through one of the scanners and found out that it was a AI generated condolence letter. And this did not go over well. Wow. So, yeah, so, yeah, So so I do think this notion that like, you know, we're never going to need human writers, we're never going to need, you know, I think there's going to be more of a transition into it's going to be more editing than original writing. But again, if you're if you specialize, for example, in industrial disc grinding, right, and you're appealing to a military contractor and they need a very specific kind of steel disc grinding for their equipment, that's not something you're going to I don't care how good your prompt is, you're not going to get that from chat. Gpt three You need to have a human conveying that to another human. And then it's just true in terms of just innovation, things like that. There's new biomedical terminology because of some of the advancements being made right now in, in in prosthetic software. That's another great example.

Sam Stone: [00:32:36] That's one of the things I really hadn't heard anyone put it that way. I mean, essentially between a software that can look backwards. Yes, but humans obviously can look forwards and at this point, ChatGPT can't do that. It is.

Christina Eichelkraut: [00:32:51] Auto correct. People don't understand that. Now, there is a there is there's reason to believe, you know, ten, 20 years down the line, we're going to have neural networks that are advanced enough where you're going to have those associations. But as of right now, it is glorified autocorrect. Let us be clear that it is going from a corpus. How does ChatGPT happen? There are you know, you have tens of thousands of people in lower in developing countries like Nigeria, for example, and they literally have been spending the last 20 years doing very repetitive, very low paid work to do. You know, whenever you get that box that says, you know, click on every square that has a traffic light versions of that. So they might have to like stand back and take a picture of themselves in a motorcycle helmet and take a picture of themselves in a t shirt as opposed to a suit jacket. That's how these models learn, right? So it can only look backwards, right?

Michelle Ugenti- Rita: [00:33:41] I saw a wonderful documentary that talked about this on Netflix, and that's exactly their point. Or individuals that were critiquing artificial intelligence and some of this stuff was that they can only do what's already been done. And so there's a handicap there in, you know, like Christine was saying, for particular industries where you need to write and talk about things that are going to happen and only a human can really contemplate that.

Sam Stone: [00:34:07] And I've got to say, I know people have talked about AI getting to that point, but I'm not sure that's a point we actually want AI to get to. Is it?

Christina Eichelkraut: [00:34:15] I think that's a question worth asking, right? So I did I wrote an article actually for my nonprofit that talks about this and it talks about the sociological impact of when you remove humans from human interaction. And we know from a variety of circumstances there's quantitative data of about this. There's qualitative data. The more you remove people from human reactions, the more you see a deterioration of human traits that include empathy, that include critical thinking. And I'm talking about and this is not high level, you know, high tier academic stuff. This is like if you're using the self-checkout at the grocery store, for example, as opposed to just saying hello to your checker. I have a checker that I have. He's my favorite checker at Safeway, and I know that his kids graduated college. I've been going to the Safeway for like five years. I go.

Sam Stone: [00:35:01] Wait a minute, chat.

Christina Eichelkraut: [00:35:02] Right, Like like, right. This is this is a human interaction. We're not besties. We don't hang out, you know, But, you know, yeah, you kind of like catch up on little tidbits about each other's lives. And there's a real underestimation of the importance of those interactions in terms of what that does to you as a human, as opposed to like scanning through a self-checkout.

Sam Stone: [00:35:20] You know what's funny? A couple of days ago, there was a New York Post piece out about how disconnected and socially isolated Gen Z is because they grew up, you know, their education really got interrupted in the pandemic with digital learning, remote learning now remote work. And they were talking about this, and I read this whole piece and I'm like, Man, this is really tough. If you were writing those key years and you get to the end and they, you know, asking the experts, they're interviewing for this what the answer is. And the literal closing of this was, Oh, they're going to have to learn new ways to to communicate like an app. Oh.

Christina Eichelkraut: [00:35:58] Yeah.

Sam Stone: [00:35:59] I'm like a joke. What? Yeah, the answer.

Michelle Ugenti- Rita: [00:36:04] People are going to tolerate this, though. I mean, I think you're going to see people crave and look for opportunities to interact and you'll see businesses try to specify what kind of material they're getting, if it was AI generated versus human generated, if you will.

Sam Stone: [00:36:19] You know, one thing. So I've as some folks may know, I've started doing a little bit of work with YRefy. And I actually got I need to do a sponsor read before we close out here about them because since they started sponsoring us, I started working with them and their office is a little bit hybrid between remote and in-person. And we've actually been having a lot of conversations like maybe what we need to start doing is scheduling some sort of office social hours, essentially where we're coming in and doing these various team and group building things, even if that's a little uncomfortable for people, just simply because otherwise you're missing so much of the interaction of office workers. I forgot, you know, in the days when I go in, there's a bunch of people in there. It's really fun to be able to go around. You have a bunch of coworkers, you can sit there and chat with. You have different conversations. You hear stories about lives that are totally unlike yours and you learn from them. You know, Man, that's so different than the isolated environment. A lot of days when I go in there and I'm one of only two people in that office and I'll be in there for 3 or 4 hours, it's it's quiet. It's sort of intimidating in that sense. I think we really need to focus right now on the discussion about AI and how it changes human interaction and maybe put some limits on it for that reason.

Christina Eichelkraut: [00:37:46] I think they're definitely it's I think what we're going to have to do is I think you spoke to something and we I already have seen that push back at different you know, there's different advertising firms and other friends of mine in marketing where one thing they're doing now is like they will call up and they will say if part of their package includes web copy, they'll say like, you're not just going to have something chat GPT three because they're like, I'm not going to pay 700, 800, $1,000 a month to have you plug in a prompt that takes you 30s that I could do myself, right? And that's a valid point too. And syntax, tone, colloquialism, slang, like all of these things, they're valid and ChatGPT is getting very good at them. But I think there's a there is a place for ChatGPT. There's a lot of places where it eliminates potential for human error, certain programming, certain, you know, certain boilerplate things are fine. But I, I think this notion of simply absconding humanity just because we can is, is perhaps folly. I don't think that's necessarily going to lead to any good outcomes for anybody.

Sam Stone: [00:38:46] Christine, are we having enough conversations? Is the tech world because you're close to this than. I'm not that.

Christina Eichelkraut: [00:38:51] Close to it, but.

Sam Stone: [00:38:52] Yeah, but you're a lot closer.

Christina Eichelkraut: [00:38:53] I'm tech adjacent at best. I'm tech adjacent at best.

Sam Stone: [00:38:57] That's better. That's better than tech distance. Like me, I still struggle to turn on an iPhone.

Michelle Ugenti- Rita: [00:39:05] So let's. You're getting there, though. I saw you try to turn it on this morning.

Sam Stone: [00:39:10] I was working on it, but I haven't gotten it yet. I figured now that I'm here with Jamie, I just hand it to her and she can do it. Yeah. No, but. But are the are the discussions about the morality, about the how far I should go. Are those happening?

Christina Eichelkraut: [00:39:30] Oh, absolutely. Yeah, I think so. 100%. Yeah. There. Yeah. That's absolutely happening. I don't think it's I think there are a lot of people who actually understand how this technology works and understands where it is, and they're not thrilled about the public perception of it. It's like the public is perceiving a Ferrari when what we have is like a very souped up Impala, right? That does have power seats and does have power windows and it's very good, but it is not a Ferrari. And you have kind of like this public perception of like, you know, let's all get in the Ferrari. So I think there are definite concerns about that and I think there are a lot of of concerns. I am I will say one thing about the tech industry as a whole that that I just really kind of grinds my gears is you have all these leaders now and all these developers of AI that now that the genie is out of the bottle and this is a tradition in tech going back to Oppenheimer and the A-bomb right now that the genie is out of the bottle and we're already here, they're going to sign a letter and they're going to talk about, oh, we're really worried now. And it's like, well, you know, you could have put that in your research paper prior to releasing this.

Christina Eichelkraut: [00:40:36] And there's discussions to be had about open source technology versus proprietary. What is this going to do in terms of access? If you have countries where you don't even have Internet access, how are we exacerbated the disparity in terms of access to tech and how does that exacerbate the detrimental consequences of that disparity? That's another conversation to be had. It's like anything, you can't take something as general as all morals and apply it to all tech in all situations, because there are plenty of situations where this is going to be great. It's going to help people, it's going to further us, it's going to bring us forward. Right? There's going to be plenty of situations where it does the exact opposite, but the sociological component in terms of what it's doing to us as humans, as just, you know, the warm, fuzzy, soft science stuff that people are so quick to dismiss nowadays with, you know, bowing to the altar of Stem. It's that needs to happen. It's that t shirt. This all comes down to the t shirt that says science will tell you how to bring back the T rex. The humanities will tell you why it's not a good idea. It is that t shirt. Everything comes back down to that like a.

Michelle Ugenti- Rita: [00:41:34] T shirt theme. And the other one, the other t shirt you brought up that the student wore that said, There's two genders, right? It's all about that t shirt too, right?

Sam Stone: [00:41:42] Yeah. No, I mean, that's actually it's really interesting to me because a lot of these conversations are not happening the way they need to be happening at the highest levels right now. And one of the things with tech is and you served in the Arizona legislature, you know how many people there are really tech proficient.

Michelle Ugenti- Rita: [00:42:00] No one.

Michelle Ugenti- Rita: [00:42:01] Nobody. Nobody. Nobody. How many.

Sam Stone: [00:42:04] In Washington, Christina, do you think are.

Christina Eichelkraut: [00:42:06] Going to say I'm going to excuse me. I'm going to say Senate. I'm going I'm going to say Lindsey Epstein. Actually, she she knows what she's about.

Michelle Ugenti- Rita: [00:42:13] Is she a Democrat? Because then.

Michelle Ugenti- Rita: [00:42:14] She doesn't.

Christina Eichelkraut: [00:42:15] She she knows she knows what she's about. When it comes to tech folks.

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