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In this episode of Women Talkin’ ‘Bout AI, we start by discussing the findings of a 2024 study "Global Evidence on Gender Gaps and Generative AI" (🔗 below). One overall finding is that women are 20–25% less likely than men to use generative AI, which unspools into something bigger: a story about power, voice, and who gets to shape the future.

We also discuss own experiences in tech, noticing how the gender gap in AI isn’t just about access to tools. It’s about what counts as legitimate work, whose voices are amplified, and how cultural scripts around “cheating,” confidence, and authority get absorbed into the most influential technologies of our time.

We talk about:

🔹 Why women’s hesitation around AI isn’t simply resistance, but often a reflection of ethics and identity.
🔹 How underrepresentation today could mean future AI systems are trained on a distorted mirror of humanity.
🔹 What it means to think of AI as both a child we’re raising and a cultural intermediary that’s already reshaping our sense of normal.
🔹 the WEIRD AI Framework: WEIRD is a term from psychology that stands for Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic. Most AI systems, generative models especially, are trained on corpora that overrepresent WEIRD voices and underrepresent everyone else.
🔹 Practical ways women can experiment, reclaim, and band together in communities of practice.
🔹 If AI is the new baseline for productivity and creativity, then the absence of women’s voices isn’t just a gap, it’s a risk of silence becoming the default.

Learn more:

🔗 Gender gap study: https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=66548
🔗 Mo Gawdat's book Scary Smart: https://www.mogawdat.com/scary-smart
🔗 Geoffrey Hinton Says AI Needs Maternal Instincts: https://www.forbes.com/sites/pialauritzen/2025/08/14/geoffrey-hinton-says-ai-needs-maternal-instincts-heres-what-it-takes/


💙 Follow us on our Substack: Women Writin' 'Bout AI: https://substack.com/@womenwritinboutai

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In this episode, we open up about something we haven’t shared publicly before: our decision to shut down Moxie, the startup we spent years building.

We talk honestly about what led to that choice—the excitement of early growth, the challenges of raising money as non-technical founders, and the impossible reality of competing with free tools from tech giants like Google, OpenAI, and Microsoft.

This isn’t just a story about one company. It’s about trust, expertise, failure, and the messy human side of working with generative AI in education and research. Along the way, we reflect on what we wish we’d known earlier, how burnout shaped our decisions, and what we’ve learned about ourselves through the process of letting go.

What you’ll hear in this episode:

• Why we ultimately decided to shut down Moxie
• The pressures of fundraising and pitching as non-technical founders
• The gap between hype and reality with AI in education
• Lessons on trust, expertise, and failure in both startups and academia
• How we’re processing life and work after Moxie

If you’ve ever wondered what it really feels like to close the doors on something you’ve poured yourself into, or you’re navigating your own questions about AI, startups, or burnout—you’ll find some resonance here.

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Today we sit down with Dr. Leslie Gruis — mathematician, NSA veteran, and author of The Privacy Pirates — to talk about the urgent importance of protecting personal information in our tech-driven world.

From children’s online privacy to the rise of corporate data exploitation, Dr. Gruis shares both her insider experience from decades in national security and her practical advice for safeguarding our digital lives.

📚 About our guest:

• First president of the NSA’s Women in Mathematics Society
• Contributor to U.S. Cyber Command & National Intelligence Council
• Author of The Privacy Pirates: Pirates of Personal Data
• Mentor and advocate for STEM students

🔑 In this episode you’ll learn:

• Why privacy is essential to democracy
• The risks kids face with school-issued laptops & smartphones
• How corporations collect and exploit our personal data
• What parents and educators can do today to protect children
• The ethical questions surrounding AI, surveillance, and data use

🎙️ Show Notes & Topics we cover:

• Defining informational privacy in the 21st century
• Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (and why it’s outdated)
• School-issued laptops and surveillance concerns
• Corporate data collection, sentiment analysis, and manipulation
• The asymmetric power between consumers and corporations
• Why protecting privacy is vital for democracy

🔗 Links

• Buy The Privacy Pirates
• Follow Dr. Leslie Gruis
• Follow Women Talking About AI:
  • 📺 YouTube
  • 📰 Substack

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Contact Jessica or Kimberly on LinkedIn:

• Jessica's LinkedIn
• Kimberly's LinkedIn