Lessons from 'The Future of Tech Careers and AI' Panel

I had a freakout moment of major imposter syndrome yesterday. I was speaking at a panel at Google-sponsored Women in Tech event as part of San Francisco #TechWeek. The panel was on The Future of Tech Careers with an AI focus.

Throughout the course of the day, the two other panelists, a female tech CEO and another ML expert, dropped out for real-time emergencies. An airplane delay. A COVID-positive kid.

Oh sh*t! I'm now the solo remaining speaker. Hundreds of people are coming to listen to me talk about AI trends.

I didn't feel like an AI expert. Who am I to lead an entire hour-long session without the ability to hide behind my fellow panelists, and to be the expert talking to a room full of data scientists, product people, engineers and VCs???

The fear is real. I could feel my heart pounding. Worried that I'd be laughed at and exposed as a fraud for the dumb things I was going to say.

I took a deep breath, texted my business coaching group for support and reminded myself of some truths. I coach tech CEOs, serve as a product advisor, and personally use both ChatGPT and Midjourney. And right now, *nobody* is an expert on AI. We're all figuring it out as we go along and deal with unexpected crises like airplanes and COVID. Leaders adapt. That's what humans do best.

And here's my top take-aways if you're wondering how last night's talk went.:

  1. You do you. The organizers made a deliberate choice to limit the room to 100 people, turning away 200+ applicants. They wanted the setting to be intimate and to be female-only. One male was so determined to get in that he ignored all the emails, made his way through building security, and physically entered the room. His face blanched as he saw the sea of female faces and I’d like to think he finally understood what it felt like to be a minority in tech. The organizers gently talked to him, and he left.
    Lesson: when it’s your event, you can do whatever you want to curate the experience. As a participant, you can try everything possible to get in (more power to you!) and you may experience an unexpected learning.

  2. Just try it. We heard amazing use cases for how women had incorporated text-based AI like ChatGPT or Bard into their work. This was a group of women in tech so everyone had tried it. One woman who had just finished an MBA used it to efficiently reduce her schoolwork by 10x (without plagiarism). A startup founder uses it for code efficiency. Another woman used it to write the first draft of legal docs for her immigration paperwork.
    Lesson: there is a sea change here. Try these AI technologies for yourself — it’s simple— and see where it can help you. No one knows your own life and use cases. Imagine that you had a little magic fairy who can write for you. What would you ask her to to? The only limit is your imagination

  3. AI for creativity. As a writer, I use ChatGPT for inspiration when I’m stuck on something. Even for this particular talk, I popped in the question: “How do AI technologies change businesses and the way we work?” as pure inspiration to give me talking points. Midjourney is an amazing tool for non-designers to visualize something that looks decent by using simple text-based prompts. You can ask it to “create a logo for a female-owned tow truck company in shades of purple” and keep iterating the versions. Midjourney is a little less accessible because there’s a minimal subscription fee and you’ll need to access it via Discord… it can feel intimidating but, hey not that hard, even 12 year old kids have a Discord server.
    Lesson: let the machines help you get started, it’ll inspire you to something more creative as a human.

  4. AI for perspective. Several women in the audience asked for some good prompts to use. What I've found is that it can be useful to write one perspective, e.g. "How can I best negotiate my salary?" and when the answers come back, as part of the refinement process, you can ask it to provide different perspectives. e.g. "How can I best negotiate my salary as a black woman?" or "How can I best negotiate my salary as written by a cat?" This can be an incredibly creative exercise to open up new perspectives.

  5. No one is an expert / we are all experts. Back to my imposter syndrome yesterday afternoon, there was one moment in Q&A that felt paralyzing. Someone had asked: "What do you see is the future of AI as it impacts climate tech?" Inside my gut dropped as I truly felt like the clueless person people came to see, and happily Elena jumped in with some thoughts. But more importantly, we opened it up to the audience, asking " Does anyone have a perspective on this question?" And voila, the CEO of a climatetech startup stood up and shared her thoughts.
    Lesson: we live in community and I am incredibly grateful for this Women in Tech community. We can admit when we don't know, and we can trust that someone else will help us learn.

So if you've been living with oh-so-natural fear and wondering if AI will take all our jobs, the answer is hell no. The human-ness is still absolutely needed. Like any new tool or technology, we're all figure out how to work with it. So jump into the arena and start playing!

Tutti Taygerly