Creating a New Infrastructure for What’s Next with Sundee Williams
𝗦𝗵𝗼𝘄 𝗢𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘃𝗶𝗲𝘄:
This week on 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘈𝘐 𝘙𝘦𝘢𝘥𝘪𝘯𝘦𝘴𝘴 𝘗𝘳𝘰𝘫𝘦𝘤𝘵, co-hosts Anne Murphy and Kyle Shannon wrestle with a shared feeling: What if we’re preparing for all the wrong things? Their conversation leads to a powerful exploration of what “readiness” really means—especially when the systems around us are breaking down faster than we can adapt.
Enter Sundee Williams, an AI implementation technologist with a bold vision for what's next. Broadcasting from Mississippi (now with broadband!), Sundee shares why Gen X women are uniquely positioned to build new infrastructure—ones that prioritize community, humanity, and meaningful work. Whether you're new to AI or already in deep, this episode invites you to rethink what preparation looks like in a time of nonstop change.
𝗞𝗲𝘆 𝗧𝗮𝗸𝗲𝗮𝘄𝗮𝘆𝘀:
• Why Gen X women are essential to designing the next era—and how they're already doing it
• What “lazy AI” looks like, and how it’s easy to spot (especially in conference applications)
• The importance of curating your own worldview—and how it shapes AI’s usefulness
• Why adaptability and self-knowledge matter more than chasing every new feature
• A candid look at AI agents, access, and the future of work from a systems perspective
𝗢𝘂𝗿 𝗚𝘂𝗲𝘀𝘁:
Sundee Williams is a systems futurist and AI implementation technologist who spent decades solving complex problems in tech before launching her own venture. From her six-acre home in Mississippi, she’s now focused on helping Gen X women tap into their experience, reclaim their time, and lead with intention in an increasingly automated world. Her message is clear: When women thrive, everyone benefits.
𝗧𝘂𝗻𝗲 𝗜𝗻:
The AI Readiness Project airs every Wednesday at 3pm Pacific. Hosted by Anne Murphy of She Leads AI and Kyle Shannon of the AI Salon, each episode helps you build the mindset to thrive in an AI-driven world.
Listen wherever you get your podcasts.
Transcript
Anne Murphy: And Murphy. Hey Kyle, Shannon, what's happening? Are we prepared for what's next?
Kyle Shannon: Eh, i, I, I, I honestly, I honestly don't know. Like, I feel like, I honestly dunno either. They're accelerating, accelerating, accelerating, and, uh, and, and just changing as, as these tools become more capable, like what people are talking about is different.
ight? It's not called the AI [:Sundee Williams: mm-hmm.
Kyle Shannon: Just do the best you can. Stop apologizing. That's one of the things we noticed early on when we started doing this work is that a lot of our compatriots and, and us as well, and us would apologize for not for, for how not expert we were. Yep.
Anne Murphy: Um, yeah. Before we knew that nobody was an expert in everybody, every single person felt, uh, slightly, at least a little bit too dumb to understand it all.
degrees from what I [:Are the things I'm paying attention to universal enough that if, if there's a catastrophe and it's like some other thing I hadn't thought of, I have a strong enough foundation that I'm gonna be able to
Kyle Shannon: Yeah. Process my, I think it's, I think it's a good, I think it's a solid anxiety. I like it. I support, I support your anxiety.
Do
Anne Murphy: you support my anxiety? Good? I did.
Kyle Shannon: I do. I support your anxiety. I think the. I think where we are is that we are absolutely preparing for the wrong thing because we've never had to prepare for what's coming. Like we actually don't know what's coming. Right. Sam Altman doesn't know what's coming, doesn't know what's coming.
Mark Zuckerberg doesn't know what's coming. Elon Musk doesn't know what's coming. Doesn't know.
Anne Murphy: Yep.
Shannon: So, and what we're [:Like I think it's the, the, the, the, the big skill then I think just becomes adaptability and maybe self-forgiveness.
Kyle Shannon and Anne Murphy: Right. Ooh, self-forgiveness. Right. Don't feel like you're, you're, uh,
Anne Murphy: and, and you know, what we were talking about before we, before we hit record, was the sense of, you know, knowing what you stand for.
Knowing who you are, self-knowledge and self-awareness, and where you fit on these lives, where the bright line is for you personally, let alone societally globally.
Kyle Shannon: Yep. Yep. So, so, so let's dig in. So I'll, I'll ask you how ready for AI are you this week? You, what were you telling me before? Oh, you're preparing for your, for your conference.
e was some interesting stuff [:Anne Murphy: Well, because of some of the recent stuff that I've been paying attention to, I do think I am at an advantage. I've seen the dark side of how it's, how it can go with hiring or qualifying for something, applying for anything because, you know, I'm, I'm.
Unfortunately, painfully aware of what's happening in the, you know, talent management and hiring world where we've got this deluge of chat, GPT driven applications, you know, each person is applying for like 300, you know, a day. And then we've got the systems that are trying to read it and they're full of bias and they're breaking and all this stuff.
Kyle Shannon: I'll have my AI talk to your ai.
me. Yeah. But now I had this [:'cause we really wanted to focus on having a breadth of topics and a breadth of speakers. And outta the 186, there were 30 that I had to just throw out because I don't have time to meet with every single one of them to understand what they really meant, which I could not tell on the application because they overused over, relied on che, on ai.
So all of 'em, all those 30, I couldn't differentiate them because they all skewed toward, you know. The middle, the most, like, you know, namby pamby version of themselves. Wow. I'll
Kyle Shannon: be, can I be a little harsher?
Anne Murphy: Yeah. [:Kyle Shannon: I think those 30 p, if it was clear that they used ai, then those 30 people are doing what I call lazy ai, which is push the button, expect brilliant results, and just publish that.
Oh yeah. Without probably even taking it in
Anne Murphy: for an AI conference.
Kyle Shannon: For an AI conference. Yeah. Um, I, you, you told me this earlier and the thing that immediately struck me is that if you're brand new with ai. It might be easy. It, it, it will be easy for you to look at how magical it generates, words uhhuh and go, oh, that must be good.
out it, didn't really have a [:Right. Didn't, didn't craft the, the, the application that they gave you. And I, and I just, I it's gonna be tempting very, to have it feel like the easy button, but, but I think the fact that you, you could instantly recognize 30 of them as No. Yeah, no, you, you didn't, if you didn't take the time to really consider what you were submitting to be a speaker, then.
Anne Murphy: I don't know.
Kyle Shannon: I, that, that's, that's huge to me. I think that's, that
Anne Murphy: would, that's huge to me. And, and so it's an indication of either they don't have an ideal mastery of writing with AI yet, or they used it and leaned into it exclusively because it was like a whim. They don't really care. Right? Mm-hmm. Yeah.
o them. Like, you know, in a [:What, just what was on the application? Oh, what, what versus what I knew.
Kyle Shannon and Anne Murphy: Mm-hmm. What I knew about people. That's, yeah.
Anne Murphy: But it's, it's like, um, you and I were talking about where. If folks don't have their own like inner compass, they don't know When they see the AI slop, they don't know that it's not, they're in keeping with their inner compass.
'cause they don't, they're not in tune with what that is.
, is a, is full on Gen X and [:Um, I just think it's lazy work. Like, like. AI does allow you to be lazy if you want to be, right. Yeah. And it, it's what people call AI slop, and they have, they, they, a lot of people are justifiably upset that there's just a bunch of garbage out there. Yeah. Especially with something like, I want to speak at a conference.
You know, you have to put yourself out there in a way that's gonna make it compelling for the event organizer to want to do it. And if you didn't do that well that's just, it is a, it is a layer less professional. Right. And so it's a layer
Anne Murphy: less professional and it, it is a word to the wise that you're doing yourself a super solid by making the organizer's decision making.
Like easier and
Sundee Williams: when
what you're gonna be talking [:Kyle Shannon: Yeah, yeah. You know, it's, it's also that kind of thing. If, if they're lazy enough about it, you get the, the classic, you know, she delves into the landscape of the tapestry of the paradigm shifts of the future.
Like what?
Kyle Shannon and Anne Murphy: Yeah, no, yeah,
Anne Murphy: yeah. People don't
Kyle Shannon: use these words. Right. You know, it's
Kyle Shannon and Anne Murphy: so,
Anne Murphy: it's like if you, I mean, for me, one of the take homes is when you sit down to do an assignment or fill something out. Yeah. To take that breath, that CJ Fletcher. Teaches us to do, to take that breath and that pause and like connect with yourself.
Yep. Who are you, what's your point of view? What is your actual voice? Understand how you actually talk. Describe it. Not not having chey pt hyperly your voice. 'cause we can do that certainly. But like, how do you wanna come across today?
Kyle Shannon: Mm-hmm.
Anne Murphy: [:Kyle Shannon: Exactly. Yeah. Love it. Well, my, my week, how about you?
I, I am, I'm preparing for, um, a depending on when you see this, it may have already happened, but, um, I'm preparing for a five day back to basics AI crash course on my AI learning lab channel. And, you know, in typical Kyle fashion, you know, I, I announced it two weeks before I'm delivering it and I'm not prepared, so That's okay.
But, but it's a really fascinating thing to go back to. I haven't, in probably more than a year, really talked about what is ai, why is it important? Right? I haven't really done a chat GPT 1 0 1, and as I'm thinking about all of these different days, the it, it is almost impossible to have even in five days to cover just the basics, right?
Nope. Yep. The AI [:Yes. And so I think that goes back to the thing that you, you said at the very beginning that you just feel like, I don't know if what I'm preparing for right now is what I need to prepare for. And I think about something just like, uh, open AI's agent, which recently came out, right? Where you, you give it a goal and then it goes and surfs websites and does deep research and prompts itself and does things for you.
y. Maybe you've ge used Gens [:It's how you prompt chat GPT, it's doing its own thing internally, right? So. So for me, I, I think I'm just confronted with the fact that people have to start somewhere. So I'm gonna have to teach something. I'll teach as, as much as I can on each of those days knowing that I'm barely scratching the surface for people.
And, you know, I guess my, my goal for the week is, can I, you know, can I provide someone a Kevin McAllister moment or two? Right. Someone where they're just like, oh, I had no idea I could do that. The, you know, that moment. Yes. Yes. Um, and, and, you know, get people intrigued enough to say, Hey, I wanna know more.
I, I, I, I wanna get on this. I, I wanna climb on this surfboard and try to watch ride these ever increasing waves.
Anne Murphy: So, [:We just launched our AI foundations for beginners course. Let's, we, uh, it's, it's, um, every, every month. 90 minutes. We just did it on Friday, Kyle.
Sundee Williams: No.
Anne Murphy: So
Kyle Shannon and Anne Murphy: here we both are again, like feeling a need to reset in some way. Reset.
Anne Murphy: Right. Reset. And it was his helpful. That's how
Kyle Shannon and Anne Murphy: important Yeah,
Anne Murphy: yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
? Yeah. I was like, over the [:So I was like, Michelle Muci Silva. And I had to like just sit there and go, okay, throw that one out, throw that one out, throw that one out. And we ended up with this core set that was, it was painful to only
Kyle Shannon: those. It's painful small, right? It's, it's, it's like painfully not enough,
Anne Murphy: but painfully not enough,
Kyle Shannon: but.
For someone who's never done this. Yeah. They're still gonna be mind blown when they see the thing that we think is just barely scratching the surface. Right.
Anne Murphy: Exactly.
Kyle Shannon: Yeah. That's huge. So let me, let me throw it. So here's the, the, the, the one thing I wanted to think about this week is oddly in alignment. I mean, it's a, it's amazing that I'm like, I gotta go back to basics.
You independently come up with, you've gotta go back to basics.
Kyle Shannon and Anne Murphy: Yep.
s the thing that I think is, [:Not worldview, but uh, uh, personal compass. Your, your,
Anne Murphy: yeah. Your inner compass. Your
Kyle Shannon: inner compass. Right. I think that the single most important thing that you can do to get good at ai. Is to understand who you are and what you want and what your worldview is, what your inner compass is. And I, and I think that there are a lot of people that don't necessarily go there all the time, and it, it seems counterintuitive, right?
ol or chat, GPT or Claude or [:Take a moment and say, wait a minute, what is me? Why is that not right? Is it too simple, it too wordy? Is it like that, that really start to have an inquiry about what it gave you back and why it's not good? And I think you'll be able to fix it more quickly if you have some clarity, but I think what it starts to do moving forward is AI comes to life when you give it enough context about who you are and what your intention is.
w is, then you're constantly [:And the more clear you are with it, the tool is just gonna take your ideas and amplify them. And so that's my, that's my thing for the week.
Anne Murphy: So I, I am like a million percent on that same page and can offer a concrete idea about how. We can support ourselves in pouring ourselves into the AI is before you go to the shiny object of connecting an AI platform to your Google Drive, for example, um, and your email and your social security number and all that.
u wrote, your brand guide, a [:Only use those, upload them to a project, upload them to A GPT, just include them in a chat. Doesn't matter.
Kyle Shannon: Yep. Yeah. Copy, copy and paste. Yeah. If you're trying to do a piece, copy and paste, piece of writing, copy and paste a piece of writing that you love and just tell it. This is a piece of writing I love.
Now let's talk about something completely different. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah,
Anne Murphy: exactly. And so when you see that you don't like the output, you can go, oh, I left that thing about that job that I didn't wanna include in my narrative going forward. That's in the in, that's in the document. Fix the document. Yeah, make, keep that current and just give AI the advantage of knowing you, but in a curated version of you, so you don't have to do it every single time.
ah, but it's, it, it really, [:Right, right. Unless you tell it who you're, and you can't tell it who you are unless you start exploring that. So I think that's the thing to pay attention to. Alright. Same with that. I wanna get Sunday up here. I'm really excited to bring her up. But why don't we talk about, uh, why don't you jump in and tell the good people about, she leads ai.
s. Then we also have our. AI [:If you have a woman in your life who's like on the outskirts of this, send her to this course. Like it's chill. It's on Friday nights, like wonderful, encouraging. And then we have our AI consultancy, our AI consulting agency, which is about to hit the streets really soon. So, and we have a conference and we have, you know, it's a whole ecosystem built for women by women.
And the goal is to provide, you know, a safe space and encouraging space. A place where your network, which matters more than ever, where your network is, what gives you the advantage that, um. We've all been looking for and hoping for, for, for decades. So here we are.
Kyle Shannon: She leads ai. Beautiful. Love it. Love it.
really designed for people. [:Like, I don't know if I, right. And she, what, what her big issue was, was I don't feel like these tech companies are putting people at the center of the technology. And my immediately response was, I don't think they're ever going to. And I think that groups like She leads AI and the AI Salon are about putting people at the center, right, about what is the humanity of how we use these tools and what the impact is on those people.
lon's all about. And we have [:And then one final thing before we bring up Sun, and that is the AI Readiness Training Program is live. So if you are trying to get yourself ready for ai, which is what this whole podcast is about, go, are you ready for ai? Do com. Uh, and and it's a, it's a course that is based on, uh, a lot of the, the content from AI Festivus, um, sun actually met you and I through AI Festivus, so this is kind of a full circle moment.
But anyway, with that, um, why don't we, why don't we, uh, talk about our special guest and then we'll bring her up here. So, why don't you tell the good people about Sunday and why she's here today?
ms that weren't built for us [:She's teaching us how to create a new infrastructure, particularly Gen X women who are. I got uniquely positioned to break down, you know, what happened before and do what, what is right, what is going to make us successful in the future. And not just us, us, but our communities, our society, our, the like, the globe.
Um, and she has a, a long running passion for making systems better, um, and has been doing it for her entire career. She's a proud Aggie and, uh, comes to us from, comes to us from
Kyle Shannon: Mississippi,
Anne Murphy: Mississippi.
Kyle Shannon: Yes.
Anne Murphy: I think our first guest from Mississippi Sun, I think welcome, hello
Kyle Shannon: from, uh, from South Central United States of America.
Sundee Williams: It's [:Kyle Shannon: a disconnect.
Welcome, welcome, welcome. It's so nice to have you here. Thank you. Thank you for having me. I'm excited about the opportunity to have conversation.
Kyle Shannon: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Well, why don't we, before Anne and I get carried away with asking all sorts of questions, why don't you just introduce yourself, you know, tell us who you are and, and what you want people to know about, about, uh, about what you're up to.
Absolutely. So I grew up in New England and went to college in Texas and now I am an AI implementation technologist, futurist, all of those things. And I live on six acres in Mississippi, and we just got broadband in our last year, so. Wow.
Kyle Shannon: Wow. That's amazing. Yeah. That's crazy.
That's so that really, that experience alone really informed the not everybody has access.
Sundee Williams: Yeah.
ge of this opportunity, this [:This technology grows over time. So anybody who didn't implement two years ago, you are already behind.
Kyle Shannon: Yeah. So, well, yeah. And I would even argue anyone who did implement two years ago go behind. Yeah. Yeah. And it, it doesn't mean, I don't think that you shouldn't start, but I think it's, I think it's the, the, uh, the sense of that's the urgency, the sense of overwhelm and Yeah.
s that even mean? Right. If, [:Anne Murphy: Can you, um, share about the intersection of, you know, building new infrastructure, which I've had the pleasure of hearing you, hearing you share about, and the future for Gen X women and the work that you're doing with them to kind of launch them into Absolutely future.
ome down. When we switched in: [:Sundee Williams: Yeah.
At all, ever. So all of those things feel really hard and heavy when they happen individually. Mm-hmm. They are happening for the first time in human history all at the same time.
So you have these generational arcs. The baby boomers who switched us from extract, from investment to extraction. Their time is coming to a close. You're looking at the unipolar moment that the United States had at the height when the, when the Cold War ended and the US was the center of everything.
d all of those things ending [:We, we wanna rake in as much money as we can. Yep. Uh, you see it in systems like Amazon. Stealing product IP and coming out with, oh, here's the Amazon brand of that backpack that you really love, that has all the, the bells and whistles. And so you see this age of extraction coming to a close and the people with power, money, and influence are panicking because the only thing that comes next is the rich get eaten.
portunity. Gen X is the only [:Sundee Williams: Yep.
So you can't expect Gen Z or even millennials to say, wait a minute, this worked before I really liked this. We should carry this forward. Mm-hmm. And boomers are not expected to thrive in an AI world, right? They're not. They're on the way out. They're, they're on the decline. So it really does leave Gen X, specifically Gen X women in a position to center humans, to center children, to center community and connection.
Anne Murphy: Yes.
e sure that there's a binder [:Whether that's a virtual binder or a physical binder, you know? Yeah. Take your pick. We can always have a trapper keeper, but it's, uh, we, we are that one generation. We are intended also, if you look at the flow of time. There are roles that each generation plays. We are that fixer generation. Yeah. Yeah.
Mm-hmm. We're the ones that have that responsibility as well.
Kyle Shannon: Wow. So can I ask you, one of the things that strikes me about generative ai is, is the g and GPT, the generative part, um, is computers do have never behaved like this before. They've never created generated. And I'm curious if you feel that the, the opportunity of, of hyper prosperity is, is a possibility.
rosperity comes? Like, what, [:We have two choices. So if we persist in allowing power and money to dictate what infrastructure is accessible to whom
Sundee Williams: mm-hmm.
If we allow power to dictate who has access to what tools, extraction continues. And we live in a surveillance state that is, uh, technology not for good, but technology for malicious intent, nefarious intent.
Mm-hmm. Um, those systems are all coming to a close, but if we do nothing, they will just rebuild what we had before.
Sundee Williams: Rights
familiar? It's convenient,
Sundee Williams: right?
And it's easy. It's the easy button. You were talking about the easy button before of generative ai.
Kyle Shannon: Yeah. It
is just easy to say, well, this is the way we've always done it.
Right,
Kyle Shannon: right, right. [:already see it. Absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely. Uh, and so we do have an opportunity like that is the flip side of the coin with every ending.
There is a beginning, and that beginning has already started. At no other time in human history has the economy depended so greatly on women
Sundee Williams: at
you cannot remove women from the equation and expect the economy to be as prosperous. So you can't send us all back to the house. Right. You can't make us all have babies.
Right. You can't erase us from the annals of history and expect that the country is going to prosper in the same way. So the reality is that the date VC funding has gone to the tech bros. Mm-hmm. The Brads and Chads of it all.
Sundee Williams: Mm-hmm.
What that has resulted in [:Uh, VC founder was complain or VC funder was complaining. Everybody's making the same three products. Yeah. Well, if the world was written for you by you, in your image, are we solving your problems or are we solving your inconveniences?
Sundee Williams: Hmm. Because
if we're solving your inconveniences, that's a you problem.
Sundee Williams: Mm-hmm.
Women have never had the opportunity to solve their problems and the universal problems. That affect the majority. So patriarchy, and this is not a ding on men, this is the structure of life that we have known it. Mm-hmm. And patriarchy focuses on the individual. It just does. That's, that's the structure.
It's very hierarchical. It's very focused on the, on the individual.
Sundee Williams: Mm-hmm.
ther hand, is not a negative [:Sundee Williams: Mm-hmm. So
if we don't shift to a more egalitarian, a more inclusive, a more, you know, at this point, Congress should not be made up of 5% of the silent generation.
Sweetie take a nap. So let's, let's move forward in a way that gathers people together to solve real problems.
Sundee Williams: Yeah. Yeah.
experience going forward in [:So
I left corporate November of:Mm-hmm. And, uh, even after I had moved our Salesforce instance twice, you know. Wow. So I walked away. I literally, I was given an ultimatum. You'll either continue to work at 150% or you will turn in your resignation. Okay.
Sundee Williams: Wow.
easy. Yeah. Yeah. And, and I [:And I started this business not knowing what I was starting seeing that the, the men that I worked for in technology, I've worked for the last 20 years in technology. Every, I, I've consistently been other duties as assigned girl. If there was a problem nobody could fix. If there was an issue that needed a solution, if there was a process that needed to be made or more efficient, if there was another department that needed to be, I, I just ended up taking on all of these additional responsibilities, and I had this epiphany when I left.
How hard can it be? Boys do it. Mm.
Sundee Williams: We
can't do any worse than the men that have been in charge to date. So there's really. There's less risk than what we consider.
Sundee Williams: Mm-hmm.
And the epiphany was, and this is the way I've run my business, if you change the life of a woman, you change the world. Yes. Hmm. And so I got called on the carpet for it.
Who do you think you are to [:You have changed the world. Because each ripple of each person who moves through this next phase of what comes next, this future of work, everybody who does it differently, changes the world. Makes possible something else. If we could all just choose differently instead of doom scrolling for two hours because you're tired.
Ask Chachi. Pt, I have this idea. Is it a viable business? Yeah.
Sundee Williams: Yeah.
office. Is this a universal [:Sundee Williams: mm-hmm.
From being someone who is extracted from to somebody who is putting something back into the world.
Sundee Williams: Mm-hmm.
The world changes. That's how we get through what comes next. By growing together, by reestablishing community bonds. And those can be virtual. I do not recommend we do this work individually.
Kyle Shannon: Yeah, no, we, we, we talk about community all the time. Yes. There's also something about the fact that the primary interface is now language.
That if you've got good empathetic skills, you're really good at ai. At generative ai. Well, that's right. Like that's why
all of us girls that were other duties as assigned
Kyle Shannon: Yep.
We're thriving.
Kyle Shannon: Yes, exactly. It's,
nne Murphy: it's incredible. [:Anne Murphy: It's one of those things where you, when you were, for me, when I was in it and doing, you know, taking care of all of the, the barks of projects, yes.
I, I had no idea then that it was anything other than just being kind of screwed over. But now I look back on it and I'm like, but I got to learn this fringe case and that fringe case and this weirdness and this gnarly problem that could nobody else could fix. Yes. Now you take all of that. Here we are.
We're in our fi Wait, gen X is what? Like 45 to 60 or 45 to 60? Yes. 45 to 60. So here we are now we sleep. Yes. You know, lots of us get sleep now. Yes. Um, we have some discretionary income. We're done with the old systems, but we are, we still have that necessary. I think that spite a little bit of spite goes a long way.
say, I'm gonna flip over the [:Kyle Shannon and Anne Murphy: I
Anne Murphy: betcha. Right. So question for you. At what point in your journey did you understand that you gotta go all in on ai? What was that tipping point for you and what happened next?
So, my story's a little bit different. Um, when I was. My entire career, but college mostly, I really recognized that both sides of my brain work equally. So I was, I was an English major taking engineering 400 level classes for fun. Oh. So yeah. Yeah. I was, I was, I was, I was the only liberal arts. Major That was in, uh, engineering classes for fun.
t sourdough and gardening, I [:Kyle Shannon and Anne Murphy: how cool. Yeah. Nice. Fascinating. Sat in
on MIT classes and was like, did I need to go back to college?
And then you fast forward to, um, to generative ai and it was everything. It changed, it changed the trajectory of my life. It made problem solving, problem presentation, um, decoding the, the different. Facets of my brain and stitching it together in a way that was really palatable. I heard you talking earlier today about garbage in, garbage out.
already writer. So if I use [:Yes. Um, so I actually write into chat, GBT, and then we have a conversation about it. Yes. Same. Um, so, so I use those AI tools just a little bit differently and all of the other. Non neurotypical things that get stitched together, whether it's that facet for music, the facet from history, the, you know, that movie that I saw a couple years ago.
Like it all just kind of, I can put all of those, um, font text pieces into cha BBC and be like, I know these all tie together. Mm-hmm. And this is what I think that tie is, what am I missing? Mm-hmm. And have this really great back and forth. Yeah. So, so that's, that's how I got to, to ai. It was that, oh, I don't need to go to college.
en I started in technology in:And let me tell you I was ready.
Kyle Shannon: Oh, that's awesome. Yeah. It's like, I call it revenge of the liberal arts major is the era, is the era that we're entering. Um, I, I, I, uh. In New York City, we, you, you and I must have similar brains. I would buy a cap copy of Backstage for audition notices and Scientific American Yes.
At the same newsstand at the same time, right? Yes. Um, um, I'm curious when, when you say when generative AI came, came along, so so you, you, you'd understand, you know, neural networks and tensor and tensor flow and all that sort of stuff. Yeah. Was it the launch of chat GPT that did it, was it, was it playing with open AI playground before that?
What was the, what was the thing that made made it snap all of a sudden and just feel different?
ility and approachability of [:Kyle Shannon: Okay.
It was collaboration. It was play.
Kyle Shannon: Yeah. Yeah. It was because it was such a simple interface early on. Right? Yes.
Yes, it was intuitive. I didn't have to go to school.
I didn't have to know more than anybody else. And the realization that there's no 25-year-old who's got more experience than I do with chat GPT, that's like that really provided agency, right?
Kyle Shannon: The, the, yeah, the, the fact that we've been on the planet long enough to have seen some stuff. Yeah, we can look at the output of chat GPT and go, nah, that's not right.
Yeah. You know, exactly.
The industrial age meant you didn't have to take your muscle to work and everybody got to start working with their brains and innovate and create. And then you had the information age come and you know, and it was like, oh, you don't need paper, you can just hold all your stuff in this, this box on your desk.
And I feel like the AI age. [:Sundee Williams: Mm-hmm.
What is left is this taste and discernment and the ability to know what is right and true and beautiful, but you have to take some time to get back to understanding what that is for you. And you were talking about it earlier. Where do you stand? What is your opinion? Well, for so long we've all had that kind of etched out of us, and the younger generation hasn't been taught to learn cognitively.
Yes. They've, they've, they've been indoctrinated, they've learned some things. So that 25-year-old who has said, I'm gonna start an AI business. Fabulous. What do you know about business?
Anne Murphy: Right. Very little. Jimmy started.
opportunity for Gen X women [:There's the W2, there's the INT entrepreneur, which is high risk. You've got employees, maybe you've got brick and mortar, maybe it's hvac, whatever it is, there is this new space called the Digital Space, and I call it W2 Entrepreneur and IDEA Space. Mm. Because the what you're putting out into the world, we need your ideas.
Yeah, we need you to teach 25-year-old HVAC business people, the business portion of how to show up to a business meeting, how to put a proposal together, how to craft marketing in a way that is persuasive while being ethical. They haven't been taught any of those things. Yeah. But the men who created this technology are saying, well, you should be a plumber.
Anne Murphy: God, I cannot, [:you should be a plumber. Okay, Bob, your kids have millions. That's fabulous advice. Thank you.
Kyle Shannon: Um, let me, let me ask you another thing. I, I, I think, I think it's absolutely spot on. And, and you know, I think that, um, have, having that, having that point of view. Like AI becomes an idea amplifier.
Right? And if, if, if what we can train people to do is get your ideas into this thing and have a point of view, then you can amplify them and put them in the world. Yes. In an incredibly powerful way. So here's question number two that we ask all of our guests. Sure. In your area of expertise, what is an AI trend that you're paying attention to right now and why?
be allowed to create agents [:That affluence that you were talking about earlier, the wealth and ability. Um, I think that makes that possible. At the same time, I'm also keeping an eye on and making sure that the women I work with understand if the product is free, you are the product.
Sundee Williams: Mm-hmm.
And so anything that's on Amazon has to be taken with a grain of salt And really, um, what I'm using agent marketplaces for as.
market itself is different. [:Anne Murphy: I'm very, very hungry for a pineapple pizza. Yeah. It's never gonna
come to my house. I don't think so. I don't think so, but, but I think there's real valid use cases for agent work. My challenge with things like marketplaces that are put out by AWS, they've already cornered 30 to 40% of global data and market share for cloud computing.
And so it's really. An easy implementation to not augment the staff that you have, but to replace them. Yeah. So you might have executives that think, oh, we are already partnering with AWS, but they've already got all of our data, their platform's already something rich within our environment. Uh, let's just go ahead and replace the, the CX team and have it done with agents now.
hink it's the, I think it is [:Kyle Shannon: Yeah. What, um, what, how do you think that we, um. How do we teach ourselves how to use agents? I can see an organization looking at an agent and go, okay, all those tasks, that's that job. Let's replace that job. I can see that. Right? But also us as individuals, um, and, you know, people within your community, these Gen X women also have access to these agents that can be quite powerful.
But I don't think I, I know, I currently don't. What, like, what do I ask this thing? What, what, you know, other than, you know, book me a vacation for a family of four. Right. You know, and, and have vegan menus. Like, I feel like there's parlor tricks I know right now, but I don't have an instinct about how to use them.
What, what is [:So I think that that's where community comes into play. I think that, um, there are valid use cases. I personally struggle with distribution. I'm not a huge fan of marketing.
I think that agents are a great way to augment my own skillset. Mm-hmm. Um, to take things off my plate that. That I don't necessarily find joy in doing. You know, we talked yesterday at social Saturday at she leads ai, what is your non-negotiable? Um, what are you unwilling to give an agent? And I will tell you my non-negotiable was Ann's.
me joy. That is something I [:You know? That's
Kyle Shannon and Anne Murphy: hilarious. That's great.
Yes. So I think there are real use cases for agents, but I think that we need to work together because it will be process driven and not everybody is a process
Anne Murphy: person. Yeah. Not, I know, I gotta ask our, our last question, but the fact that so many people aren't gonna know what it means to even something as simple as, you know, my take of upload my Christmas list.
Yeah. My Christmas, you know, my mailing list. You know, like that is not an insignificant thing that I've just done. No. For my friends and family, by the way. Yeah. The people who I really, really love. Right? Yeah. So, and pe we, you know, the average, average person can't possibly be aware of it because it just hasn't been the way that we needed to think before.
[:Okay. Our last question is, what does AI readiness mean to you?
For me, AI readiness is understanding that it's a tool. Tools change. Um, right now we're working with large language models. Don't get comfortable with large language models. They're changing the world. Model is what comes next, even if it doesn't amount to the same impact as a large language model.
You think about the way that humans learn. Humans don't learn by reading the encyclopedia. A child will learn more before they turn five than they will for their, the rest of their entire lives. And they learn it through perception. They learn through hearing and seeing and tasting and touching. That's what comes next is this world model JEPA.
[:It doesn't take us to, uh, a GI.
Sundee Williams: Mm-hmm.
If it was going to, it would have, they've thrown a lot of money at it.
Kyle Shannon and Anne Murphy: Yep. A lot.
A lot of money, a
Kyle Shannon and Anne Murphy: lot.
So like, where does all this money
Sundee Williams: come from? It's crazy.
Yeah.
Sundee Williams: So when we
n of this technology, don't, [:So think about how you engage and think about it as a tool. Think about, I think about it as a survival skill more than I think about it as a luxury, and I think some people do see it as luxury. They see it as a toy. And, and I, I'm glad that works for you, Thad. That's, that's fabulous. Um, but for women, it really is a tool that helps you reclaim your time, your voice, and to find that inner peace that comes of knowing yourself.
Well, and LLMs are a mirror and they only know the past. They can't predict the future. They're horrible at some things. They're horrible at problem solving. Come to find out. Mm-hmm. Um, so as we find the limitations and we work around them, that will bring new technology, new iteration, new innovation, women and untapped potential.
whether you're talking about [:Right. Broadband is not a luxury. If you're not worried about work, if you're not worried about all of those other things, innovation becomes possible. Mm-hmm. So when we think about access, when we think about who's allowed to build, who's, who's permitted into the room? Well, the rooms have been very exclusive to date.
Gen X women. We just need to [:Anne Murphy: Gorgeous sun. How can people get ahold of you and learn more? How can they hang out with you more? So,
so my name is Sun, S-U-N-D-E-E Williams. And as far as I can tell, I'm one of very few. So all of my socials except for Instagram are Sunday Williams. So my substack is sunday williams.substack.com. My stand store is Stand Store slash Sunday Williams.
Um, so that's where my, my thoughts and my. My products are being housed, but you can find me on LinkedIn. I am there every day arguing with men who think that women should be smaller. Um,
Kyle Shannon and Anne Murphy: but
is my, my name. I have just, [:My name is so weird that I'm just gonna go with that.
Anne Murphy: Love it. Love it. Well, I, I have met, I don't know, thousands of Gen X women in this journey. I, it was what helped me figure out that we needed community was just, yeah, opening up a workshop and the only people there were Gen X women we're ready. It was like, we're so ready there, they're there.
Everyone. I never said, don't come here if you're a guy. I just opened up the doors and that's who came with a quickness. Yeah. Um, and I know that the work that you're doing is going to unlock so much for the world. Not, like you said, when it's safe for women, it's safe for everybody when it's, if, when women thrive, everyone thrives.
f, the AI salon, and working [:it's exciting.
Very healthy, quite
Kyle Shannon: exciting. So, yeah. Yeah. So thank you so much. I felt like, you know, a lot of the stuff you just talked about, I felt like Yeah, that's Yes, yes, yes. So good. Good, good. So thank you so much for, for, for coming and doing this with us.
Anne Murphy: Yeah. Thank you. Absolutely. I appreciate it. Thank you, Sunday.
Kyle Shannon: Bye-bye. Bye
Anne Murphy: bye.
