My Claude Doesn't Do That

Back in Episode 31, Logan assigned Sherry Turkle's new book, Artificial Intimacy. Now she's read it and doesn't know what she thinks. So instead of asking Claude, she brought it to Mara. A duo episode about second-guessing yourself, AI-pilled defensiveness, and who gets to push back on a legend. Mara's appetizer comes from Instinct, the free personal agent that now writes her daily AI news brief. (She won't touch Meta's Muse with her data.) Personal agents are finally consumer grade, and Logan, who spent a year building her own Claude chief of staff the hard way, is torn. It's great that more people get this without the late nights. It also makes her wonder what we stop thinking about when it all works out of the box. Mara admits her patience for reading has gotten worse since she started using AI, and the better the models get, the harder the errors are to catch. Then the news. The White House's new AI task force met for the first time and chose existing liability law over new rules. Mara counted one woman on the member list: Susie Wiles. And AnitaB.org canceled the Grace Hopper Celebration, the largest gathering of women in computing, two weeks before it was due to open. Logan's take is that the formal spaces are falling apart, but the energy of women finding each other hasn't gone anywhere. In the drinks round, a listener asks how to get better at AI. Should they take a coding class? Logan's answer is a monthly routine (the full method, with prompts to copy, is on her site). Have your AI audit your last 30 days of sessions. Scan what the people at the frontier are doing (she uses the free last30days repo). Then ask your AI to map what you're missing and make a plan for the next 30 days. There's no hidden textbook. It's scattered across Reddit and podcasts, and that's fine. The main course: Turkle has studied people and computers at MIT for about 40 years. Her argument is that the more we lean on chatbots, the less attuned to people we become. Logan couldn't tell if she disagreed or just felt called out, and she caught herself thinking "well, my Claude doesn't do that," the way a parent insists their kid would never. Mara saw Turkle speak on launch day and had a similar reaction, then reminded them both who they're arguing with. They get into the AI Sherry Turkle that Turkle never agreed to, grief bots, the gap between her interviews and her conclusions, and why the binaries are lazy. Mara brings in a Berkman Klein colleague's study where people often preferred a bot's answers on questions of faith over answers from well-known imams, and asks what that says about the gaps in human support. Maybe some people just need a minute before they're ready for the human. What needs womansplaining? Leave us a voicemail at womansplainingai.com/answering-machine or email ask@womansplainingai.com. Anonymous is fine. Your question could be the next drinks round. In this episode 00:00 Cold open: "Talking to my grandparents about the good old days" 00:38 Welcome to Womansplaining AI 01:21 Who we are 02:23 The dinner party format 03:05 Appetizer: personal agents, fantasy football style 04:49 Why Mara won't use Muse 06:38 A year of building a Claude chief of staff 07:40 What do we stop thinking about? 10:16 The White House AI task force picks liability over new law 11:39 One woman on the list 11:55 The Grace Hopper Celebration is canceled 13:26 The energy is still there 13:57 Drinks round: how do I get better at AI? 15:11 A three-step, 30-day routine 16:34 AI as a personal trainer 17:59 There's no hidden textbook 18:41 The free Corrix assessment 19:25 Main course: Sherry Turkle's Artificial Intimacy 21:05 Mara plays the perfect LLM 21:19 Turkle's argument 22:31 Am I just AI-pilled? "My Claude doesn't do that" 23:53 Should we excuse the machine's mistakes? 25:16 Mara saw Turkle speak on launch day 26:02 The AI Sherry Turkle 26:49 Grief bots 28:56 The interviews versus the 10,000-foot view 29:15 Mara: "But this is Sherry Turkle" 30:51 The binaries are lazy 31:33 A Berkman Klein study: bots versus imams 34:15 Not quite ready for the human yet 35:34 Who this opens doors for 36:15 Goodbye Resources mentioned Sherry Turkle, Artificial Intimacy: Who We Become When We Talk to Machines (Little, Brown) The White House AI task force's first meeting (TechRepublic) What the Grace Hopper Celebration cancellation means for women in AI (Forbes) Logan's monthly AI audit: three prompts to copy last30days, the free GitHub repo from the drinks round Take the Corrix AI collaboration assessment Last week's episode with Jo McKinney of Corrix