Leadership Tea

Managing Anxiety in the Age of AI with Soribel Feliz, The AI Therapist | S4 EP13

• Shelby Smith-Wilson and Belinda Jackson Farrier • Season 4 • Episode 13

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Belinda and Shelby are joined by tech policy and AI governance expert, Soribel Feliz, also known as The AI Therapist. Soribel tackles the anxiety currently gripping the professional world: fear of being replaced by artificial intelligence. If you're wondering what your kids should study, how to upskill mid-career, or how to maintain your mental health amid constant doom-and-gloom headlines, this episode is for you.

Soribel discusses the legitimate concerns surrounding AI, from plagiarism in higher education to the AI automation impacting white-collar work. She dispels one of the biggest myths—that AGI will be "god-like.” And she offers practical advice on how to manage your anxiety around AI by focusing on what you can control, and how executives can build a collaborative AI adoption strategy. 

Also in this episode:

  • Legitimate concerns everyone should have about AI's impact on work and society
  • Why learning all the AI tools is an overwhelming and ineffective strategy
  • Soribel's advice for maximizing your data privacy and security immediately
  • How leaders can create a vision for integrating AI on their teams

Find Soribel:

You can also watch our conversation on YouTube: https://youtu.be/A-RocnSZfl0

Send us a comment!

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SPEAKER_01:

Hey everyone, and welcome to the Leadership Tea podcast, where we talk about not only what it takes to reach the executive level, but how to thrive and survive once you get there. My name is Shelby, and I'm joined by my co-host, Belinda. And today we are very excited to welcome Sori Bell Felis. She is affectionately known as the AI therapist. And we are talking to Sori Bell today about how do you manage anxiety in the age of artificial intelligence? Sori Bell is an expert in this area. She's an expert in tech policy, AI governance, data privacy. She has her own YouTube channel. She's an entrepreneur who has had experience working in the tech industry as well as in government. That's how we met. She's a former diplomat, and she is just a wealth of knowledge when it comes to artificial intelligence. And how do we manage this space, particularly for people who are worried about losing their jobs to AI? So listen up. Sorry Bell offers a lot of great insights and some practical advice on how to manage AI. We think you'll enjoy this episode.

SPEAKER_00:

Sorry Bell, thanks so much for joining us today. We're excited to have you on the Leadership Tea podcast. I just want to dive right in. My first question for you today is why do you call yourself the AI therapist?

SPEAKER_02:

Thank you so much for having me. I call myself the AI therapist because at some point I felt like I was a therapist. A lot of people were coming to me asking me about what it's AI going to do with our jobs? What should our kids study in college? Should they even go to college? I am 45 and I'm being replaced by an AI tool. What should I do? How should I upskill? So many questions that I had some answers to, but not, you know, I wasn't very confident in my answers because I was like, I really don't know. I know as much as you do. But because I talk a lot about AI and talk about the future of work, people come to me and ask me a lot of these questions. You know, I am ahead with the research and with the white papers and the studies. So I try to, you know, help them as much as I can because there's a lot of anxiety going on. And I just try to put a positive spin and uh neutral lens on all of this doom and gloom headlines that you see out there.

SPEAKER_01:

So given all of the doom and gloom headlines and the myriad questions that you get, and I can relate to one of them as a mother who has a daughter in college, and I'm hearing, you know, college professors being really concerned that students are cheating and using AI. I don't know if there are news reports or just some of the things that I'm seeing on various chat groups where students are getting in trouble for accusations of AI plagiarism. So I can relate to all of that. And I wonder, as you think about all of the anxieties that you're hearing around AI, what do you think are some legitimate concerns in terms of where we're going as a society with artificial intelligence?

SPEAKER_02:

There's lots of legitimate concerns. You know, to start with higher education, you can see it from two sides, right? You can see it from the professors seeing their students using AI to turn in their papers to do their homework for them. But it's a legitimate concern that students are, you know, not thinking critically, which is the whole point of college and education, and that they're not making an effort and they're not building a good foundation for when they go out to the working world. There's also the concern that professors are using AI to come up with their curricula, to come up with the syllabus, to just put their students' papers in and ask AI to grade it. So I've seen both sides of the coin. And I think both sides have legitimate concerns. In terms of the future of work, I think this is where most anxiety comes in, right? Because we are a country that where our identity is work. Uh, work is our life, right? So if you see the slow motion, mass automation and joblessness, so many layoffs due to AI, whether or not it's true, people associate layoffs with AI. I think there's a lot of anxiety, legitimate anxiety about work and will AI take my job? And if I don't upskill quick, someone else using AI will take my job. But then what do I upskill on? Like, what exactly is this secret sauce that I need to have so that nobody replaces me? And we don't have an answer to that. A lot of companies just say, well, you should just play around with this LLM or that LLM or learn the tools. But learning the tools is not enough, right? Because the tools are the ones that are taking your job. So even if you learn it, it doesn't matter. You're no safer than someone who doesn't learn the tools. You may be ahead by months, maybe a few years. You can buy yourself time, but it's not learning the tools is not the answer. So there's a lot of anxiety over whether where, like, should I even go to college if you're a young college student or uh high school student, then should parents pay for college? That's another side because it's expensive and it's four years. And then if you do go to college, uh, are you gonna get a job after four years and a lot of debt? So those are only three concerns that three sides of that coin, but there's a lot more. There's so much more.

SPEAKER_00:

There seems to be also a lot of misinformation and disinformation that's kind of fueling people's anxieties. Can you speak a little bit to what are some of the myths that are fueling AI fears?

SPEAKER_02:

Well, I think the biggest myth right now is what we hear all the time, which is superintelligence, AGI, it's gonna take over, it's gonna kill everyone. I mean, there's like some books out there and papers that sound really legit and you know, true. But there was one paper that came out not too long ago, I would say last month, and it defined AGI. It finally defined what superintelligence AGI is, and AGI is artificial general intelligence, and it defined it as a highly educated adult professional. That was the definition of it. And it was a little bit like, whoa, you were hyping this up for so long, so much, and in the end, this is going to be a highly educated white-collar professional, which we have a lot of those already. So, you know, it it kind of was anticlimactic because we thought it was gonna be god-like, right? But it turns out it's more human-like. It's still very concerning because one AGI who is just like a human, a highly paid white-collar worker, can replace white-collar workers. But it's also not god-like, it's not going to suddenly destroy the entire world. So that's one of the biggest myths.

SPEAKER_01:

So, given this paper on AGI that you just referenced and some of the legitimate concerns and the anxieties that you hear about in your own network, I'm wondering what are some of your recommendations on AI tools that everyone should be familiar with? And how do you manage your own anxiety?

SPEAKER_02:

My first recommendation is don't try to learn all the AI tools because there's a lot of them. And a lot of them do the same thing and serve the same function. And there's more coming out every day. So there's no way a human being can keep up with all of this new AI tools that are coming out every day and can really overwhelm even the most tech savvy person. So I would say pick three to five that are relevant to you. So if you're a writer, really learn Claude, right? Learn, you know, ChatGPT, Notebook LM. Those tools can help you in your craft, right? It can help you get ahead of a lot of things. It can help you be better at your job. It can even get you more business. If you're a videographer, well, learn the AI video tools, right? They can help you do more. So pick three to five that are relevant to you and your craft and your life, if they can help you in your personal life as well, awesome. But don't try to learn all of them. How do I manage my own anxiety? Of course, I have anxiety over AI, not just the work anxiety, but also the what's going to happen to our society anxiety, right? When you have the ability to do a deep fake, the ability to really hurt someone in terms of cybersecurity, our identity, right? Identity fraud, it's easier than ever to imitate someone's voice, to imitate gestures, to look like you're someone else. It is really scary. I think everyone should be anxious about what AI can do if a bad actor gets his hands on it. How do I manage it? I think the internal look is of control thing is it sounds trite, right? But it's so real and it's so appropriate to this because there's not too much that you can do outside of yourself and your family. So make sure your identity, your personal identity stuff is foolproof, two-factor authentication, that your data privacy is well protected. Definitely keep up with the world, right? In terms of your job. Like again, learn the tools that are relevant to you and your craft, safeguard your kids, make sure your parental controls in your kids' devices are you're maximizing that. I heard a statistic that only 2% of parents take advantage of the parental controls that are built in the devices and platforms. So make sure your kids are not interacting with craziness online. But other than that, I think you have to let things play out, right? And one more thing, I think be active in politics in the sense that not engage with crazy people online, but see where your senators and your reps stand on AI issues, because a lot of these decisions are being made at the congressional level. And if we don't pay attention, you know, we might find things that are not so savory when it comes to the direction of our country. So keep up with that. And then after you've done that, then you have to kind of tune out the negative headlines, you have to tune out the negativity and the contradictory statements and just kind of let things play out.

SPEAKER_00:

I really agree with that. And, you know, I would add that what you said at the beginning, getting your hands dirty and really finding the tools that work for you really helps. I've been experimenting a lot, as Shelby knows, with building agents and bots to just see kind of what works in our business and doing a lot with Notebook Elum. And that has been really helpful in terms of getting rid of the anxiety and seeing where the technology actually is versus what the kind of gossip sphere says that it's capable of doing or where it's going. You know, I've had a lot of conversations with executives who feel overwhelmed with a pressure to both use the technology and explore it, but they just don't know where their curiosity begins and their anxiety and their need for caution begins. And I was wondering if you had any advice for leaders who are looking at how to help their teams begin to integrate some of this technology, but still do it in a balanced way.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, that's a good one because I think executives have it harder than anyone else because they're feeling the pressure from their boards, right? Or their shareholders and investors to implement AI, to use AI. But the thing is, there's no definition around what that means. And so they internalize that pressure and then pass that on to a lot of employees. And you've seen that play out in nasty emails that are sent to staff. Like there was one, the CEO of Open Door, he sent an email to his staff saying, you have to default to AI. Don't use a Word document, default to AI. And he did not define what defaulting to AI is. He did not ask their staff to use their judgment and see if it makes sense to use AI. He kind of said, Don't worry about cybersecurity or anything like that. It's our responsibility, as it's the company's responsibility, you just use AI. And so they're internalizing that pressure, but also passing it on to their employees. Some of them, not all of them. I've just seen a lot of this play out online. I would say don't do that. First, work with your staff to see where using AI and default into AI makes sense. Open a conversation where people feel safe to talk about AI, how they're using it, their hesitancy. And then actually give people time to learn AI. If you want them to learn AI and do their jobs well, then give them time. Like set aside like Friday morning, Friday afternoon is for AI learning. And we're going to meet quarterly and discuss use cases, and we're going to talk about how AI got it wrong and how AI got it right. Talk about these things and do it in a more team-oriented way and collaborative, collaborative way, and not in a threatening way. Like if you don't use AI, you're fired, because that doesn't really help anyone and it doesn't really inspire confidence in your team. And so I would say they have to deal with that pressure first, and then you know, use a collaborative, constructive way to send a message to their employees that AI is important. We want to learn it, we want to apply it in our business. Here's how we're going to do it. Not just a blanket statement saying use AI.

SPEAKER_01:

That's a really good point. And I'm glad you said that executives have it harder when it comes to integrating AI into our work because I think, you know, just reflecting on our collective time as diplomats. I think we saw this a little bit in the public diplomacy space, where people would say, Oh, we need press for that event. You know, let's sprinkle some press on this event. And it's like, okay, well, have we thought through what is the message that we're trying to convey? Like, why do we need press at this event? It's not just, you know, some icing on a cake that you just top off randomly. And I feel that that's the tendency, or at least the trend that I'm seeing in some spaces, where it's like, okay, we need to throw some AI on that. All right, well, what do you mean by that? Throw some AI. Like everyone needs to learn AI. Well, what does that mean? How do we apply it? What makes sense for our industry? And I think that that's a good segue to a more personal question that I want to ask you, because the three of us as women of color have had the privilege of being in privileged spaces that aren't always welcome. And when it comes to tech in particular, I think you and Belinda have more experience in this than I do. But I'm just wondering, because women and leaders of color haven't always been at the table, particularly when it comes to big tech shifts, what are your recommendations? How do you think that we can change that?

SPEAKER_02:

That's a good, that's a good question. Um how we can change that is by creating our own spaces and creating our own tables instead of trying to get into other people's tables. So tech and AI are a very kind of closed-off space where the same schools feed into the same companies and the same companies feed into the other companies. So it's like a circle. It's really hard to break in as an outsider, especially, you know, someone like me, for example, who have very few connections into tech. So I really had to kind of create my own space and then go and put myself out there. So I think there's no easy answer for it because, again, the people in power are people that control a lot of what goes on here. But I think with AI, there's an opportunity to really create your own spaces, and there's so much excitement and curiosity and so much energy around it that you can really galvanize people and create a movement that can put you on the map and that can make you um, I don't know if this is a word, but unignorable. Make it a word. I like it. So I think, you know, just galvanizing other people and creating a community, because you going in as a lone wolf probably won't get you far. But if you create a community around an idea, especially when it comes to AI and how it's going to affect society or how it's going to affect your demographic, not just as a, you know, biographical demographic, but as a parent, as a caregiver, as a worker in X industry, you know, like whatever identity you want to embrace and center, you can create a movement around it because there's many other people going through the same thing, right? And so I would say create a community around an idea and put yourself out there and you become unignorable.

SPEAKER_00:

And I would offer that to me, in my view, this space, it's like a road that has been quickly built, and there's been a couple of rainstorms, and there's lots of potholes already. There's lots of gaps. There are lots of gaps that we can fill. And I agree with you that no matter what identity you're bringing to the table, there's space for you to create your own space, especially if we look globally, right? And we partner globally. Earlier, you made reference to kind of we need to pay attention to what's happening in the regulatory space. And that is important, I think, particularly for business owners or for people who are looking to get into the space. I think watching that regulatory and compliance space in the US is critical at the state and the federal level, but also globally, because information is global. These systems are global, and you need to know what's happening and what your partners are doing elsewhere in order to think strategically here. So much of what you've said today really boils down to staying calm, making sure that you're getting access to real information, solid information, and being strategic, right? And the way in which we talk about strategy and so many other parts of leadership, where the example that you used with the CEO who said, just use it, isn't helpful, right? We've got to bring that same strategy here. So I'm curious, as we think about being strategic, what is something that a leader or an executive could do this month to really build their expertise and confidence in AI?

SPEAKER_02:

November being the month of Thanksgiving, I think is a great time to slow down and write out what you're grateful for, but also reflection. If you lead a team, think about what you want your team to look like a year from now, two years from now, three years from now. How you see AI helping that team, how you see them incorporating AI into their daily workflow. Be honest about whether or not you even need your team. And instead of letting yourself be influenced by outside perspectives and experts and research, I think be introspective and dried out a vision for what you want your team, your company, your own career to look like instead of going and learning three to five tools, learn about yourself and what you want and how you see AI impacting, shaping or not your team, how you lead your career, your business. And then you can share that with the team. That's my recommendation. I know it's uncommon because what everyone says is learn at tools. I will tell you to stop and go inside, like go inside yourself and see what you want and ride out a vision before you go and get your team to adopt AI, this nebulous term that we don't agree, like what it means.

SPEAKER_01:

That's so important. You know, begin with the end in mind. And I think, you know, Belinda and I, as executives, as two individuals who are really focused on leadership and professional development. I just want to double-click on everything you just said in terms of having a vision and being clear with your teams about your mission. Like, what is it that I foresee for us as a unit? And then begin to integrate the tools that are necessary to achieve that vision. It's almost like people are tempted to put the cart before the horse. And this anxiety that's building around AI is like, okay, I know I need to do something with this thing, but they haven't actually thought through in a thoughtful and intentional way. How does this make sense for me and my team? So I really, really appreciate your comments on that. So we want to wrap, sorry, Belle, by giving you an opportunity to share with our audience some of the things that you're doing. You've made a major pivot and a transition in your own career. You've done a lot of interesting things. And we would love to hear more about you and how our viewers can learn about the work that you're doing, which is really important in the AI space. We'd love to hear from you.

SPEAKER_02:

Thank you for that opportunity. I officially launched my business where I do three main things. First one is I do AI governance consulting. So I help businesses build AI governance programs. So all of these questions that I asked in this podcast, I asked of them and then help them craft a vision, build an actual AI governance program, train their staff on AI governance, help them create an AI usage policy. I also do AI adoption and transformation. So that means going beyond prompt engineering and learn AI and more like here are the things that you need to learn for your business. Here's how you do it. A lot of anti-hype stuff and more like getting into the nitty-gritty and like building stuff. And the third thing I do is coaching, but not your typical career coaching, more like people who want to transition into AI governance. I help them transition with that. So a lot of people come in and they don't know how to get in. They don't know how to use their skills, the skills in their career that they already built, how to transition that into AI governance. So I help them with that. And you know, I take not too many clients, but I have about three clients right now. And as I rotate them out, I can take one or two more. The best place to find me is on LinkedIn. And I also have a YouTube channel, but I I talk a lot more about the therapist side of things, helping people through this very transitional time. So I have a like a column where people submit questions to me about, you know, I'm anxious about this or that, and I give advice.

SPEAKER_00:

So it's it's a creative thing for me. Excellent. So we'll be happy to link to that. And well, it's been wonderful to have you, Sword Bell. This has been really informative. We've given our audience a lot to think about and also ways to stay in touch and continue to learn. We appreciate that. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Let me let our audience know that if you are listening to us on the audio version of the podcast, we do want you to go over and support Sorybell on YouTube. And while you're there, don't forget to go to the Leadership Tea Podcast as well and like and subscribe to us if you're not already checking us out there.

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Belinda Jackson Farrier

Co-host
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Shelby Smith-Wilson

Co-host