On this day, 11 years ago, my daughter, Celeste Rose, was stillborn at 39 weeks in 2013. Still bleeding, aching and grieving the loss of my child, I slumped down on the cold bathroom floor. My phone was in my hand – as it seems to always be, even during the worst moments in our life.
In shock or denial, or something else more banal, I checked my email, scrolling past email after email from New York Presbyterian Hospital. I opened one. A bill for $30,000. On a day that I wasn’t bleeding on the bathroom floor, I may have been able to compartmentalize – to understand that the bill was still winding its way through the byzantine insurance system.
Instead, I only felt searing, air-gasping pain. Nothing is ever as vivid as the darkest time of your life. Sometimes it shocks you into seeing something old with new clarity.
The social sector has a responsibility to consider deeply and show up as digital tools, including AI, become a more persistent, even ambient, part of our lives.
There is a way not to send bills to grieving mothers. It’s not even that hard. But our world is increasingly constructed around automated transactional technology that reduces human experience into levers to pull and buttons to push. We are human beings – the good, the bad, the illogical and the emotional – who interact with generative AI tools everyday that are unconcerned with our human-ness.
Sealed tightly in a black box, for many of us the technology is inscrutable. We can’t complain to a manager. We can’t disavow its use. It’s everywhere and nowhere. Are we powerless to make the technology work for us instead of the other way around?
I recently learned that my experience was not a one-off. Hospital correspondence is routinely pushed out to women who had miscarriages or stillbirths, sometimes including the sex of the baby by default. As a technologist I know that changing this default is as simple as unchecking a box. Such a simple, human act could save women from so much unnecessary sadness and pain.
As inscrutable as the technology can be, I know there are humans behind the curtain. It’s heart-breaking that humans are incentivized to ignore humanity. Engineers and UX folks know enough about human behavior to build addictive products. And how to motivate us to click the Buy Now button. It is a devastating loss of opportunity to continue to build technology that ignores what makes us human
It is critical that we continue to build new tools and tweak old ones to better support human empathy and compassion. If we ignore what makes us human, we do so at our own peril.
AI is here for good. The social sector has a brief moment to decide how we will show up and how we will help our for-profit partners engage more deeply with the human values that the sector exists to uphold. Do we value what makes us human? Grief, joy, hopefulness? Do we value trust and transparency? Do we value innovation and psychological safety? Then we need to begin doing the work — engaging and partnering with the tools in a new responsible way.
Calls to action will follow at a rapid fire pace. I’m angry, hurting, frustrated. And I know I’m not the only one. We are in a fight, flight, freeze moment with AI - we are human, this is natural. I am here to help channel those feelings into productive outcomes for all of us. Equity, transparency, liberation are non-negotiable. Climate change is here and we have some big issues to tackle in service of our own survival. How will we deploy our skills? How will we share our knowledge? How will you challenge status quo practices? Because you are all field catalysts and we can all use our positional power for good.
You can find more rants here: TikTok Rachel and always on LinkedIn.