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The thing I love most about this book is are the the humans in the book the stories in the book They're just everyday workers who are using these tools to open up entirely new Possibilities for who they are and what they can be at work Jonetta is in her 50s grew up Fearing the robots and yet when AI came even though she started as in her words a hell no to AI She just found cause to have to push through that. I Was totally against using AI in each way, shape or form, not realizing that I probably have been using it when you use Alexa or when you're talking to your phone or when you're talking to your remote is artificial intelligence, which is AI. So having been introduced to it and then having to use it during my Merit America stint, I got used to making it work for me. Having worked through AI and using it now, I can't see how I can't get through a day. As I work as a help desk support person as well as work on projects. The use of AI streams lines a lot of my projects makes my life a lot easier. It allows me to get to a work day in an efficient amount of time without having to struggle. And I'm not using it to do the work. I'm using it to help me work. So it helps me work smarter and not harder. And I am becoming a proponent within my own family. We've got a a story in the book, Ume, who was in college learning how to become a software engineer as AI tools were coming out and people were really wondering, what is this going to do to the job of a software engineer? What's amazing is that she has come out of college, landed a job at Microsoft as a software engineer, but is also this influencer where she's trying to inspire young girls to get into STEM. My first real experience with AI started when ChatGPT actually launched during my junior year of college. I was a teaching assistant for three different computer science classes in college. I would use analogies a lot to help students understand these really complex topics. And I thought, well, why can't I use this to help me curate a lot of these tech concepts towards women and girls that like girly things? I just put that into ChatGPT one day. I said, hey, this is how I understand DevOps engineering. And I broke it down in the way that I knew best in a technological sense. I said, wait, can you just translate this over to an analogy of me doing my makeup? And it gave me back this analogy of me doing my mascara. So that was one of the first moments that I really understood what the power of AI could hold and that it wasn't all scary. And so that's why, for me, I really feel like AI is something that can be used as a helper, not necessarily something that can replace you. It's the empathetic side that I believe that AI probably will never replace, but we should be looking at AI as a means to really help accelerate our learning and also the way we work as well. What's great about Tess is that, you know, she comes from this nonprofit background. As AI started to hit, what she really was worried about was not how do I stop it, but her first question was, how do I make sure that folks who generally are left behind moments of big change are part of building this moment of big change? How do I bring them to the center of this? I really became passionate about this idea that opportunity isn't equally distributed and that we need to do something about that. How do we create more opportunity for people and try to level the playing field so that they don't just have the opportunity to survive, but also to thrive. And I started to really see that technology was becoming this turning point in accessing opportunity, whether it's applying for jobs or just being part of the growing digital economy. Around 2017 is when I first started encountering the rise of artificial intelligence. It really felt even at that point, like it was this really critical inflection point in the story of technology and how it's going to affect our lives, not just in how it's going to affect work and jobs, but it's going to affect things about our lives, our relationships, our creativity, our thinking, what it actually means to be human. And so I became really interested in this moment for AI and where it was going. And I became the founding CEO of a nonprofit organization called AI for All, which was focused on ensuring that AI expands equity and human dignity rather than deepening existing inequities and divides and make sure that we are mitigating the risks and getting it to strengthen rather than erode human opportunity, creativity, and connection. And that's the future that I'm focused on today. One of the voices in the book, Diego, he went and just became an entrepreneur because in his words, it's a permissionless path. He could just go build a business. And if it worked, that was all that mattered. But as he talked to me about these AI tools, he had this really important line that I think should help everyone who feels like they haven't been able to bring all they've got to work. And he said, you're no longer limited by what you know. You are only limited by what you can think to ask. I thought everybody was an entrepreneur and I sort of grew up with this mentality that everybody creates their own opportunity. So I left college to pursue this permissionless path and explore my own sense of opportunity. And now I help entrepreneurs across rural America develop their own businesses. And with this new tool of AI, it is much easier for an entrepreneur in a remote area, a rural remote area to have access to the expertise, the knowledge, the tools that someone in a metro area that's well-connected would have. So it levels the playing field. It removes all the barriers for anyone to pursue any type of opportunity. And it creates a sense that anything is possible as long as you are able to imagine it and interact with the AI tool. We are in a moment of exponential change. Instead of just wondering when someone else is gonna solve the thing, figuring out how you can solve it. Hey, the tools will tell you everything you need to know. Ask it the right question. You gotta be trying something new, failing in some new way, learning in some new way, and the more you do that, the more valuable you're gonna be at work.