You Teach The Machines

About You Teach The Machines

Hot takes on living with AI from the first generation who has no choice: today's college students.

Publisher

Jeff Pennington and MJ Pennington

Category

news · society & culture

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

10 Mar 2025

Latest episode

19 Aug 2026

Latest episodes

25 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   19 Aug 2026

   Gretchen Andrew

   Artist and entrepreneur Gretchen Andrew shares her perspective on life, beauty standards, and the civilizational stakes of saving independent journalism. Gretchen turns the tables and learns from MJ as we go NEXT LEVEL with Gen X, Y, and Z in our multigenerational take on tech in society. Check out Gretchen's company Intelligent Attribution and her (literally) genre-defining art; important work all around. MJ and I are tired of lamenting about AI so are thrilled to learn from Gretchen who is doing something to make the glass half full. Or at least less half empty!

2. 

   29 May 2026

   AI Literacy Workshop - Understanding for Non-Tech People of All Ages

   You Teach the Machines was an AI literacy workshop before it was a book. I've helped over 850 people from California to Maine connect, understand AI, process their fear, and move forward. People ages 12 to 80+ have been active audience participants. I make it as fun as the topic can be! An example of the short-form talk in Burlington, VT June 2025 is here. Video of the full workshop in Brooklyn, NY October of 2025 here. I'm winding down this work as of May 2026. If your community has a burning desire to learn how you teach the machines feel free to connect. I don't charge libraries, schools, or community groups. Ideally you could partner with a local bookstore to support sales of the book through their business. Events: Clayton Library, Clayton, NY, August 22 2026 Jesup Library, Bar Harbor, ME January 2026 College of Computing and Informatics, Drexel, Philadelphia, PA November 2025 Springboard Enterprises, New York, NY October 2025 Gowanus Studio Tour, Poursteady, Brooklyn, NY October 2025 Bala Cynwyd Library, Bala Cynwyd, PA September 2025 (https://lmls.libcal.com/event/14864455) Belvedere Tiburon Library, Tiburon, CA August 2025 (https://beltib.libnet.info/event/14076699) Thousand Island Park Library, Clayton, NY August 2025 Thousand Island Park Chatauqua, Clayton, NY, August 2025 Causeway Club, Southwest Harbor, ME July 2025 Grindstone Island Winery, Clayton, NY July 2025 PechaKucha 40, Burlington, VT June 2025 (Book published June 27) Colby College, Waterville, ME March 2025 NIH CTSA Consortium, Bethesda, MD November 2024 American College of Graduate Medical Education, Chicago, IL September 2024 Cincinnati Children's Hospital and Medical Center, Cincinnati, OH August 2024 Thousand Island Park Chatauqua, Clayton, NY, July 2024 Here's a transcript of the final part of the full workshop where we admit that AI can be put to productive use, despite all the flaws in the current landscape. "If you choose to use it productively. Yeah, so that's a really good, that's a really good point. There's there's a a point of view with technology. Am I using it deliberately, or am I just like depending on it mindlessly? There are a lot of amazing things that have come out of those same companies, including social media, right? Like some of you may be here because of social media. That's a good thing, right? You may have heard about it. Um, but at the same time AI has been used, especially in the last five years, six years, to uh make our interaction with digital systems more and more compelling and harder and harder to step back from and avoid. So my biggest, my biggest argument with the AI industry as it, as it is now, the sort of consumer like, hey, we're just using Chat GPT or Gemini or Claude or one of these things, or also hey, I were consuming social media, is um it's really really built around uh giving us those hits that will keep us coming back. So I I can go off on tech dependence all day long. I'm gonna stop there, but it's something to be aware of when you're interacting with AI systems, that those systems, they're being, they're they're trying to charm you. They're type casting and all these things because they really want to get you using them and keep using them. They want you to like pay for the premium subscription, right? That doesn't mean they're all bad and that you can't be productive in line, right? Um, we've talked about a lot about all the bad stuff. We're gonna really really try hard together to focus on the good stuff. Um, and this, this mate, Mary Jane just shook her head. Ha ha. Um, and I'm gonna, I'm gonna blow through what I have to say and then and then we can talk some more together, uh, and then we'll switch over to uh what I'm personally more interested in than being here to talk about AI again. Um, 'cause actually I didn't really want to write a book about AI, but haha. Um, and we'll do, we'll do some coffee stuff. So uh, a couple of my anecdotes, and then I'm gonna ask y'all for some um, why, why am I not like ready to throw the baby out with the bathwater and cut the cable and walk away from all this stuff? My uh mother in law, Mary Jane's grandmother, was staying with us this summer. She woke up, almost fell down from severe pain in the back of her knee. She's 82. She doesn't slow down, but this stopped her. She was up early when this happened, and um sat at the kitchen table and was googling over and over, what's going on, what's going on, what's going on, and was getting more and more scared. It was, she was not getting helpful information. It was scattered. Uh, I I got up, came downstairs, and and um could tell something was wrong and asked her, hey, what's up? And she said, I have this pain in the back of my knee and I can't find anything on Google, it doesn't make any sense. So we sat down in front of a chatbot and started a dialogue that um, we built up enough context, 'cause that's really important when you use these things, to interact and build up context. We got to the point where uh it told her, oh, you need to go to the hospital right now, because that's either deep vein thrombosis or a baker's cyst. And we got there because like, she basically said, well, I just tried this vitamin and I just stopped taking that medication and then I did this and then I did that. And she put all of this information out there that through the normal like ranking algorithm was just scattershot, but because of the context that she built up, and because of the pre training that the model behind this chat interface had, um, knew what to pay attention to. It said deep vein thrombosis or baker's cyst, go get an ultrasound, here's the two sentences you need to say to the doctor in order to have a really quick and productive exchange. She went to the local critical access hospital and had an ultrasound, and the deep vein thrombosis was ruled out. It was a baker's cyst. At 82, she had a better health outcome because of this technology. You know, she may or may not have shown up at that hospital uh and been triaged appropriately. She could walk in more informed, right. It could have been wrong, could have, there could have been misinformation, right, but um it was better than what she was getting from technology without it. That's one of my positives, and I'm gonna ask everybody else for positives. The second is uh a a study that I I worked on at CHOP, um, is similar to a study that's being done in pediatrics around the country. So, a uh there's a certain type of rib fracture in children that is, when appropriately evaluated, is like a dead on marker of physical abuse. The way the rib breaks, how it breaks, how it shows up in the X rays. Um, there are very few pediatric radiologists who can look at a chest X ray from the ER and say yes, that is from physical abuse, this kid needs to be uh assessed and protected. Um, there's a high rate of of that being missed by pediatric radiologists who haven't had that training. So there are researchers around the country who are working to teach machines to to appropriately and correctly identify that type of rib fracture, so that all the pediatric radiologists who don't have that expertise, and all the radiologists, and all of the community hospitals where there isn't a pediatric radiologist, can appropriately catch physical abuse in children and those kids can be protected. Um, these are the kinds of things why I can't just be like, f this stuff, f these guys, I'm out. And why I think it's important for all of us to be more informed and be critical consumers, that we can get to the good stuff and to collectively like marginalize the bad stuff. You just got a positive. Cooking, cooking. Yeah, take a picture of the ingredients you have and it'll help you, give you ideas for what to do with them. And you only lit it on fire once. Like sourdough baking, sourdough baking. A large, 60 pizzas for example, like helping create a recipe. So I think we're a recipe. So yeah. Derek, I was gonna say, kind of expanding on both of those points, the democratization of knowledge, where before a lot of this was extremely specialized. Before literacy was super high, everything was gatekept by guilds where people had specific knowledge of a certain thing. Literacy increased, people were able to learn more and do things at home and bring it to themselves. This is the next level of technology where I can go on, who has no formal experience with coding, and being able to buy code, new systems or something, like help me run something in my household I had no access to before this. Not good. Yep. That reminds me, I fixed my ACBC. Yeah, I have found Chat GPT, two examples recently, to be really good collaborators in complicated mechanical engineering tasks. That I mean, in one way it kind of is eliminating a job, you know, like this is CEO position and I get to like, you know, have expertise here when I can afford it. But the truth is a lot of time you can't afford it. We've had mechanical engineers and we've lost them in the past. I have more of like an MFA of design and been making stuff with my hands my whole life. But we need to improve the laminar flow of the water coming out of the course taking machine. And I had a month long conversation with Chat GPT where it was doing all the math, and we kind of figured out how long the little syringe tubing needed to be inside the nozzle to do it at that temperature, which, you know, conceptually I've seen a YouTube video of making Lambert flow, but this was literally doing the math. And we were narrowing in on like what you can buy online, where you can buy it, how long it has to be, what the diameters have to be. And like, that's like a fluid dynamics graduate student, 200 thousand dollar job hybrid specialty. And you know, we're a struggling small company trying to make complicated stuff, and like I can accept it now. Yeah, you're so desperate that you're hosting AI. Yeah, no. I mean, but like, you know, I would love to have like genius engineers around all the time, but I, yeah, that's not my cool, hasn't manifested itself yet. Another good one which um is actually re bringing back uh human interaction and especially through customer experience. A good example here, of course, that I do a lot of the CX support and about customer experience. Customer experience, half of my um day was sending out the same templated email, this is how you um connect back to Wi-Fi. And that caused me to also take a lot of other uh interactions to be less thoughtful. There's so much time was taken up for one thing. So with um our integration with um Fin AI, who intercom, that part's automated now. When it comes to actually speaking to the customers, I'm have more free time to be able to interact with them, get to know them on a real basis. Same thing if you're doing um marketing or social media on management, you can now automate the basic mundane crap that doesn't actually matter, like post this to three different spots, time this out, you don't have to wake up to do that. And it gives people more opportunity to write their own copy and do what actually matters. Yeah, just because Chat GPT or this can write the copy for you doesn't mean it has to. And you can automate the part, my friends, with the BS, and then you can do what matters and not live in between. Yeah, yeah, who's a parent here? Okay, who's a parent of a a like high school or college age kid? Okay. Um, who, who's ever seen their kids struggle because one of their teachers isn't great? Yeah, who in the room has ever had a teacher who wasn't getting through to them? Haha. These are class of 2025 college grads. OK, who, who are some of the most, they are the most interesting people to talk to about AI because they did 2 years of college without, two years with. MJ and I started this podcast called You Teach the Machines to Talk To. Actually these were our first guests. Um, true, true. Yeah, about that experience, and you should check it out 'cause it's fascinating. Um, who'd be willing to share how your experience using uh AI helped you learn more, get a better grade, when your teacher wasn't getting through to you? MJ, plant. Yeah, I'm a huge AI skeptic and I am gen generally negative about it, but I have had positive experiences. I took a probability class last year um for my statistics major that absolutely wrecked me. Like, it was in the math department, I wasn't a math major. The professor was like super classic, like long gray beard and glasses, like incredibly brilliant mathematician who did a lot of super theoretical math. Um, and so the way he taught the class was through a lot of math theory, and I was more interested in probability from the statistics side and from like the modeling side. So through a lot of these units I would sit in a lecture and he would teach about probability through a sort of math theory lens and it would go right over my head. And like, the way that I Learned better is through like concrete examples of applying math. And I'm also super visual, so I need kind of it like spelled out for me in like a physical way. Um, and so I would sit through one of these lectures and then use AI after the class to basically give them the topic that I had Learned and ask for an explanation in a couple different ways. And there's like a benefit to the ability to interact with it that's different from just googling. You can just Google like whatever the probability concept is, the Poisson Curve, and and get a page, a static page that gives you information. Of being able to interact with AI, I could kind of, it kind of Learned how I Learned better, and could could word it in a way that my brain process better, come up with examples and problems for me to try that like got through to me a little bit better than the theory. So yeah, there you go. Yeah, so what's a common theme from all positives today? Was anybody just like, you know, what's the animated movie um where the people are in couches, just like WALL-E? WALL-E, uh, yeah, WALL-E. Were any of those examples like, somebody is like, right, they were all examples of augmentation. That's how this works for us. And that's where there may be an element of dependence, in the same way that I now depend on navigation apps to to get places. Um, but that's on my terms, okay. Augmentation is is what you are instinctively drawn to in these uses. What's just took like one call back to fears. Kids that are younger than than the crew here. Um, with Connie, chef, chef, alright I got it right, they're both blonde like roughly the same shape, he's bigger, he's bigger. So chef. Um, Chef, I'm sorry to tell you, but your prefrontal cortex is not developed, right. It will be someday, it's gonna be great. Alright, but your, your the kids in your lives aren't necessarily developed to the point where they can disambiguate between, oh, this thing's augmenting me, and I'm just gonna be like, I'll just take it, right. Um, that's why it's important for you to be an influence on the kids in your lives, and to be understanding of teachers who have been dropped into this right after they got out of the pandemic and are just like, really, okay. Um, but that augmentation is the sweet spot, as so far as it exists now. Um, the the sort of so what, my recommendations um based on my own research, my own behaviors, experiences, but then what I've Learned from talking to, you know, over 800 people um in person, are: don't give away your data. In your business, in your personal life, consider your data to be an asset. Now, in this forum it's hard to, like for me to tell you exactly what that means, but uh Derek, how useful were 10 years of customer service emails in fine tuning the, I mean, it was everything, that's our dataset. Yeah. Um, your data can be your business's data, your personal data. My writing is my data. I I am getting ready to uh fine tune an AI using my book. Alright, and then from that, do some experiments on, like, could I train an AI to be my book? Right. I'm not gonna just give that book to any of the big commercial providers, dump it in there, even though Paul thinks I should. Something to do for you, they probably already have, they probably already have it. Just get it in, yeah, just get it in. I'll just upload it. But consider the data you generate to be an asset. And if you are in a situation where you need to acquire or start using a new digital system, every digital system that you, that you buy or buy into these days is, has been funded as a startup, in part, digital information system, in order, based on the value of the unique dataset that they collect. Like the venture capital market switched in 2015 to, it's not just the team and the product and the market, it's those things and it's the unique dataset. So the investors for 10 years now have been buying into, putting money into, businesses that generate a unique data set. Um, when you subscribe to a business uh service software, it's all hosted now. That's because they want your data. It's a unique data set. The terms and conditions that um that company acquires and then uses your data are always favor the company, and you just like, yeah I'll click fine, let's go, low stakes. So what, who cares? Higher stakes, like, thank god you had all those emails. Does Intercom also basically allow you to download sort of every product of every interact, every customer interaction, so that you have it instead of just Intercom? Yes, great. Yep, that was the right decision. We also set up a additional background forwarding so that we can have it saved on a Gmail as well as Hubspot for our CRM. Right, so we have it moved over to several locations. Yeah, they're all using it to train, of course. So you're contributing to the commons, which is another way to look at how your data gets used, right. It, you can hoard and protect and be conspiracy minded, or you could just like figure out what's important to you, what the stakes are, when it comes to your data. Um, tasks. Everything, every positive we discussed was about like, I gotta, I gotta get x done. Be deliberate in how you interact with AI. Teach the people around you, model that behavior, teach kids. What do you wanna do? It's not like just sort of sitting back and using AI. It's like, I gotta, I gotta do this task. And then use it to save yourself time. This is something that I, that I've Learned in lots of discussions with people, that I've Learned on my own. Um, great anecdote. I had a consulting project, I did probably a day and a half worth of work in a, in a half a day, and could spend the rest of that time differently. I was blown away with not just how I could do, do research on the topic I was consulting on, but then how I could synthesize it, compile it, and and use AI to help me tell the story that was in the information and put it out there. Get time back, right, by using these tools. And then as best you can, like, have your output be based on value, not on hours spent, so that you don't end up like adding to the gig economy sectors, right, which is something Mary Jane can speak very cogently about. Um, but use it to get time back. That's on your terms. Um, and the most important thing, something that I that I've, I've Learned um, is, and it's become even more important to me: you don't just use Chat GPT. Don't ever get reflective about which AI you, you use, because they're all different, they all have pros, cons, flaws. Ask the same question or do the same project on multiple. That does one thing, it allows you to see where they're inconsistent with each other, and that inconsistency is a signal, oh, why is that inconsistent? Back to critical thinking and digging into like why, why, why is this, why are these answers different? Um, it gives you an opportunity to think critically and compare contrast, do your own research and thinking. So just in that, that pattern of behavior, it's sort of just better for a human brain and using those strengths more. Um, also it's, for me it's become, you know, now when I don't agree with one of these companies and how they're going about this stuff, I'm out. You know, I'm not gonna tell you which one I don't agree with, you gotta come up, come up with your own answer to that. Um, but recently I've been like, nope, I'm done, I can't. So coming back to the environmental cost of AI. It it turns, yeah, AI turns electricity into heat. That's how it works. That's the physical industrial process. Electricity goes into a computer, bits and bytes come out, heat gets emitted. So it consumes electricity, it consumes a ton of electricity, it consumes a ton of water for cooling, both at electricity generation but then also in the data center. Um, you know, everything in our modern life consumes resources. We're all, we're all often trying to be good stewards of these resources. When you use multiple AIs, you set yourself up to start to be a critical thinker about, hey, like which one's even like deciding to, you know, not put a new data center next to a new power plant on top of Marcellus Shale gas. Because a year, a year and a half ago, it was all about the new nuke plants that were being commissioned and or recommissioned. And now, very quietly, the the AI industry is like, now they're parking data centers on top of of of a shale gas. So it's happening, right. Shh, right. So if you use multiple, you can make those, you can use your critical thinking to make those kinds of decisions. Um, most importantly, stop my foot, get out and talk to people. Get, get off your phone. It's hard, I don't judge anybody who sits and scrolls, I do it, but connect in the real world. We've all been burned by the incorporation of AI that basically makes technology more addictive. We've been burned by a pandemic that locked us up and put us in front of computers for what had been in personal interaction, zoom, blah blah blah, right. Disconnection is the biggest risk to us, all of us here. That's my view. My biggest fear is disconnection, which is why I don't do these talks online, which is why I go, I've been to seven states now and I do it in person, because this is what makes us human. What makes all of these things turn into minor problems and not overwhelming problems. Alright, and also, if you'd like to keep up with, with this, with the change of this stuff, as much as you, as as we can, MJ and I um have this podcast. Uh, I've, I can say objectively that the book is really good. Um, a 15 year old has gotten something out of it, an 85 year old has gotten something out of it. It doesn't dumb things down, it does make really complex stuff accessible. You can tell what my style is, um, and that, that comes through in the book. If you wanna get the book, um, let me give you a sticker."

3. 

   26 Mar 2026

   Exhausted by AI Hype?

   I want to help you understand and move on with your life, with or without AI. A quick reading from my book You Teach the Machines.

Who has been a guest on You Teach The Machines

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• Georgie Kovacs
• Paul Berger
• Philip Hagedorn MD
• Pablo Urdiales Antelo
• Jack

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5.0 / 5

3 ratings

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1 ratings

Podcast Authority Score: 24 / 100

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36

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32

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