Episode 111: One Woman’s Rebellion Against Reckless AI

Carolyn Ford — Tue, 25 Nov 2025 10:00:00 -0500

In this thought-provoking episode of Tech Transforms, host Carolyn Ford welcomes Janet Kang, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur turned nonprofit leader whose work sits at the intersection of AI innovation, ethics, and long-term societal impact. After building companies since age 13, launching multiple ed-tech ventures, and incubating AI-powered products in a corporate venture studio, Janet experienced firsthand the exhilarating speed and unsettling risks of deploying AI in real-world environments. Those experiences ultimately led her to join Just Horizons Alliance, a nonprofit committed to developing open protocols, ethical frameworks, and real-time auditing tools that help organizations build and deploy AI responsibly.

Janet shares candid stories from the early days of AI adoption, where models behaved inconsistently, guardrails lagged behind product timelines, and the pressure to scale fast often overshadowed deeper questions of safety and accountability. She explains why today’s biggest risk isn’t far-off superintelligence; it's the immediate, under-regulated integration of AI into education, healthcare, hiring systems, and public services. For younger users especially, she warns, AI already shapes communication, decision-making, confidence, and even identity and most tech leaders lack the tools to properly assess or mitigate those risks.

Carolyn and Janet explore why ethical AI requires more than thought leadership and policy statements. It requires action: adversarial testing, real-world simulations, contextual frameworks, and independent audits that account for messy human behavior, not just ideal use cases. They also discuss the structural barriers women face in tech, the mentors who “give up their seat” to make space, and the mindset shift that comes with parenthood thinking in decades, not quarters.
Looking ahead, Janet envisions a future where AI becomes “infrastructure, not the main character” as invisible and reliable as flipping a light switch because circuit breakers, safety layers, and accountability systems are finally in place. Until then, she calls on builders, executives, educators, and policymakers to take practical steps now: test relentlessly, understand failure modes, prioritize vulnerable users, and choose impact over speed.

This is an episode for leaders who want to innovate boldly and responsibly, those wrestling with how to balance progress with protection, and how to shape an AI-powered future worthy of the next generation.

Show Notes:
www.justhorizons.org
https://www.linkedin.com/in/kangjanet/
Pause superintelligence petition - https://www.axios.com/2025/10/22/superintelligence-ai-pause-yoshua-bengio

Books Mentioned
Empire of AI — Karen Hao
The Alignment Problem — Brian Christian
The Broken Earth Trilogy — N.K. Jemisin (recommended by Carolyn)

Episode 107: The Curious Case of AI - Part 1 (The Chills)

Carolyn Ford — Tue, 07 Oct 2025 09:30:00 -0400

The Curious Case of AI - A Two-Part Special (“The Chills”)
In this Tech Transforms Halloween “Chills” episode, host Carolyn Ford and futurist Joseph Bradley explore the eerie, but essential, questions AI raises. Using Star Trek as their guide, they look at how “identic AI”, technology that mirrors identity, preferences, and even purpose can feel both thrilling and unsettling.
Bradley, a strong believer in AI’s potential, points out that every powerful tool comes with risks if it’s misused. Together, he and Carolyn discuss what happens when efficiency is valued over happiness, how bias can creep in if we aren’t intentional, and why cognitive cities must be built with trust and ethics at the core. Think less “the end is near” and more “what safeguards do we need to make sure this future works for people?”
This episode sets the stage for leaders, innovators, and everyday users to think critically about how AI shapes identity, relationships, and society, while remembering that the choices we make now will decide whether the future feels like The Borg… or The Federation.

Mentioned in this episode:
Joseph Bradley’s book U to the Power of 2 (Pre-order: josephmbradley.com | https://shop.u-x2.ai/)
Paperclip dilemma thought experiment - https://nickbostrom.com/ethics/ai
Smart vs. Cognitive Cities https://www.pwc.com/m1/en/publications/documents/cognitive-cities-a-journey-to-intelligent-urbanism.pdf
Questioneering: The New Model for Innovative Leaders in the Digital Age

Tech Transforms - Episodes Tagged with “Aiethics”

Episode 111: One Woman’s Rebellion Against Reckless AI

Episode 107: The Curious Case of AI - Part 1 (The Chills)