You In Danger, Girl: What 10 Days in NYC Taught Me About AI & The Future of Work
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I went to New York for 10 days. I did not go looking for AI. It found me anyway.
Billboards. Subway car ads. Two competing AI companies on opposite walls of the same train car. And then a brunch table, where I sat trying very hard not to interrupt a conversation happening one foot to my left, between two strangers and the future of work.
One of them was venting about her company's research department. Too slow. She needed insights. So she did what anyone would do: dropped the report into AI, got what she needed in minutes, moved on with her life. I sat there biting my tongue because everything in me wanted to say the quiet part loud.
That conversation is still sitting with me two weeks later. It's the whole reason I'm writing this.
There's a tension right now between AI-as-hype and AI-as-real-turning-point. I felt it walking around the city. I felt it in two back-to-back sessions during New York Tech Week. One room full of guys optimizing for bots. Cold, fast, "more." The other room full of women building together, helping each other when they got stuck. Warm. Collaborative. Human.
Same week. Same city. Same technology. Two completely different visions of what this is all for.
I know which table I want to sit at. More than that, I know which one I want to build.
What I'm sitting with after 10 days
AI is moving off screens and into the physical world faster than most people realize. New York showed me that.
You can tell the difference between AI used intentionally and AI used lazily. So can your customers.
The person who learns AI deeply is not the one in danger. The one who waits is.
Tech events still have a gender problem. But there are rooms being built that don't. I've been to both, and the difference is everything.
You don't need a big project or a lot of technical knowledge to start. One annoying thing on your plate. That's where it begins.
Community changes everything. Women building together, helping each other figure it out, that is the version of AI I believe in.
The wave is already here. You're not waiting for it. You're deciding whether you're watching it or riding it.
If this landed for you, I want you to listen to the full episode. I take you everywhere. The packing hack. The tech sessions. The soap shop that broke my heart a little. And that brunch table.
And when you're done, come build with me. I'm running a free live virtual AI Queens Buildathon on June 24th at 1:00 PM Eastern. Seventy-five minutes. You'll leave with your own Claude Command Center, built in plain English, no code required.
Grab your free spot at aiqueens.com/build.
